Every now and then, I come across another name. George Takei. Satsuki Ina. Daniel Inouye. Paul Kitagaki. Sono Fujii. Japanese-sounding name...
Every now and then, I come across another name. George Takei. Satsuki Ina. Daniel Inouye. Paul Kitagaki. Sono Fujii. Japanese-sounding names, or at least partly so. If there’s a picture attached, they are all Japanese-looking, whatever that really means.
But they are all also Americans. Of Japanese ethnicity, yes, but full-fledged Americans. Satsuki Ina is a psychotherapist. The late Inouye was a US Senator, named “President pro tempore” of the US Senate from 2010 until his death in 2012. That is, he was the US Senate’s second-highest-ranking officer, and thus third in line to the Presidency. Takei is an actor who made his name in the Star Trek films.
These are Americans like any other. Yet what forever marks them, and other Japanese-Americans, is that starting in 1942, the US incarcerated over 100,000 people like them in prison camps. This happened because the US and Japan were enemies during World War II, and these Japanese-Americans were seen as potential traitors to the country in which they lived.
Ina was born in such a camp. Takei spent a year-and-a-half in another. Inouye only side-stepped the internment by, ironically, enlisting in the US Army. He lost his right arm to a grenade and was later awarded the Medal of...
