Sat 1/31 @ 6PM
It’s a difficult topic to dredge up but there are important lessons to be learned, especially in these fraught days of attacks not only on immigrants but those who simple LOOK “different.” When Japanese-Americans were pulled from their homes, forced to leave their businesses and possessions behind, and interned in remote “relocation” facilities during World War II, these weren’t “illegals” — the majority were American-born citizens who had no reason to be presumed to be more loyal to Japan. Was racism at work? There were no similar internment camps for German-Americans. Yet following Pearl Harbor, in one of his less commendable acts, Franklin Roosevelt signed the order for the camps which existed through 1945. The late Cleveland photographer Masumi Hayashi was born in one such camp. From 1990 until her death in 2006, she created a series of haunting images of the locations and the survivors in her unique photo-collage style.
It’s a topic worth revisiting today and you can do so at the Lakewood Public Library’s Main Library Auditorium, where Dr. Aura Sunada Newlin will speak on “The World War II Imprisonment of Japanese Americans: Heart Mountain and Beyond.” Newlin is a fourth-generation American who will share stories of her relatives who were incarcerated at Heart Mountain, as she also connects that history to northeast Ohio and the Japanese-Americans who came here after the war as they tried to rebuild their lives.
It’s free and open to all.
lakewoodpubliclibrary/the-world-war-ii-imprisonment-of-japanese-americans-heart-mountain-and-beyond/