This Is Not the Original Starbucks
posted by Jim Page at 10:26 PM
Monday, January 18, 2010
About Me
- Name: Jim Page
- Location: Seattle, Washington, United States
I do music. I find it's a very useful language, it travels well and translates. I think that when we get good at ignoring things life becomes dangerous.
Previous Posts
- If There Is A God How Come We Don’t All Know About...
- Nickelsville, and the Ugly Underbelly Of Seattle
- Goodbye Joe
- Joe Paquin
- Time In San Francisco
- Nickelsville, the play
- Snow On My Neck
- Christmas Time Has Come Again
- Narrowly missing the end times
- Finally the Rain and Billy Hults
3 Comments:
You,sir, are a National Treasure...
Forever Grateful
Hi Jim:
Just a not to say Canada Loves Ya`! Time flies so fast these days can hardly believe 1 1/2 years have gone past since we saw you up here..
All the best / stay healthy and live long !
Garry & Gina
Dad had just graduated from USC and Mom was a stenographer at Los Angeles City Hall. California born, all-American kids—they both worked hard, got good grades in school, met at church, fell in love and got married. In college, he had a raccoon coat and a banjo. She loved growing flowers and making beautiful food. They were saving money to move out of his parent’s home and buy a small house of their own.
Everything changed on December 7, 1941—Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. 125,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent who lived on the West Coast were loaded onto buses with duffle bags and suitcases filled with clothing, linens, blankets and personal items. The majority were American-born citizens. They were sent to ten inland camps in eastern California, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Arkansas. Dad’s family went to Arkansas, Mom’s family went to Arizona.
Cars, machinery, tools and musical instruments were sold for a pittance. Most people lost homes, pets, farms, fishing boats and businesses.
My grandfather was taken away at gunpoint, by the FBI. It was several months before my family found out where he was. It was several more months before they were reunited.
At the Santa Anita Racetrack “Assembly Center”, 18,000 people had to live in horse stalls and hastily-built military barracks. The horse stalls were whitewashed but still smelled of manure.
The 8,000 people who were moved to Jerome, Arkansas lived in barracks. Now home was a single room with cots for each family member and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Several blocks away were the latrine buildings, which had group showers and toilets with no partitions, and the Dining Hall where everyone ate together at long tables. The lack of privacy was humiliating.
The camps in Santa Anita and Jerome were surrounded by barbed-wire fencing, and soldiers pointed machine guns at the internees 24/7 from tall guard towers. My older brother was born during that time, and his first two and a half years were spent behind barbed wire.
Mom wrote in her journal, “Everything is so scary and difficult. I feel confused and hurt that my America is treating us like the enemy. Now, we citizens are called “non-aliens”. I am so terribly disappointed.”
There are two Japanese phrases; Shikata ga nai means “it can’t be helped” or “nothing can be done” and Gaman means “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity”. They were the Japanese Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”
Years later, Mom sewed a Memory Quilt with camp photographs printed on fabric, surrounded by a border of embroidered barbed wire. She showed her Quilt and spoke at schools, libraries and churches. She talked about racial prejudice and fear of those who seem “different”. She talked of being vigilant about “protecting our precious freedoms”. In 2001, she talked about compassion for Muslims. If she was alive today, she would talk about compassion for immigrants.
With grace, beauty and love Mom, the alchemist, changed anger, grief, loss and pain into a fierce desire to safeguard American civil rights. Turning dross into gold. Turning darkness into shimmering light.
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