America's long history of scapegoating its Asian citizens

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

DANNY SATOW WAS walking home from a stroll around her neighborhood in Federal Way, a suburb just south of Seattle, when a heavy object slammed into her chest. A car whizzed by and a disembodied voice yelled a racial slur against Chinese people. The car melted into the rush of traffic, and Danny leaned over to pick up the liter of water that had hit her. Her collarbone stung, but she told herself it didn’t matter, she was fine. She stood still on the sidewalk and tried to channel her grandmother.

Growing up in New York, Danny rarely felt bigotry because of her Japanese heritage. But in the house she shared with her grandparents in Brooklyn, the past engulfed her imagination. Her grandfather, Eisaku "Ace" Hiromura, barely spoke of his experiences in World War II, but the medals hanging on his wall told of combat with the 442nd Infantry Regiment, a highly decorated unit of second-generation Japanese Americans. Her grandmother, Haruka "Alice" Kikuchi, regaled Danny with stories about being 20 years old and going to jitterbug dances held at the Tanforan Racetrack in California, where she and nearly 7,800 other Japanese-Americans were interred by the U.S. government. She and seven siblings slept on cots in horse stables.

Internment, she told her granddaughter, was a mistake. But she wasn’t bitter. We need to do better, Alice would say.

So when the water bottle hit her chest and the slur rang out, Danny, a 33-year-old physician assistant, thought of the optimism and poise her grandmother had maintained through her 101 years and counting. She kept walking. She was four blocks from home, but she burst into tears before she got to the end of the street.

-more-

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/09/asian-american-racism-covid/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=SpecialEdition_20200904&rid=FB26C926963C5C9490D08EC70E179424

[flotsam]

1. I've read elsewhere the the 442nd was the most decorated unit of WW2

In one case a company of Texans were surrounded and they were tasked to a rescue mission. In heavy combat they took more casualties numerically than the entire company of Texans but broke through and rescued the white boys. The company motto was "Go for it!"...