Japanese Americans

Attorneys for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II told the Supreme Court on Monday that lawyers for the government deliberately concealed reports that cast doubt on its claim that the mass roundup of 120,000 persons on the West Coast was a "military necessity." In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the "exclusion" of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast, accepting the government's contention that these residents posed a potential threat if Japanese forces invaded California.

Dragons, graffiti, cartoon heroes. Gajin Fujita is known for mixing Japanese art with L.A. street and pop culture in paintings fueled by his eclectic imagination and experiences as a Japanese American from Boyle Heights. The Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena is spotlighting a major influence on these East-meets-Eastside creations: Fujita's passion for ukiyo-e , the woodblock prints that flourished in 17th- to 19th-century Japan. "Gajin Fujita: Ukiyo-e in Contemporary Painting," which opened in April, is what curator Bridget Bray calls "a focused solo exhibition of five pieces in which you see parallels to the print tradition such as dynamic compositions, martial figures, attention to surface detail and dramatization of the natural and supernatural worlds.

Y. Fred Fujikawa's hands aren't what they used to be. His right forefinger is bent like a sickle from the painful arthritis that eventually forced him to retire from performing chest surgery. But the 81-year-old Seal Beach resident has a bull's-eye memory. Fujikawa was born on the Fourth of July, 1910, in San Francisco. His father had immigrated to the United States in 1900 and had lived a migrant life, working on the railroads and in fields.

Reflecting its diversifying community, the Japanese American National Museum announced Friday that it had hired a fourth-generation Alaskan of Japanese and European heritage as chief executive of one of Little Tokyo's most important institutions. G.W. "Greg" Kimura, who headed the Alaska Humanities Forum, will take over the museum as it struggles with an aging donor base, fundraising difficulties and the challenge of appealing to younger and more assimilated Japanese Americans. Gordon Yamate, chairman of the museum board, said Kimura's fundraising skills would be particularly needed, even as his institution has financially stabilized after retiring about $2 million in short-term debt in the past few years.

House and Senate negotiators on Thursday endorsed legislation guaranteeing $20,000 compensation payments to the estimated 60,000 living Japanese-Americans who were sent to internment camps in World War II. The compromise legislation, which could pay the former internees as much as $1.2 billion over three years, must be approved by both houses of Congress before being sent to the White House for consideration by President Bush. Atty. Gen.

They came from as far as Hawaii and New York to recall Manzanar, a dusty, inhospitable place where they attended school, made friends and forged a community--surrounded by barbed wire and gun-toting guards. It was a reunion tinged with ambivalence, a cherished opportunity for old friends to renew acquaintances while also recalling an experience most deeply wished had never happened.

All week long, Matao Uwate fiddles with recording equipment in the back of his cluttered shop on San Pedro Street in downtown Los Angeles, readying tapes for a one-hour radio program that for decades has been a precious link to the homeland for Japanese-Americans living in Southern California. Before he turns on his tape machine, Uwate often lingers in front of towering shelves in his improvised recording studio.

He went away and hewed to the line. He came back and carved a life. That's what happened when Gardena celery farmer Heishiro Otani was shipped off to an American internment camp during World War II. To while away the time, Otani whittled. A half-century later, he's still at it. But don't think for an instant that the 84-year-old is some old codger rocking on the porch, lazily putting knife to stick. He works on a grander scale. And his works have a look of grandeur.

Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal, in an extraordinary admission of misconduct, took to task one of his predecessors for hiding evidence and deceiving the Supreme Court in two of the major cases in its history: the World War II rulings that upheld the detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. Katyal said Tuesday that Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat.

The century-old Buddhist temple is for sale. The asking price for its gilded columns and marble stairs is $1.1 million. But the cost to a blighted corner of this city and to the area's Japanese American community is not as easily estimated. Indeed, during this Obon season — when Buddhists remember the dead — the decision to abandon the landmark Fresno Betsuin Buddhist Temple balances two basic tenets of the faith: honoring ancestors and accepting the impermanence of all things.

Gordon Hirabayashi, who was convicted for defying the evacuation and internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II and, four decades later, not only cleared his name but helped prove that the government had falsified the reasons for the mass incarceration, has died. He was 93. Hirabayashi, who had Alzheimer's disease and other ailments, died Monday in Edmonton, Alberta, where he had lived for many years, said his son, Jay. The elder Hirabayashi was one of only three Japanese Americans who refused to comply with Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1942.

They're old men now, old enough to remember the days of segregation and slurs. Levi Thornhill is an African American raised under Jim Crow laws in Virginia. Bill Toledo is a Native American who was spanked by teachers for speaking his Navajo language. And Ken Akune is a California native and U.S. citizen who was imprisoned in a World War II internment camp simply because of his Japanese ancestry. But when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, thrusting the nation into World War II, none of that mattered.

When they first came to this corner of Wyoming 69 years ago, shops and restaurants in the tiny town of Cody hung banners warning "No Japs Allowed. " A local newspaper announced their arrival with the headline, "TEN THOUSAND JAPS TO BE INTERNED HERE. " But this weekend, as hundreds of Japanese Americans interned during World War II at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center returned, many for the first time, new signs greeted them: "Welcome all Japanese Americans. Congratulations. " Photos: Heart Mountain reunion They returned to see the land, now fields of lima beans and alfalfa, and to see the opening of a long-awaited museum at the site that will preserve their stories.

The century-old Buddhist temple is for sale. The asking price for its gilded columns and marble stairs is $1.1 million. But the cost to a blighted corner of this city and to the area's Japanese American community is not as easily estimated. Indeed, during this Obon season — when Buddhists remember the dead — the decision to abandon the landmark Fresno Betsuin Buddhist Temple balances two basic tenets of the faith: honoring ancestors and accepting the impermanence of all things.

Quite a few of those who gathered Thursday along the angled Little Tokyo block named for the first Japanese American astronaut said it was the closest they would ever get to a space shuttle launch. They had come to see a newly restored one-tenth-scale model of the Challenger space shuttle be hoisted atop the memorial to Ellison S. Onizuka, one of the seven astronauts who died when the shuttle exploded on Jan. 28, 1986. At 1 p.m., when the big moment was scheduled, people clutching cameras positioned themselves, lining the balcony of the Weller Court shopping center on one side of the monument as well as the roof and each level of the parking garage on the other side.

Every morning, she climbed the wide marble steps of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga was not trained for this work. She was a homemaker, not a historian. But she had a lifetime of simmering anger and unanswered questions. By lamplight in the grand reading room, she scoured thousands of documents, inventing her own organizing system to keep track of the information she found. She brought home so many copies that she commandeered a bathtub and used it as a filing cabinet.

A lifetime ago, the Yamaguchi family labored long and hard in a chop-suey shop in downtown Los Angeles to send their son, Kei, to university, hoping it would give him the chance for a better life. World War II interrupted the immigrant family's dreams, but on Saturday, Kei Yamaguchi finally received his degree from UCLA — almost seven decades after he left. "It feels great," said the 91-year-old Yamaguchi, who is still active in the family termite-control business. He was among 48 Japanese Americans who were awarded honorary degrees, some posthumously, in a special ceremony at the Westwood campus.

Americans of Japanese or partial Japanese descent are eligible for college scholarships from the Ventura County Japanese American Citizens League. The scholarships can be used to help students with books, tuition and other educational expenses. Students must submit an application, letter of recommendation, official transcript and a personal statement. For information, contact Ventura County JACL Scholarship Committee, P.O. Box 1092, Camarillo 93011 or (805) 373-4536.

In one sense, the U.S. solicitor general's recent admission of his office's wrongdoing wasn't really news. After all, commissions courts and investigators long ago established that various government agencies and officials fudged or withheld facts during World War II in order to sweep all people of Japanese descent — American-born citizens as well as immigrants — out of California and parts of three other Western states. Congress, the president, state and local officials and the military rode a wave of war hysteria to support the politically popular but blatantly un-American evacuation and confinement of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans.

Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal, in an extraordinary admission of misconduct, took to task one of his predecessors for hiding evidence and deceiving the Supreme Court in two of the major cases in its history: the World War II rulings that upheld the detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. Katyal said Tuesday that Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat.