APAHM Comics, but especially They Called Us Enemy

I could have easily done a post on comics last week. I did read some looking for Asian-American authors, though I got two Asian-Canadian and one Japanese author mixed in. There is one I am thinking about more, and it is going to lead somewhere.

I will still name the comics:

Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano

This One Summer by cousins Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

Supernova (Amulet 8) by Kazu Kibuishi

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei with co-writers Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott and art by Harmony Becker

That is in reverse order from how I read them, because Takei's work is the one that has stuck with me most, over a year after reading it, and is the one that relates most to additional reading.

I am not going to spend a lot of time on the others. I do think that it is perfect that This One Summer, with its youth and secrets and summer vacation, was written by cousins. The futility in Nijigahara Holograph sticks with me as well, though it seems like there should be a way through. 

Of course, if you are not already, you can always become my friend on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/gmharris 

 

I review lots of books, pretty regularly.

 

On to They Called Us Enemy. 

I know one reason I am thinking about it more now is because I just read Jamie Ford's Hotel On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

While the book focuses on a Chinese boy, his best friend is a Japanese girl who is interned with her family. We see some of that.

There are things that you know on one level; I have known that the internment happened for some time. Stories bring facts to life, and multiple stories drive them deeper.

Somewhere in the reading, I realized that while most large cities have a Chinatown, there used to be Japantowns too, at least on the West Cost. Then the people living in them were taken away, providing great financial opportunities for those left behind.

Maybe I was thinking of it more because of a flurry of attention to the Tulsa Massacre, and how roads were constructed and new things built in a way to hide the evidence, but also to transfer wealth from the marginalized to those who marginalized them.

This year was the first year that I saw that Executive Order 9066 could be applied to those of German and Italian descent too. Occasionally it was, but no, that law was not applied equally.

 

I am going to need to watch Allegiance, and that will happen, but for now the image that stays with me from Takei's book is his father slipping out of an office they are both working at because Eleanor Roosevelt is going to stop by. Even though it is meant to be an honor, and George himself is excited, his father cannot shake the hand of the woman whose husband sent him to that camp.

 

There are people who are still alive who were in those camps, though they are old now. The process for admitting it was wrong did not happen until Carter, with formal acknowledgement under Reagan. That's in my lifetime.

Is the past even past?