From left: MS Now’s Rachel Maddow, Satsuki Ina, Frank Abe, and Lorraine Bannai.
By Sharon Yamato
As we approach the end of a torturous year for American democracy, I can’t help but think about the deeply personal recent losses to our community that have made the past year one of the worst in recent memory. Just look at The Rafu’s front page last week to see how many deaths have hit us harder and with more frequency than ever before.
Aside from the belated tribute to centenarian and elder statesman Frank Chuman, how could anyone who knew the ever-cheerful Barbara Keimi or the amazing Marsha Aizumi not mourn their untimely passing? They join the distinguished ranks of people like Bob Nakamura and Art Hansen, who died earlier in the year after giving so much to the community that would not have been the same without them.
In addition to these human losses, 2025 will also be remembered as a year when we suffered the repeated loss of our civil liberties. With ICE agents sweeping through Little Tokyo and other ethnic communities, people are being arrested solely based on their appearance and without constitutionally guaranteed due process. It’s so pervasive that I would bet there’s not anyone among us who doesn’t know someone in danger of being stopped, arrested, and potentially deported.
It’s uncanny how striking the similarities are between immigrants being targeted today and what happened to our ancestors a little over 80 years ago. Oddly enough, it took a narcissistic leader and his maniacal administration to call attention to the WWII incarceration through its creation of similar and perhaps even more appalling detention centers today.
Of note is that there are still those among the history-illiterate in this country who were completely unaware that concentration camps even existed in America’s “land of the free” in 1942.
Enter newscaster Rachel Maddow, who recounts the story of this horrible history to millions of her followers in the recent six-part podcast “Burn Order.” The titular “burn order” refers to the government’s efforts to destroy all (but one) document that details the racist policy that underlay the decision to confine anyone with any Japanese blood in a predetermined “military zone” along the West Coast.
As a tried-and-true liberal and Maddow fan, I give credit to the creators of this podcast for carefully investigating and bringing to light a story that was once mostly familiar to those of us directly affected by it. It’s also good that it came out in a year plagued by misinformation and outright lies that has led to a country deeply and often violently divided.
By reflecting on how our ancestors experienced and overcame the absolute horror of mass incarceration, Maddow has put a positive spin on what all of us can do to overcome tyranny and injustice. She has turned people many of us already know well, like Korematsu, Hirabayashi, Yasui, and Endo, into household names, and gives much deserved credit to Aiko Yoshinaga-Herzig and the coram nobis team for their relentless work in uncovering governmental wrongdoing.
Maddow outlines with her characteristic hyperbole what she calls “one of the most shocking decisions in American history.” Indeed, the wholesale imprisonment of all Americans of Japanese ancestry was massive and unprecedented, but given the many complex factors that caused it, I’m not sure that “shocking” is the correct word to describe the decision to take more than 115,000 people from their homes and throw them in camps.
There was concerted effort by many in FDR’s administration, including the president himself, to cause the mass hysteria that came to a head with Pearl Harbor. Repeated today with equal viciousness, that decision did not seem to shock most Americans at the time, just as there are still those among us today in favor of immigrant detention.
Also, Maddow chooses to focus on Army Major Karl Bendetsen as the chief culprit in the decision to incarcerate. By doing so, she lets others off the hook too much, including such racist and “lock them up” allies as Army General John De Witt, California Governor Earl Warren, Department of Justice attorney Edward Ennis, and even FDR himself.
Thankfully, community leaders like Frank Abe, Satsuki Ina and Lorraine Bannai were on hand to tell our part of the story in the podcast and on a TV broadcast that aired last Monday. I love hearing that Japanese Americans must stand as the most outspoken protestors that weren’t there for us in 1942.
At the same time, I would’ve liked to have heard from at least one bona fide WWII scholar to temper Maddow’s sometimes-inflated rhetoric that created heroes and monsters where more subtle differences might have made the story slightly more accurate. Even though I know many of us are delighted to hear her tell our story, I hope it’s also being conveyed to those who are still unconvinced it was as bad as we know it to be and would like to hear more.
I’m grateful this past horrific year has given us something to cheer about (and not just the Dodger win). In the meantime, I hope to see you at the next No Kings rally carrying a sign that says, “Never Again” so we can all be the allies our ancestors didn’t have.
Here’s wishing you a 2026 filled with hope, change and lots of compassion.
Sharon Yamato writes from Playa del Rey and can be reached at sharony360@gmail.com.Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.