[HN Gopher] Kanaye Nagasawa: A samurai who changed California ___________________________________________________________________ Kanaye Nagasawa: A samurai who changed California Author : rntn Score : 114 points Date : 2022-11-14 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com) | 1letterunixname wrote: | All along the hills following Blossom Hill Road in San Jose used | to be wineries. Very few remnants of these wineries exist because | they were replaced with single family homes when the value of the | land increased in the 1980's onward. Some of the larger homes on | the hills of San Jose / Los Gatos have a few scions. | Apocryphon wrote: | Wonder if there's any connection in the name of Sakamoto | Elementary. | shagie wrote: | I suspect its named for Paul Sakamoto, though I haven't found | anything to say one way or the other yet - | https://www.jamsj.org/manabu/paul-sakamoto | usui wrote: | > In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which | ordered the forced removal of Japanese American "enemy aliens". | The Nagasawa heirs, who were still fighting the estate's seizure | in court, were incarcerated in internment camps. Like the | approximately 125,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned until after | the end of World War Two, they lost any chance of reclaiming the | property. | | Absolutely disgusting that it took the United States 50 years | from 1942 to acknowledge injustices like this had occurred as | well as disburse the funds in an attempt to correct its mistakes. | It was $20,000 in the 1990s, yay whoopee... I have friends whose | families still, to this day, do not forgive the American | government for what it did. A good majority of | grandparents/parents were dead by then. Many returnees from the | camps systematically tried to erase any cultural heritage they | had by purposely hiding it and not passing it on to future | generations, as a result of their treatment. Because of that, | many Japanese perceive Japanese Americans from that time period | as cultureless. Btw, the 442nd Regiment, comprised of Japanese | Americans, received the most awards in U.S. history for military | service in WW2. | | Then you take into account the loss of capital from Nagasawa | losing his vineyard, and it gets even worse. | femiagbabiaka wrote: | Not surprising. The US has not paid reparations to most of the | people it has wronged. | rayiner wrote: | Has anybody ever paid reparations to anybody? Inter- | Generational debt just isn't a thing. | sorokod wrote: | Yes | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_Agreement_between | _... | zasdffaa wrote: | Assuming your reparations claim was correct, injustice | becomes ok if it happens often enough. | rayiner wrote: | Who said that? Stuff can be "not okay" but also "not the | problem of anyone currently alive." We have a concept of | a statute of limitations in law, for example. | bilbo0s wrote: | Just being pedantic here, but there's not limitation on, | say, homicide. | | Whether or not there is a statute of limitations is | generally dependent on the severity of the offense. | | But again, just a nit-pick. To my mind, the mistake is in | paying any sort of reparations to anyone, ever. As a | nation state, unfortunately, some things you have to go | all in on. Not paying reparations is one of those things. | | I am OK with forcing state and local governments to pay | out for egregious acts taken in explicit contravention of | Constitutional rights. But that's because as a nation | state we should _also_ go all in on defending the | constitutional rights of our citizens. I know that 's | talking out of both sides of my mouth, but the reality is | that nation states can incur far larger obligations than | state and local governments can. A nation state could end | up with an obligation that realistically simply can't be | paid. | jacobr1 wrote: | > Just being pedantic here, but there's not limitation | on, say, homicide. | | There is though ... the lifetime of perpetrator. | rhino369 wrote: | >Just being pedantic here, but there's not limitation on, | say, homicide. | | Right, but sons aren't held responsible for their | father's crimes. And while the Father's estate can be | liable for wrongful death, that is generally limited in | time. Certainly, you can't just go after all descendants | decades later. | | It's not just a slippery slope, but fair compensation is | essentially impossible to determine. The average Japanese | America is far richer than the average American-- | significantly so. Should you discount for that? Doesn't | seem fair to penalize them for being successful. But the | other hand, maybe that shows that the lasting harm wasn't | that bad. | | A lot easier to just let the past be the past and to | police our actions going forward. | skyyler wrote: | This kind of stuff can easily be searched for. Here's a | low-mid quality article: | | https://www.vox.com/2014/5/23/5741352/six-times-victims- | have... | akavi wrote: | All but the last of those examples only paid out to the | living survivors of the atrocity, and the last only | earmarked 5% for descendants. | | So it does seem that _inter-generational_ reparations are | indeed very rare. | skyyler wrote: | >$10 million out of court settlement with the victims and | their families | | >$2.4 million today would be set aside to compensate the | 11 or so remaining survivors of the incident, $800,000 to | compensate those who were forced to flee the town, and | $160,000 would go to college scholarships primarily aimed | at descendants. | | Inter-generational reparations exist explicitly in two of | the six examples in that article. | | Japanese interns that didn't collect their payment from | the US left it up to their heirs to collect it, so I'll | even add that as a technicality of inter-generational | reparations. | | Also I'm rather sure Israel is still getting payments for | what happened in the 1940s... But I could be wrong there. | | Inter-generational reparations are indeed rare if you | don't look very hard for examples of it happening. | rayiner wrote: | Now compare that to all the instances where people | committed atrocities against other people. It seems like | you're talking about something vanishingly rare. | jacobr1 wrote: | War reparations from the conquered/losing side appear in | history now and then. | rgrieselhuber wrote: | Amazing what sort of atrocities people will commit when fear | and emergencies are invoked. | asdff wrote: | You don't have to invoke all of that to commit atrocities, | just appeals to convenience work well enough to convince | someone to forsake the rights of another person. Settlement | of this country should have never happened, this is all | stolen indigenous land whose conquest was legally justified | by the handwaving of a patriarch of a religion hundreds of | years ago. White settlers at the time saw native peoples as | a pest much like a coyote is a pest to livestock, and much | like coyotes they were allowed to kill off these people | pretty matter of factly without recourse. There was no fear | or emergency justifying that action, only that the white | person would like to make profit grazing their cattle in | the buffalo country on land that was offered to them by | their government for next to nothing. | rgrieselhuber wrote: | That's true. We did see that in recent years with people | even such as Noam Chomsky arguing for ostracizing | undesirables and withholding food from them. | badrabbit wrote: | At the risk of being overly controversial, what would have been | a better option given the times. Lynching black people was not | uncommon back then for context of how minorities were treated. | Of course taking away someomes property when they have done no | wrong is wrong. Or the internment camps. They did bad things | because it was war. | | Do you remember how muslim americans were treated and attacked | after 9\11? The animosity of the majority of americans towards | them? The point I am making is even now this is how people | react but back then modern concepts of human rights and justice | were not prevalent. | | The war effort then was not like any war effort afterwards. It | requires mobilizing the civilian society "lose lips sink ships" | for example was a big motto because a lot of people see stuff | and if they repeat it, it can make it to the enemy. Combine | that with the fact that the japanese emperror was regarded as a | god by the japanese, you can see how much paranoia war time | president and generals would have about anyone japanese | related. | | I am not saying what they did was in any way justified but | rather if I was in their shoes I would also be susceptible to | committing such atrocities. Really, what I am trying to say is | how easy it is to do what america did to the Japanese americans | then and how we should not be so quick to pass judgement. Their | motivation was fear and paranoia in the time of war not hatred | like with Germany's camps. | | Judging people of the past is easy but learning from history is | hard. The lesson I learned from this is you have to be strong | (whatever that means) and resist attempts by the government to | do these things in the future as well as educate people on | history like this. | | It may not happen to japanese people but it can happen again. | If there is war with China and they start sabotaging, extorting | and bombing americans are you sure chinese americans won't be | mistreated again? All it takes is 51% of people to agree in a | time of war (fear of death and cruelty). | giraffe_lady wrote: | I have to point out that these actions were condemned | contemporaneously as well. Even in their own time, by others | living through those times, this was considered an atrocity. | Standards of socially acceptable harm to minorities may have | been different then, but we also know that this was easily | recognized as unjust at the time, by the fact that so many | people at the time _did_ condemn it as unjust. | Cyberdog wrote: | To this day I am dumbfounded that Roosevelt is still as revered | as he is. He had other problems like poor economic policy that | probably prolonged the Great Depression, but you don't even | need to look at any of that - the dude implemented an executive | order which put American citizens into effective prisons with | no due process, based only on their ethnicity. Trump, who I'm | told is a racist and a fascist and so forth, never even tried | to do anything close to that. | | You want to start toppling statues and changing street names of | dead white guys? Start with that one. What a creep. | photochemsyn wrote: | The main architect of the Japanese internment camps (out in | Owen Valley California) was John J McCloy: | | https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/04/us/ex-aide-calls- | japanese... | | > "Mr. McCloy, one of the key Government officials who | oversaw the relocation program, said he might again support | the wartime resettlement of United States citizens because of | their national heritage. The 87-year-old retired diplomat | testified before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and | Internment of Civilians, which was charted by Congress last | year to determine whether the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who | were uprooted from their homes on the West Coast and | relocated in camps in the East and Middle West in 1942 were | entitled to compensation." | | McCloy has an interestingly creepy history - head of the | World Bank post WWII (1947-1949), High Commissioner of | Occupied Germany (1949-1952) (where he released a lot of Nazi | industrialists from prison, claiming they were just good | anti-communists), Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations | (1954-1969), member of the Warren Commission, which buried | any real investigation into the Kennedy Assassination in | 1963), Board Member of the Ford Foundation (which served in | part as cover for CIA activities) then back to a Rockefeller- | linked law firm for the rest of his career. | | Most historical accounts show him pressing hard for | internment, and FDR basically went along, not willing to | fight about it. He defended the program up to his dying day: | | > "''I don't like the word 'incarcerated,' '' Mr. McCloy | replied. ''Well, all right, behind barbed wire fences,'' Mr. | Marutani snapped. Mr. McCloy cautioned the commission, which | is to report the findings of its inquiry to Congress next | year, not to advocate policies that might someday prevent the | forcible relocation of other American citizens because of | ethnic background." | labster wrote: | Instead of starting with FDR, why not first cancel the US | Presidents who literally owned slaves or who literally | engaged in genocide against the natives? Just a thought. | | I mean, imprisoning people for just minding their own | business, based mainly on skin color, is something that every | president has done since the laws against marijuana were | passed. Not sure why you'd single out FDR. | ehaliewicz2 wrote: | Probably because FDR is very relevant to the article. | [deleted] | runjake wrote: | > Trump, who I'm told is a racist and a fascist and so forth, | never even tried to do anything close to that. | | Central Americans might disagree with you. | | https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/immigration- | kids-t... | WillPostForFood wrote: | Also, Korematsu v. United States, one of the all time worst | Supreme Court decisions, maybe only second to Dred Scott. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States | retrac wrote: | The war. He won the war, or is perceived to have. Simple as | that. Churchill gets the same treatment in the UK despite, in | my view, being far worse than FDR, both as a man, and in | government policy. De Gaulle got it as well, practically | apotheosized while still alive. Stalin too; in Russia he is | still ranked as one of their greatest leaders. It would seem | that being in power while prevailing in a total war | translates automatically into sainthood. | ch4s3 wrote: | Yeah, FDR's government really liked taking land from people. | The TVA basically tossed black farmers out on their asses[1]. | The Housing Act of 1937 was used to clear out "slums"[2] and | required new housing be provided, but it was largely used to | suppress and disperse immigrants and African Americans. The New | Deal was pretty terrible if you were black and owned anything, | not to mention the intentional setting of minimum wages to a | level that would ensure black unemployment[3]. | | [1]https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a9ef5262e76846dfa1074cb | ... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Act_of_1937 | | [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-racist-history-of- | minimu... | photochemsyn wrote: | From your sources: | | > "While the Housing Act of 1937 looked to solve American | housing issues, it became marred by inequalities and | problems. The main problem that rose from the legislation was | the power given to the local governments. The Federal | government let the local governments and voters decided on | where and how to use the federal funding. This lead to local | governments maintaining segregationist housing policies as | well as allowing many public housing locations to become | neglected." | ch4s3 wrote: | Yes, I'm vary familiar with the history. The law was | written and implemented poorly. It didn't have any | enforcement mechanism for reimbursing or resettling | residents of cleared slums. It was apparent immediately | that it was going to funnel federal funds to segregation. | fakedang wrote: | You also forgot the seizure of gold and the forced sale at | below market rates. And the mandate that prevented Americans | from owning bullion. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 | ch4s3 wrote: | I mean, I wasn't trying to write a term paper. | zackmorris wrote: | Mentioned by the article: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism | | This notion of freedom resonates with me the most. I want to live | in a society where basic needs are met through automation, so | that people can spend the majority of their time following their | calling and finding meaning. Less than 2 hours per day should be | spent working towards survival, or else our tech offers little | benefit over living in a hunter-gatherer society. | | Concretely, that would look like: | | * Robots pay taxes - not people, to be used for UBI | | * No taxes on necessary commodities like food, high taxes on | luxuries | | * Taxes on unearned income would always be higher than on earned | income | | * Labor performed on process not application, so maintaining the | things that make the things | | * Profit on another's labor would either be considered | inappropriate or taxed highly: at or near 100% | | * Unsustainability would be suspect, as it runs counter to the | cultural goal of providing for all people forever | | * Injustices which impose burdens on people doing the most | spiritually significant work would be targeted first: no penalty | for being a parent, teacher, nurse or other caregiver | | There's probably a lot more to be said about this. I feel that | the powers that be seem to be doing everything they can to | prevent progress in this direction. Specifically, the wealthy and | powerful seem to be doing nothing to help makers and inventors, | they just hoard the money and put it towards whatever satisfies | their ego. | | So we all work longer and longer hours to build bigger houses and | buy more expensive vehicles to create profit for billionaires. We | don't invest in trusts that would pay the living expenses of | self-sufficient communities of tiny homes with hydroponic gardens | and solar panels and such. | Cyberdog wrote: | Not sure what this has to do with the article. Did you post | this comment on the wrong page or something? | dmacedo wrote: | The article mentions "Transcendentalism", the above comment's | author seems to have researched, and offered their opinion on | the matter. Seems like an appropriate comment, and a | worthwhile discussion of what the transcendental ethos imply, | coupled with what drives the behaviours that are antithetical | to those goals, which leads to the historical moments the | article refers to. | donclark wrote: | Maybe he is additionally commenting on where our government | is lacking today, and what he envisions us to be experiencing | currently - if our GOV really were trying to improve things. | | I am glad that he did comment - and have copied it to dive | further into those thoughts. | asdff wrote: | I think an issue with this expectation is the assumption that | our current set of technology was made for its utility alone. | The reality is that most of the innovations of the 20th and | 21st century only came about if they had a strong profit angle | or lopsided military advantage to go along with them. As such, | it's hard to actually do what you propose when everything we | have is only stuff that was good enough to make a profit at one | time. It's not like a bow and arrow or the wheel, fundamental | tools that were built for their own merit, not because the | bowstring company had a patent and legally set the standard for | what sort of arrow is to be sold in stores or anything like | that. | | So then we have to take a step back and ask what is actually | innovative about our global culture's technology today? Is the | 4k TV really that innovative? IMO not really, you are using | more energy now to watch the same movies and TV you might have | been watching a decade ago. It's not like the bow and arrow, | imparting a novel function that didn't exist before. Its just | an iteration on existing ideas, just slightly different enough | to market on that difference and convince people to sell thing | x that does y for thing z that does y. Even when we do work | hard to further the capabilities of these innovations, e.g. | computers being so much more powerful than they were 15 years | ago, are we really reaping that fruit? Or is everyone still | using microsoft word, email, and light web browsing like they | were doing 25 years ago with hardware that's at least an order | of magnitude less powerful? | | Real innovation is scarce imo, since we don't invest in | innovation, we invest in profit and innovation comes as a side | effect, if it comes at all. | WalterBright wrote: | LED TVs use far, far less power than the old CRT TVs. The old | TVs would warm up a room, LEDs, not. | ericmcer wrote: | "If" we were able to pull this off, which right now is a total | pipe-dream, what do you picture the average person doing in | this world? Would you implement harsh restrictions around what | you can do if you are dependent on the system? | | Can someone have 20 kids and not raise them because it isn't | part of their calling? Would people from other societies be | allowed to immigrate in or would it be closed to all migrants? | | I don't think it is some orchestrated scam from a power mad | global elite that is fighting against your utopian worldview. I | don't think it is feasible, barring some kind of sci-fi AI that | manages everything for us. | WalterBright wrote: | Nobody makes you live in a bigger house or buy an expensive | vehicle. | | I bought my truck used 30 years ago, and used it daily up until | last year when it finally expired. It cost me very little | money. | | > they just hoard the money and put it towards whatever | satisfies their ego. | | Your sentence contradicts itself. | | BTW, some years ago a luxury tax was placed on yacht building, | based on the notion that millionaires were jerks for spending | their money on yachts. Then the local economy of one of the | yacht building companies collapsed, because the millionaires | went elsewhere to spend money building their yachts. | | So the tax was rescinded. | Apocryphon wrote: | yamazakiwi wrote: | Namari wrote: | eff_nogs wrote: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-14 23:00 UTC)