Once When I was Japanese: A Black Girl’s American Story

Barely into my teens, I began making discoveries that changed how I saw America and my place in it. By then, I had absorbed enough information to convince me that my people, Black people, had a monopoly on pain and suffering in this country. Transitory moments of joy certainly occurred within my family, church, school, and community. In America, celebratory aspects of American history existed but were restricted to the food, the arts, and the sanctioned heroes. Never were these offerings sufficient to counter-frame the cornucopia of jaundiced narratives about Black people. Little was made of their immeasurable contributions beyond enslavement and their persistent struggles to assimilate. Stories of survival and success against all odds were often suppressed and buried in preference to tales that perpetuated racial stereotypes and historical myths. But oral histories give primacy to the voices of those who have witnessed history, and their lived experiences provide an empirical lens on life as it is lived that no textbook ever delivered. Stories bequeathed by those within the culture and allies outside the culture recount people’s struggle, survival, resilience, and triumph. History also revealed universal tales of “man’s inhumanity to man.” However, these occasional glimpses proved insufficient to alter my nascent observations of an adversarial America in the late 1960s. At 14, I joined a once-all Japanese American youth organization that forever broadened the lens through which I experienced America and the world. Membership united a diverse group of teens across the city of Chicago. It was there I learned that America comprises many stories, not unlike my own. Tales of crushing heartache, loss, and survival transcended black and white. It was in that youth group that I first learned that approximately 120,000 Japanese, most of them American citizens, were imprisoned in America’s concentration camps during WWII for being of Japanese ancestry, a status that reignited long-standing prejudices against Asians in America. Politicians weaponized the war with Japan to justify imprisoning those with Japanese heritage. Yet neither German nor Italian Americans ever faced mass removal from their American communities despite America being at war with both at the same time. Nor did Germans and Italians endure the racial prejudice, discrimination, and economic ruination that those of Japanese ancestry experienced from their fellow Americans. Japanese blood was deemed sufficient for presuming disloyalty and for accusations of not being real Americans. Japanese citizens were mandated to complete a loyalty questionnaire to prove their allegiance to the United States or the Japanese Emperor. Not until forty-two years later, after the last camps closed in 1946, was the painful truth of this shameful chapter in American history spotlighted to an unknowing nation. America had to be reminded of the injustice it inflicted on its own citizens. The acknowledgment of this WWII atrocity did not emerge from a sudden awakening or moral shift in national policy. The apology and reparations resulted from ongoing activism and compensation for both the tangible and intangible costs of Executive Order 9066 on the formerly imprisoned. Only then was a formal apology offered, and meager reparations paid. Better late than never was too late for many who died before receiving an apology and tokens for the wrongs they endured. Later, I learned about the cultural values of Gaman and Shikata ga nai, which loosely explain the importance of endurance and resilience in the face of uncontrollable obstacles. It was largely due to the persistence, truth-telling, and advocacy of many groups that some schools now even mention this piece of American history. I teach at a private and “elite” midwestern university. Some of my students share that they first learned of Japanese imprisonment in college. This is not the case for students from the West Coast or the Pacific Northwest, where this history was acutely felt. Why should geographical location determine the likelihood that certain chapters of American history are taught? It’s American history; all schoolchildren should learn American history.

I did not learn about America’s concentration camps in high school. In my mid-teens, I learned about them from Japanese friends. The group I joined, “The Nisei Ambassadors Drum & Bugle Corps,” brought together youth from Chicago and its suburbs, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion, to participate in something bigger than our individual selves. That affiliation exposed me to another America that no history books or amount of schooling ever attempted to reveal. Hearing the stories of others was transformative. The Nisei Ambassadors Drum & Bugle Corps parents instituted what I, as a sociologist, call “planned” or “affirmative” integration. In the late 1960s, the majority of white America preferred its neighborhoods to be racially segregated. Each week, the southside Black kids made the nearly two-hour trek to the northside of Chicago to participate in “Nisei.” Unbeknownst to us, this confluence of ethnically diverse youthful bodies was the result of Japanese parents' behind-the-scenes negotiations and discussions that included honest conversations about race and teenagers.

At the time, we, Nisei members, didn’t know that our existence would be our unwitting participation in the Civil Rights Movement transpiring at home and across the nation. We were simply a bunch of kids coming together from different neighborhoods, rival high schools, and disparate socioeconomic backgrounds. We honed our marching and maneuvering to the sound of drums and horns in empty parking lots and armories, hoping to win against the powerhouse drum & bugle corps of the day. We participated in parades and competitions in Illinois and beyond. We spent summers traveling together, bunking on floors and in church basements.

Illinois Democratic Representative Sidney R. Yates called us a “United Nations in action.” Friendships formed on long bus rides led to exchanges of stories about our lived experiences of being Asian, Black, or White. Fellowship and our shared mission overcame the tendency for adolescent self-centeredness. Coming together and demystifying ourselves to one another nurtured intergroup ties that persist to this day. Uniting around our experiences did not make us less patriotic or pose a threat to democracy; it taught us acceptance and resilience, and we learned the power of building on the strength of our differences.

From this, I learned that my people did not have a monopoly on pain and suffering, as I once thought. Understanding and acknowledging others’ histories did not diminish my own. Truly seeing and valuing others’ lived experiences fosters allies. This transformative knowledge came at a time when I had to actively pursue truth. Facts were embedded in encyclopedias, which only the fortunate had at home. My friends shared snippets about their parents’ and grandparents’ mass incarceration. I listened with intrigue and rage. No history class had ever mentioned this disturbing period of WWII history- not a word about the war waged on American soil against people whose only crime was Japanese blood.

Ignorance is not bliss. Selective teaching of history has a far-reaching impact on every American. What stories have we buried? Why not learn about others and their American experiences? For me, the library became my trusted teacher, my refuge, and my attempt to dismantle the lies my teachers told me by omission or ignorance. I needed to find and reconstruct the stories I had been denied. During these self-directed studies, my passion for history grew, and for the first time, the power of storytelling emerged. History became more than a narrative about “The Founding Fathers” brilliant nation-building. History became dynamic, complicated, and replete with stories about how we all arrived at this place we call the United States of America: “land of the free, home of the brave.” I should have had access to unvarnished history textbooks and truth-telling teachers. Lacking both, the library, encyclopedias, memoirs, and camaraderie with friends who looked nothing like me became my primary sources to satisfy my thirst for knowledge that was left bone-dry in school. I cut more than a few school days to hunker down in the public library, where time always seemed to vanish. How educationally damaging to our future that so many students, equally hungry for learning, never experienced these transformative epiphanies because they were not mentioned in school. Back then, as is true in 2025, decisions were made to teach myths and false narratives about the making of America. ​ Learning about “The Founding Fathers” in school demanded considerable cognitive dissonance. I was taught that these were great men of keen intelligence, yet they owned people whom they considered less than human. Accepting the hero worship I was forced to embrace meant abandoning critical thinking. However, I could never exonerate these founders for being enslavers. My teachers’ explanation for owning human beings was, “It was the times,” which completely ignored abolitionists who, during those times, did not accept slavery and railed against the economic and racist beliefs that rationalized owning human beings. No teacher ever told me that the first “founding father,” George Washington, spent his presidency paying bounty hunters to find his escaped slave, Ona Judge, a gift he bequeathed to his wife, Martha. I cheered for Ona Judge when, as an adult, I learned her story. The inspiration and hope this intrepid woman could have given children of all backgrounds, especially children like me, would have made history come alive. Ona Judge’s tenacity and sass could have made children appreciate history beyond dates and the “Founding Fathers.” Accessing stories from other voices and consuming history “from the bottom up,” as the late historian Jesse Lemisch encouraged, is how learning about our complicated and nuanced history of America should be taught. Knowing the past is the first step in recognizing the familiar present and creating a better future for everyone. I thank my youth organization for planting the seeds that keep history alive.