Call for Papers: Pacific Languages in Diaspora

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Center Press

CALL FOR PAPERS: PACIFIC LANGUAGES IN DIASPORA

Guest Editors:

Professor Serge Tcherkezoff (Anthropology, French Institute of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences)

Professor Luafata Simanu-Klutz (Samoan Language and Literature, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa)

Dr. Akiemi Glenn (Te Taki Tokelau Community Training and Development)

Publication Date:  Issue planned for Spring 2017 publication.

Due Date:  Paper submissions (up to 5,000 words) due June 1, 2016

Change is native to the world of Epeli Hau‘ofa’s “sea of islands,” where the ocean has historically connected people and served as a thoroughfare for the flow of resources, culture, and ideas.  The Pacific is home to the richest linguistic diversity on our planet and yet many of the native languages of the region are under threat and many more have been lost.  As the currents of colonization, globalization, and climate change carry Pacific people far beyond their homelands, their languages travel with them into new physical and cultural spaces.  In a region steeped in cultural histories of voyaging, exploration, adaptation, and population movement, how do Pacific Island languages and their speakers respond to present transformations of their social and physical environments?  For diasporic communities, what is the value of holding on to ancestral languages in new lands?  In the midst of change, is language a beacon that draws communities together to conserve their heritage or is it a malleable tool for way finding and creating new identities?

 

This special issue of Amerasia Journal invites papers that investigate the contemporary diasporas of the Pacific Islands through the lens of language.  We welcome work that delves into the relationships between language and geography; language and identity; language change and history; cultural particularity and culture sharing; language, communication, and media technology; language in education; the influence of cultural institutions such as language revitalization programs and churches; language in the family; language and climate change; and the transmission of traditional knowledge.  We seek scholarship that highlights the diversity of Pacific Islander diasporic communities, the heterogeneous experiences of the children of migrants and their elders, contact between Pacific languages, the negotiations of hybrid identities, innovations in art, social networking, and politics.  We encourage the submission of interdisciplinary and accessible writings that may be adopted for courses in Asian American Studies, American Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, and Pacific Islands Studies.

 

Submission Guidelines and Review Process

The guest editors, in consultation with Amerasia Journal editors and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:

 • Initial review of submitted papers by guest editors and Amerasia Journal editorial staff

• Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review

• Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission

This special issue seeks papers of approximately 5,000 words in length. All correspondence should refer to “Amerasia Journal Pacific Languages Issue” in the subject line.  Please send correspondence and papers to Dr. Arnold Pan, Associate Editor:  arnoldpan@ucla.edu.

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The Passing of Professor Emeritus Don T. Nakanishi (1949-2016)

Posted on March 22, 2016 by admin

Dear Alumni and Friends,

Don T. Nakanishi (1949-2016)

Don T. Nakanishi (1949-2016)

It is with a truly heavy heart that we share the news of the passing of our Center’s former director Professor Don T. Nakanishi’s on Monday, March 21, 2016 in Los Angeles. Our sincere condolences to his wife, Marsha, and son, Thomas, and to his family members and friends during this difficult time. We will provide an update with more information as it becomes available, including a Center-hosted celebration of Don’s life in Los Angeles.

As many of you know, Don was on the faculty at UCLA for 35 years and served the Asian American Studies Center with distinction as its director from 1990-2010. Don’s contributions to Asian American Studies and ethnic studies were pioneering, and those of us at UCLA were the prime beneficiaries of Don’s leadership and scholarship. Of course, his visionary influence extended much further, literally to other continents reflected in his many travels to places like Australia and Japan to help establish and support ethnic studies.

Don co-founded Amerasia Journal in 1971, played an indispensable role in establishing Asian American Studies as a viable and relevant field of scholarship, teaching, community service, and public discourse. His fight for tenure has widely been regarded as a watershed moment in higher education and has been taught as a significant case study for multi-racial student-community mobilization. For a fuller biography, see: http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/people/dnakanishi.aspx

Despite his remarkable career, Don, in his characteristic humility, always focused on his students and colleagues, as he was often the first to advocate for and to celebrate their accomplishments. As I know is the case for hundreds if not thousands of others, I will be forever grateful to Don for his care and mentorship, extended to me since we first met when I was in graduate school and that has spanned decades.

Don will be deeply missed, but his legacy lives on through all of us who had the privilege of benefitting from his support, encouragement, and friendship.

Rest in peace, Don.

Sincerely,

David K. Yoo
Director & Professor

 

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The funeral ceremony for Professor Emeritus Don Nakanishi is scheduled for Saturday, April 2, 2016, 3 pm, at the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. It is located at 815 E. First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.

The Nakanishi Family has asked in lieu of flowers that donations be made to:

Don T. Nakanishi Award for Outstanding Engaged Scholarship in Asian American & Pacific Islander Studies, UCLA
online: https://giving.ucla.edu/Nakanishi
mail: Nakanishi Award
c/o UCLA Asian American Studies Center
Box 951546; 3230 Campbell Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
310-825-2974

OR

Nakanishi Prize, Yale College
http://yalecollege.yale.edu/…/funding-oppor…/nakanishi-prize

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For Don

Posted on March 22, 2016 by admin

Don was a native son of East LA–a scholar and activist, colleague and friend. Always, a curious & passionate explorer.

He crossed the LA River to seek out other communities, other nations, other worlds.

He talked as he walked through the brave new world – post WW2 Internment, post-Orwellian 1984, post 9/11.

He saw how minorities were crucial to international politics–as they often were the intrepid counterpoint, the dissenting voice, the No-No Boy.

As he once told me, Why is it that we (Asian Americans) are often like the nail that juts out, thereby taking the heat?

His life and accomplishments were the answer to his own wry observation.

Salute, Don. Guess I’ll need to take a raincheck on our usual meatless lunch in Thai town.

–  Russell Leong

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2015-2016 Lucie Cheng Prize awarded to Cathleen Kozen of the University of California, San Diego

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Amerasia Journal blog

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Amerasia Journal are pleased to announce that Ms. Cathleen Kozen, Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the recipient of the 2015-2016 Amerasia Journal Lucie Cheng Prize for her essay, “U.S. Empire and Japanese Latin American Critique: A Critical Re-Reading of ‘Japanese American Internment’ and Its Redress.” Ms. Kozen was nominated by her advisor, Professor Yến Lê Espiritu.

Cathleen KozenMs. Kozen is currently a Ph.D. candidate whose dissertation research examines attempts at governmental redress for Japanese Latin Americans forcibly brought to U.S. concentration camps during World War II. Her winning essay explores how the politics of history, memory, and redress concerning the Japanese Latin American case demands a rethinking of Japanese American internment as primarily a constitutional and civil rights violation.

The Lucie Cheng Prize recognizes exceptional graduate student essays in the interdisciplinary field of Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies. The winning article is published in Amerasia Journal, with $1,500 awarded to the recipient.

The Lucie Cheng Prize honors the late Professor Lucie Cheng (1939-2010), a longtime faculty member of UCLA and the first permanent director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.  Professor Cheng was a pioneering scholar who brought an early and enduring transnational focus to the study of Asian Americans and issues such as gender, labor, and immigration.

For more information about the Lucie Cheng prize, see: http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/ajprize/.

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Latest Amerasia Journal Marks 45-Year Legacy

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Center Press

AMERASIA 41:3For 45 years, Amerasia Journal has published on a wide range of topics – from Asian American history and activism to forums responding to current issues. The latest open-topic issue celebrates this long legacy of centering the Asian American voice and experience. Issue 41:3 (2015) commemorates the journal’s 45th anniversary, with a graphic history of the journal’s covers and Amerasia’s founding publisher and long-time UCLA Asian American Studies Center Director Don T. Nakanishi offering his reflections on how far the journal has come over the past 45 years.  We include a reprint of an essay detailing Amerasia’s origins, written by Nakanishi for our 25th anniversary.  As Nakanishi recounted then, “I am hopeful that we will continue the legacy of pursuing research that speaks for us, as well as encouraging the creation, sharing, and teaching of works that speak to a new generation of students in our schools and colleges, as well as new audiences in our communities.”

In the tradition of the journal, this issue highlights the history of Asian American activism.  Former Associate Editor Glenn K. Omatsu pays tribute to Grace Lee Boggs, who recently passed away at the age of 100.  In Omatsu’s words, Boggs “developed a distinct worldview and challenged others to rethink strategies for social change.”  Cindy Domingo, the current Chair of the Board of Directors of LELO (Legacy of Equality, Leadership and Organizing), offers a history of the organization and the relationship between labor, prejudice, and rights in the Philippines and the United States.  For our community spotlight, we highlight the work of API Equality—Northern California, a group devoted to increasing the public presence and power of LGBTQ Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

As it has for over four decades, Amerasia Journal offers relevant perspectives on current cultural conversations as they impact Asian America.  Here, we convene a roundtable discussing the scandal over poet Michael Derrick Hudson’s use of the Chinese penname Yi-Fen Chou, providing a forum to leading artists and scholars such as Neelanjana Banerjee (Kaya Press), Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis (Asian American Literary Review), Garrett Hongo, Craig Santos Perez, and Margaret Rhee to express their unique points-of-view on the matter.  As the renowned poet Hongo notes, “The ‘literary freedom’ upheld by so many that allows a Caucasian poet to adopt a Chinese pseudonym is here a manifestation of cultural dominance—white empowerment feeling free to colonize everything. . .”  The issue also presents a catalog of artworks from the recent PIKO: Pacific Islander Contemporary Art Exhibition held at the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (Long Beach, CA), written by curator Dan Taulapapa McMullin, scholar Michelle Erai, and artist Moana Nepia.

As always, Amerasia Journal features innovative research on politics and culture across the Asia Pacific.  Yu-Fang Cho examines what she calls “nuclearism” in Taiwan and the Pacific Islands, analyzing how rhetoric promoting nuclear power is inextricable from American nuclear weaponry.  Todd Honma explores Filipino American tattooing practices, and how they raise questions of cultural authenticity.  Elaine Elinson reviews Patty Enrado’s A Village in the Fields, a historical novel about Filipino farm workers involved in the Delano grape strike.

Published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center since 1971, Amerasia Journal is regarded as the core journal in the field of Asian American Studies.

Amerasia 41:3 Press Release (PDF Version)

ORDERING INFORMATION

Copies of the issue can be ordered via phone, email, or mail.  Each issue of Amerasia Journal costs $15.00 plus shipping/handling and applicable sales tax.  Please contact the Center Press for detailed ordering information.

UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press
3230 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
Phone: 310-825-2968 | Email: aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmerasiaJournal

Amerasia Journal is published three times a year:  Spring, Summer/Fall, and Winter.  Annual subscriptions for Amerasia Journal are $99.00 for individuals and $445.00 for libraries and other institutions.  The annual subscription price includes access to the Amerasia Journal online database, with full-text versions of published issues dating back to 1971.  Instructors interested in this issue for classroom use should contact the above email address to request a review copy.

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Amerasia Celebrates 45 Years

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Center Press
IMG_5029

Don Nakanishi (left) and Lowell Chun-Hoon (right) celebrating 45 years of Amerasia Journal.

This year marked the 45th Anniversary of the founding of Amerasia Journal. On September 22nd, a dinner was held in Honolulu to celebrate the occasion. Lowell Chun-Hoon, co-founder and first editor of the journal, and Don Nakanishi, the other co-founder and publisher, attended the dinner and were joined by a small group of family and friends, including Center Director David Yoo, and former AASC staff and students like UH Manoa Professor Karen Umemoto, Brian Niiya and UH Manoa Professor Susan Nakaoka.

To commemorate this occasion, Don Nakanishi, Professor Emeritus and former Center Director, shared some of his thoughts on reaching this milestone. Amerasia Journal staff is also pleased to be able to provide access to Nakanishi’s article “Linkages and Boundaries: Twenty-Five Years of Asian American Studies” (Issue 21:3), that chronicles the founding of the journal.

Amerasia Journal is planning to have a larger 45th anniversary celebration in Los Angeles in 2016.

Every time Amerasia Journal reaches a milestone – and the 45th anniversary is a major one – I search for my copy of the first issue and re-read the “Message to our readers” to see how far the journal and the field of Asian American Studies have come. The wonderful admixture of uncertainty, inclusiveness, search for relevancy, as well as innocence that is reflected in the last paragraph of this statement serves as a timeless frame of reference.

Amerasia Journal 1:1“In the end, though, the AMERASIA JOURNAL is not our journal. It belongs to our readers. We exist as a journal to collect and publish the best and most provocative material we can find on Asians in America. If our judgment or our goals are inadequate, we hope they get corrected. If there are others who would like to work with us, they are welcome to join us.  Also, if there are people who can do what we’re trying to do better than we can by themselves, they have our sincerest best wishes. For in the end, it will be our readership that sustains or deserts us. Unless we or our goals are relevant to their needs, concerns, and aspirations, we’re simply shouting loud and listening to the echoes of our own voices in a closed room. We’d like AMERASIA JOURNAL to be more than a soliloquy, and we need your assistance. Please let us know what you think.” (Vol. 1, no. 1)

Amerasia Journal has survived and thrived for 45 years, and has been a significant contributor to and a beneficiary of the development of Asian American Studies and its related fields of scholarship, teaching, and public service and discourse. It owes its longevity and impact to thousands of people, who have supported, learned from, and used the journal over the years, be they subscribers, students, teachers, scholars, community organizers, journalists or elected officials. I am glad the journal was “relevant to their needs, concerns, and aspirations” and that it became more than “shouting loud and listening to the echoes of our own voices in a closed room”. Thank you very much for your commitment to Amerasia Journal.

Amerasia Journal’s sustained impact and innovation is also due to the hundreds of remarkable researchers, creative writers, critics, community workers, students, photographers and policy analysts, who believed in the mission of the journal and contributed to the over 30,000 pages that it has published since its first issue in 1971. We also owe them our deepest gratitude in developing this indispensable foundational treasure chest of scholarship, community knowledge, creative insights, and critical perspectives on the Asian American and Pacific Islands experience.

I also would like to thank and congratulate the many people, who literally worked on the journal, be they the legions of referees from across the country and globally who evaluated new submissions or the many exemplary staff members of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center who produced and distributed Amerasia Journal, for their extraordinary commitment and professionalism. They played a singularly significant role in the success and reputation of the journal.

Very special thanks also to the Yale Asian American Students Association (AASA), which was founded in 1969 and still remains as a vibrant and progressive campus-wide group, for being the first sponsor for Amerasia Journal, and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (AASC), which has supported and housed the journal since 1971. The journal could not have survived too much longer than its first few issues without the unflinching commitment of Yale AASA and the UCLA AASC.

And finally, I would like to recognize and applaud the six individuals, who have served as editors of Amerasia Journal during its 45-year run: Lowell Chun-Hoon, the co-founder and first editor; the late Megumi Dick Osumi; the late Carolyn Yee; Russell Leong, who served as editor for the longest stretch of thirty years; Professor David Yoo, the current director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center; and Professor Keith Camacho, the current editor. They each lent their special talents, insights, expertise, experiences, and relationships in providing leadership and vision to Amerasia Journal. They, along with the special issue editors that they worked with, insured that the journal would always “collect and publish the best and most provocative material we can find on Asians in America.”

 

In sincere gratitude,

 

Don T. Nakanishi

Co-founder and publisher, Amerasia Journal

Professor and Director Emeritus, UCLA Asian American Studies Center

 

 

 

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Newest Amerasia Tackles Sport in Asian America

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Center Press

41.2 finalcover3The new issue of Amerasia Journal delves into the world of sport and the roles Asian Americans have played in it.  Guest Edited by Rachael Joo of Middlebury College and Sameer Pandya of University of California, Santa Barbara, the special issue “Sport in Asian America” (Issue 41:2) explores how Asian Pacific Americans have left their imprints on the basketball court and the skatepark, the golf course and the football field.  As the guest editors note, “A study of sport can help reveal how the very ideas of community, belonging, and identity are constructed and emerge through everyday interactions and behaviors within sporting spaces.”

 

Inspired by the guest editors’ call to engage how “Asian American sports inevitably involve questions about who constitutes Asian America and the political stakes involved in these ideas of community,” the issue’s offerings examine how race, gender, sexuality, religion, and class intersect in sports.  The tensions between racial identity and masculinity are front and center in Amy Sueyoshi’s essay highlighting the often obscured contributions of Asian American men in popularizing skateboarding in the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Stanley Thangaraj and Christina Chin provide detailed case studies of how South Asian American men and Japanese American youth, respectively, counter prevalent stereotypes of both groups with their play in largely co-ethnic basketball leagues.

 

The issue focuses on the social contexts and forgotten histories that provide a deeper understanding of Asian American sport.  A roundtable of education specialists and administrators reveals the challenges facing Pacific Islander student-athletes, whose presence on college campuses is hypervisible, yet whose experiences in higher education are underappreciated.  Lauren Morimoto unearths the history of barefoot football, a local variation on football played in Hawai‘i’s plantations in the early and mid-twentieth century.  Daniel Yu-Kuei Sun presents a different perspective on the transnational phenomenon of Linsanity, explaining how the adoption of Jeremy Lin as a Taiwanese hero reveals the nation’s place as a producer and consumer in the global sports industrial complex.  Finally, author and Amerasia Journal board member Gary Pak interviews Vincent Goo, former head coach of the University of Hawai‘i women’s basketball team, about his own experiences and his father Ah Chew Goo’s contributions to the Harlem Globetrotters and Pete Maravich’s ball handling skills.

 

“Sport in Asian America” also spotlights the community group Pacific Islands Athletic Alliance, which acts as a clearinghouse for information on college athletics and high school student-athletes prospects from Hawai‘i and American Samoa.  Books reviewed include SooJin Pate’s From Orphan to Adoptee: U.S. Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption and Brandy Lîen Worrall’s memoir What Doesn’t Kill Us.

ORDERING INFORMATION

Copies of the issue can be ordered via phone, email, or mail. Each issue of Amerasia Journal costs $15.00 plus shipping/handling and applicable sales tax.

UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press
3230 Campbell Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
Phone: 310-825-2968
Email: aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmerasiaJournal

Amerasia Journal is published three times a year: Spring, Summer/Fall, and Winter. Annual subscriptions for Amerasia Journal are $99.00 for individuals and $445.00 for libraries and other institutions. The annual subscription price includes access to the Amerasia Journal online database, with full-text versions of published issues dating back to 1971. Instructors interested in this issue for classroom use should contact the above email address to request a review copy.

 

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Reminder: Call for 2015-16 Lucie Cheng Prize Nominations (October 15, 2015)

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Center Press

2015-16 Lucie Cheng Prize Nominations

Amerasia Journal invites faculty to nominate exceptional graduate student essays (masters and doctoral level) in the interdisciplinary field of Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies for the 2015-16 Lucie Cheng Prize.  The selected article will be published in Amerasia Journal, with a $1,500 prize to be awarded to the winner.

The Lucie Cheng Prize honors the late Professor Lucie Cheng (1939-2010), a longtime faculty member of UCLA and the first permanent director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (1972-1987).  Professor Cheng was a pioneering scholar who brought an early and enduring transnational focus to the study of Asian Americans and issues such as labor and immigration.

Submission:  Nominations must be submitted via email by the graduate advisor by October 15, 2015, with notification to the winner by the end of the calendar year.

Nominations are to include:

1. Graduate Advisor Name, Title, Institution, and Contact Information

2. Graduate Advisor Recommendation (500-word limit)

3. Graduate Student Brief CV (2 pages)

4. Essay (5000-7000 words) in a MS-Word file, formatted according to the Amerasia Journal Style Sheet; for journal style guidelines, see:  http://www.amerasiajournal.org/blog/?page_id=42.

Submit materials and queries to ajprize@aasc.ucla.edu and arnoldpan@ucla.edu.

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Bold Step: 50th Anniversary of Delano Grape Strike Sept. 5-6, 2015

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Amerasia Journal blog

Triptych

Delano, CA — The newly formed Delano chapter and its parent organization, the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), will host a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike with a series of events over Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 5 and 6, in Delano, CA. Dubbed “Bold Step,” the weekend will focus on the momentous decision to strike, and celebrate the strike’s legacy in the Filipino American community in Delano and across the nation.

The weekend’s events will kick off on Saturday, September 5 at the Filipino Community Hall, the historic building where the strike vote was taken and the headquarters of the first years of the Grape Strike. The program will include presentations by strike veterans, scholars, community activists, and local community leaders. A highlight of the weekend will be a screening of the Emmy-award winning documentary, Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the United Farm Workers. New York-based filmmaker Marissa Aroy, whose family roots are in Delano, will be present. The weekend will also include bus tours of local historic sites.

The Delano Grape Strike began on September 8, 1965, when thousands of mostly Filipino American grape workers walked off of the vineyards in Delano. The Delano Grape Strike sparked the farm labor movement of the 20th century, one of the most significant social justice movements in American history. From the strike came the multiethnic farm laborer’s union, the United Farm Workers.

Moreover, the strike raised global consciousness about the plight of farmworkers. It was a pivotal moment in which Filipino Americans made their largest and most significant imprint on the American narrative. That bold step taken by these Filipino workers — most of whom were senior citizens in the twilight of their lives — inspired labor movements and movements for civil rights and social justice amongst Filipino Americans and Americans of all backgrounds.

In the late summer of 1965, the small agricultural town of Delano was energized as thousands of Filipino migratory farmworkers arrived for the grape harvest, as they had done every year through most of the 20th century. The workers, most of whom were members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee union (AWOC, AFL-CIO), were fresh from the Coachella Valley, where they had struck and won $1.40 per hour for the grape harvest. The migrant workforce shared the grocery aisles and streets with the 13,000 or so permanent residents eager to fatten their paychecks from harvesting boxes of Thompsons, Calmerias, and Ribiers – popular varieties of the finest table grapes in the world. With a prosperous season, they could make enough to get by the lean winter months.

When Delano grape growers refused a wage of $1.40 per hour, anticipation and excitement turned to conflict and tension. Led by a veteran union organizer, AWOC’s Larry D. Itliong, the doubtful and frightened grape workers — more than a few with families and mortgages – gathered at the Filipino Community Hall on the evening of September 7 to consider an action that would throw their lives and their community into chaos. They voted to strike. The next day, several thousand laborers in about 20 individual farms left the precious crop on the ground and walked off on September 8, 1965, in a unified declaration for a fair wage and decent working conditions for the farm worker.

Growers evicted Filipinos from their homes in the labor camps and hired Mexican scab workers. Violent clashes erupted between law enforcement and strikers, but Filipino workers remained militant. Itliong made the fateful decision to approach Cesar Chavez and his mostly Mexican worker’s association, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), and asked them to join the strike. On September 16, 1965, the NFWA voted to join the AWOC. In 1966, the AWOC and the NFWA merged to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Cesar Chavez was named director, and Itliong served as the UFW’s assistant director from 1966-1971.

Fifty years later, the courage to make that stand at such a high risk resonates in the prosperity, diversity and growth of Delano and the Filipino American community nationwide. Filipino Americans are now the largest Asian American group in California, California’s third largest minority group, and the second largest Asian American group in the United States. Latinos and Filipinos are the two of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the nation. Despite the growth of the community, the history of Filipino involvement in the farmworkers movement has been largely obscured.

On July 2, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill establishing October 25 as Larry Itliong Day. In 2014, the California State Legislature passed AB123, which calls for students to learn about Filipino American farm labor organizing history. Both bills were sponsored by Rob Bonta, the first Filipino American elected to the California State Assembly. Recently Union City, CA renamed a middle school the Itliong/Vera Cruz Middle School to honor the UFW vice-presidents, and a bridge in San Diego, California was recently named Larry Itliong/Philip Vera Cruz.

Speakers and a detailed program will be forthcoming. A link to a schedule of events to date (subject to change). For more information, please visit the FANHS/Delano Chapter Facebook page. For ticket information, a link to ourEventbrite event.

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Contact:   Alex Edillor, (661) 331-4547
fanhs.delano@gmail.com

ABOUT FANHS: 

FANHS (www.fanhs-national.org), headquartered in Seattle, Washington, was established in 1982 and consists of 33 chapters nationwide. Members are scholars, educators and community members who preserve, document and share the rich history of Filipinos in the United States. The Delano Chapter was chartered in June, 2015.

 

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Reflections from the 70th Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony by Tom Nakanishi

Posted on August 6, 2015 by Center Press

At 8:15 AM on August 6th, the announcer at the 70th Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony asked us to observe a moment of silence. It was precisely then, 70 years earlier, that Little Boy fell from Enola Gay and turned the city into a hell zone. Above an army of cicadas chirping away, we all bowed our heads as officials rang the Peace Bell, each gong pushing us to reflect on what happened then, what is going on now, and what we can hope for in the future with respects to creating a world free of nuclear weapons and at peace.

The Mayor of Hiroshima provided the annual Peace Declaration, doves were released into the crowd, representatives from Hiroshima schools announced the annual Commitment to Peace, all before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took the podium. With his strong handed push for legislation rescinding Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution to remilitarize, all eyes and ears were hoping to hear something new but only received a similar line that other PMs have used stating that it is Japan’s duty to push for a nuclear free world. The Governor of Hiroshima and a representative of UN Security General Ban Ki-moon delivered remarks before the audience joined in the Hiroshima Peace Song to end the ceremony.

However, before this all occurred, a small group of peace protestors outside the Atomic Bomb Dome brought out the police and security forces en masse from the night before the ceremony and into the morning. These protestors pointed out the irony that PM Abe would be speaking about peace and nuclear non-proliferation since it is unclear how far Japan will go should it remilitarize. Many yelled to give peace a chance. Some suggested that should Japan become a military power, it will want a nuclear weapon in the same way other nations surrounded by nuclear powers want them.

Walking through the Peace Park after the ceremony, attendees gathered around to pay their respects at various monuments made specifically for groups of people who perished in Hiroshima, like the Monument Dedicated to Korean Victims and Survivors, and many others queued up to walk to the main altar where the names of the victims and survivors who have passed away is updated and kept. I found myself remembering my previous Peace Memorial Ceremonies and the summer I spent working at the Hiroshima YMCA’s International Youth Peace Seminar in 2000 as I walked up to the Cenotaph to say a prayer. I remember praying then as I did today for there to be fewer nations who possess nuclear weapons; for a President of the USA to come to Hiroshima and deliver remarks rather than send the Ambassador to Japan or other official to sit in the crowd; and for conflicts around the world to be handled through diplomacy rather than military strength. This year, I added a few prayers that Prime Minister Abe stops his current push to remilitarize Japan, that Iran never be able to arm a nuclear weapon, that President Obama can in his final months in office take bigger strides on decreasing the nuclear stockpiles of the USA, Russia and other nations.

Here’s to hoping that the next time I come to Hiroshima, I’ll be able to remove some of those prayers from my list because we as a global community have done more to create the world that we want to live in free from the fear of nuclear weapons and devastating armed conflicts.

Tom Nakanishi is a political consultant in Los Angeles who has worked for President Barack Obama, Senator Mazie Hirono and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He attended Yale University and Harvard Kennedy School where he concentrated in American Studies and political advocacy and leadership. 

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The UCLA Asian American Studies Center would like to thank Tom Nakanishi for sharing his reflections and photos from the 70th Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony with us!

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