A Time for Reason and Respect

A Seattle teacher has heard people talk about the parallels between the terrorist attacks and Pearl Harbor, and this has her worried.

By Elaine Akagi

As a child growing up back in the '50s and '60s, I often heard my parents and their friends talking about "camp." I never knew what "camp" was, but assumed it was a normal part of growing up. Later, much later, I learned that it was in fact an unpleasant part of their young lives. Now, I under-stand that the "camps" were places in the desert, far from civilization, where 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them American citizens, were interned following the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a dark time in the history of the United States. It was a time when people were judged unfairly, solely on race, and tens of thousands of Americans paid with their freedom.

On September 11, 2001, the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, and the Pentagon near Washington, DC, reminded many of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. When I heard radio and TV reporters likening the day's events to December 7, I had a sickening feeling in my stomach. What if, I wondered, the same hysteria resulted in the internment of people of Middle Eastern descent. Then I thought, no, the United States government learned from their mistakes. President Bush would not let this happen.

It's been heartening to hear officials, from the federal level on down to local government, reminding the citizens that just because a person looks a certain way doesn't mean that that person is somehow related to "the enemy." I've been very disturbed by the reports that people who look a certain way have been attacked and even killed. Others have been harassed or threatened.

What was even more disturbing was a report that a member of Congress referred to "people who wear diapers on their heads with a fanbelt wrapped around the diaper" in a public statement.
Of course, he apologized for making the racist statement. But the comment was made and had been heard by the public, and the damage had been done. What have been heartening are statements made by young people, such as the one in a letter written to the Seattle Times reminding people not to let the events following the attack on Pearl Harbor happen again. It tells me that our work at the Japanese American Citizens League and the curriculum guide we developed [see below for details] have made an impact. The history books don't say much about the Japanese-
American internment. There's a paragraph or two, referring to that part of American history. That's why we encourage the use of our curriculum guide and the teacher trainings we provide.

Younger students who have heard the stories, through lessons provided by their teachers, of the trauma and heartache suffered by the families who lived along the West Coast and were forcibly moved to camps hundreds of miles away are aware of wrongs the government inflicted. Those older students who study the Constitution have learned that our government violated the constitutional rights of itizens.They've also learned that our government was big enough to apologize and make reparations to the victims' families. When students find out about the ostracism and shame Japanese- Americans were subjected to during the 1940s and 1950s, they learn a precious lesson about the importance of diversity and the dangers of intolerance.

And this lesson has tragically become all the more relevant in light of the September 11 attack. Elaine Akagi is a veteran of 35 years in the classroom in Detroit and Seattle. She currently works in the Seattle schools visual impairment program. Akagi's E-mail address is eakagi@seattleschools.org.

For the past four years, she's helped to develop the Japanese American Citizens League's curriculum guide for use in elementary through high schools. Information about how to order the curriculum guide is available in the education section of the JACL Web site at www.JACL.org.

Editor's Note

The NEA Today staff struggled with what to include in this issue about the terrorist attacks of September 11. Our October issue had already gone to press and would be delivered to members' homes by the end of September.

This issue-the November issue-was already partially written and designed; we'd intended our cover story to be about parental involvement, coinciding with American Education Week, November 11-17.

We tried to advance our thinking to early November, when you receive this issue. After six weeks of non-stop, often overwhelming, coverage in the media, what should our approach be to this story?

You see the results in these pages. We decided that our members would like to know how their colleagues, not only here, but in other countries as well, handled the discussions of the terrorist attacks in their own classrooms. So, we went to the heartland first, and the social studies classroom of Kansas NEA member Norm Conard. He has a reputation for challenging his students to acquire knowledge of events and people way beyond the confines of Uniontown, Kansas, a town of 300. We also sought the perspective of New York City teachers whose schools near the World Trade Center were most affected by the tragedy.
We asked school nurse Laura Bauernfeind, who works at Heidelberg American High in Germany, for her perspective. Texas teacher Elizabeth Fourzan E-mailed her thoughts from her school in El Paso. Tolerance and appreciation for diversity were also key to our coverage, so we asked Maryland teacher Wafa Hozien and Seattle teacher Elaine Akagi for their thoughts. To all who helped us tell this painful story, thanks.

-Bill Fischer