I've been meaning to start a thread like this for ages, where pertinent/relevant news articles about Japan can be linked. Feel free to add to it when you find something interesting. I almost started it a couple of weeks ago when the Japanese finance minister was caught saying that Japanese politicians should change the constitution secretly, the way the Nazis did during the Weimar Republic. Someone pointed out that the last time the Japanese used the Nazis as a model, it didn't end well for them. That would have been a good piece to start this thread with, but I was too busy at the time and it slipped through the cracks.
Anyway, in today's New York Times, there's an obituary for Ruth Asawa, a Japanese-American artist who grew up in California and was sent with her family to detention and internment camps during WWII. She's the same age as my mother, who also grew up in California, except that my mother went to high school and started college during WWII and worked on the Intrepid aircraft carrier when it was docked in San Francisco, while Ms. Asawa was sent away.
Here's an interesting quote from the obiturary:
Her family spent the first five months of detention in stables at the Santa Anita Park racetrack. It was there that three animators from the Walt Disney Studios taught her to draw.
I'm curious how that came about. It must have taken great courage for the animators to do that. Did Disney sanction it? I'd like to know the backstory.
Also, here's her quote about the internment experience:
“I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one,” she said in 1994. “Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.”
Please read the obit. I'm sure you'll find it interesting:
http://www.nytimes.c...odayspaper&_r=0
Also, just for the record, George Takei, who played Sulu on the original Star Trek, also lived in an internment camp during the war and has written about it.
