Ms. Rizzuto's article rightly criticizes America's nonchalance toward "a day
of remembrance" of the Nisei Japanese-American internment, during World War
II. Her article describes Rizzuto's first learning of it as a teenage high
schooler, when her own Japanese-American grandmother was honored as a guest
Nisei internee and spoke before the gathered student body. The article's
message is clear -- the violation of civil rights was shameful, racist, and
something which never should happen again. But as you will see, Rizzuto's
rhetoric conveys a whole other message, too.
As if encountering a metaphorical wall of silence, Rizzuto wrote of her
frustration trying to research the internment experience: "This silence
about internment is not unusual in the Japanese-American community."
Rizzuto's own mother was too young to remember being interned, and she, too
-- similar to Rizzuto -- first learned of the internment when in high
school. Describing her "search for the genesis of this silence...,"
Rizzuto emphasized the pain felt by the Nisei and the "terrible
betrayal." But then she explained, "I have been told it is cultural:
The Japanese don't complain; the Japanese respect authority; the Japanese
are indirect, and do not say what they mean. In other words, they are silent
because they are Japanese, just as they were untrustworthy because they were
Japanese. Inscrutable, inexplicable -- and internable -- because they were
Japanese ...." With these words, Rizzuto traces "everything back to
race." (All italics and bold emphasis herein, mine.)
Insensitive to the clear wishes of former camp internees, Rizzuto set about
rooting out and displaying their secret "shame." This was bad enough. But
Rizzuto's main purpose in writing the article, I see, was to inflame and
demagogue Asian-Americans generally into embracing a collective feeling of
outrage (and "racial" identity) at this "racist" "betrayal"
perpetrated against 120,000 Nisei by "whites," in the tense years of
war with Japan in the 1940's.
Rizzuto herself is Eurasian. Her article surely was targeted at fellow
Eurasians. Rizzuto identified herself Asian, explaining "... although we
do eat at least some Japanese food, many of us --including me and all 14 of
my cousins -- are biracial. This Americanization is intended to be a
safeguard, and the silence a gift, to ensure that we will never again be
sent 'on vacation.'" But, blatantly indifferent to her Asian ancestors'
wishes, Rizzuto pillories "This Americanization," and she implicitly
disowns her father, denouncing "thoughtless, hostile racism ... all over
the world." (Note: in the jargon of the New Left, only "whites" can be
"racist.")
Rizzuto, who by her mere biracial existence can help with disarmament of the
"verbal hypnotism" of "race," chooses instead to hammer it into an
impregnable fortress: "The internment is within us; its effect is
hereditary," she pronounced. "But if we cannot recognize it,
if we believe we are immune, we may fail to see the racial boundaries that
still exist all around us." (Doesn't Rizzuto seemingly erect "racial"
castle walls for holding "Asians" in and "whites" out?)
I found it revealing, that even after Rizzuto watched her grandmother tell
her story at the high school, Rizzuto wrote: "The story should have
haunted me but I ignored it for almost 15 years." Plainly, Rizzuto, as
her interracially married mother before her, grew up fitting into mainstream
"white" American society (as my own son grew up free from "racism," too).
It was Rizzuto's postwar Nisei family's wish to quietly blend this way, and
they did. "I didn't have the information or the empathy to ask my
grandmother what happened next, or any of the questions like 'Who am I?' and
'Where did I come from?' ... Instead, I accepted the minor celebrity her
visit brought me, and marveled with all my friends about those
poor people and what they went through." Thus Rizzuto
apparently grew into adulthood, a well adjusted American multiracial young
lady, for another 15 years before the Neo-Marxists infesting our nation's
universities brainwashed her to be a One-Drop Asian "victim" of "white
racism," spouting the minority identity "race," apartheid party line.
Ms. Rizzuto clearly is a victim, but not in the way she thinks. She seems
truly frightened "whites" could turn and re-intern every "drop" of Asian
blood. With such suspicion of the "white race" firmly ingrained, one
wonders if Rizzuto still feels safe around her father? I can only guess
what ridiculous, mental Maginot fortifications her mentors are constructing
to defend against future "attacks" by the "racist whites," "But this
civil rights agenda is only the beginning ...," Rizzuto concluded.
Unfortunately we cannot stop now to pick up casualties. Our battle is joined.
George Winkel
Biography: I practice appellate defense law in the California
Fourth Appellate District, the State Supreme Court, and occasionally before
the U.S. Ninth Circuit.
"This article is not officially part of Salon's multi-racial series,"
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, the author of "Breaking the silence" Salon (2/18/00),
explained in a post to the Hapa Issues Forum mailing list.Also by George Winkel:
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