LITTLE TOKYO : Asians Lambaste Immigrant-Bashing

With speeches, poetry, drumbeats and slide shows, local students and community activists put an Asian face on the topic of immigrant-bashing during the 13th annual Day of Remembrance program at the Japan America Theatre.

Sponsored by the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations, the program marked the 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066, which sent hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II in the midst of war hysteria. The program aims to educate, inspire and motivate Asian Americans in human and civil rights issues, organizers said.

In the words of Kay Ochi, the coalition’s Los Angeles chapter president, the Day of Remembrance “commemorates the entire experience . . . the devastating effects of the order” and honors “the struggle and courage of the Issei and Nisei (first- and second-generation Japanese American) pioneers.”

The groups participating in the Feb. 19 program addressed the immigration issue and anti-immigrant sentiment. Speakers warned that immigrants are the scapegoats for a bad economy and other woes, and that the recent debate over illegal immigration has fueled negative attitudes toward all immigrants.

Angelo Ancheta, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said racism and “mean-spiritedness” have characterized discussions of immigration throughout history. He said that attitudes such as “Immigrants use up our resources” and “Immigrants are outsiders” have influenced passage of restrictive anti-Asian immigration laws--starting with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act--that blocked immigration from various Asian countries and prohibited citizenship.

“The parallels with the past are striking,” Ancheta said, pointing out the recent debate over earthquake public assistance for illegal immigrants. But, he said, illegal immigrants contribute to the economy by paying property and sales taxes, and by taking low-paying jobs that many others disdain.

Anti-immigrant arguments are based “more on myth than fact, on rhetoric than reality,” Ancheta said. “Immigrants aren’t nameless faces. . . . They’re people.”

Representatives from the Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese, Korean and Japanese communities brought this point home with slide presentations and musical and poetic compositions.

Particularly poignant was poetry read by Nancy Yoo, in which she honored her Korean immigrant parents--her seamstress mother who works long, grueling hours for little pay and her father, who runs a South-Central shoe repair shop. Her father’s fatigue is often misread by others as coldness and apathy, Yoo said. Though he patches shoes, “he has not the power to patch your community,” Yoo said.

The program concluded with a presentation of the coalition’s Fighting Spirit Award to James Matsumoto Omura, former editor of the Rocky Shimpo newspaper in Denver. Omura was recognized for the courageous individualism he demonstrated when he took the controversial stand of supporting Japanese American draft resisters in World War II.