Cecilia Lei [00:01:29] So, Sadako Kashiwagi is a 91 year old Berkeley resident that I met a week before Trump was inaugurated.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:37] Cecilia Lei is a reporter and producer who reported this story for KQED.
Cecilia Lei [00:01:42] I met her at J-Sei, which is this Japanese community center in Emeryville. And she was there for this monthly gathering of seniors whose families or they themselves were incarcerated in prison camps during WWII.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:02:04] I was eight at the time of Pearl Harbor. So you don’t think I remember much, But it’s amazing how much I do remember.
Cecilia Lei [00:02:15] And I sort of immediately noticed that Sadako was the smallest woman in the room. You know, my best guess is she isn’t more than five feet tall. She has this really short, gray hair, and she’s wearing this really stylish purple Japanese shirt. And even though she looked delicate, I kind of quickly realized her voice was one of the loudest in the room. And she spoke with a lot of fiery passion.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:02:39] You matter. Everyone matters no matter who we are, where we come from.
Cecilia Lei [00:02:48] She was eight years old when she and her family were sent to Tule Lake Segregation Center in Northern California right after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:59] What does she tell you about what she remembers of that time and of life in these camps?
Cecilia Lei [00:03:07] So, you know, Sadako told me she has this really vivid memory of her family just scrambling to leave.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:03:13] We could take only what we could carry.
Cecilia Lei [00:03:16] And seeing her father in particular standing by the fireplace and tossing his books into the fireplace.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:03:23] And I remember him pitching — He loved books, pitching his books into the fireplace because it had Japanese written on it.
Cecilia Lei [00:03:41] Sadako was sent to Tule Lake, which was the largest high security prison camp during that time. And she remembers walking in and quickly realizing how different life was going to be.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:03:54] I looked around, I says, “Papa let’s go up.” Because I knew it wasn’t. Hey, you look up and you’re surrounded by barbed wire and the guards in the guard tower and this kind of thing. And this isn’t home. We didn’t know where we were going, how long we were going to be detained because we didn’t know how long the war was going to last. And I mean, what was going to happen to us after the war? You know, that kind of thing.
Cecilia Lei [00:04:26] You know, her father was born in Japan. And when he was in the camps, you know, the U.S. government asked Japanese people to enlist in the military during that time and to serve in the war for a government that is also holding you inside these prison camps.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:04:41] When they came in and asked, you know, will you join the army and all that? And my my father objected and went to a meeting and and told them, you know, you’re already just considered disloyal. Why should you, you know, volunteer. Well he was reported to the FBI and so the FBI came in, carted him off.
Cecilia Lei [00:05:02] Andthat led him to being separated from his family for about 18 months or so. And I was listening to Sadako talk about just how traumatizing that was.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:05:13] What happened was it really broke up the family and that really did a number on my sister. She was close. And to this day, I think much of her problems stemmed from that.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:31] Well, Cecilia, we’re talking about this now because President Donald Trump has vowed to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as part of his deportation campaign. And this was actually one of the legal authorities used during WWII to incarcerate people of Japanese ancestry, including members of Sadako family. Tell me a little bit more about the Alien Enemies Act and what Trump has said about how he plans to use it.
Cecilia Lei [00:06:04] So the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is this this act that’s been around for centuries, and it’s only been used three times during a declared war in the United States. And that’s really what the law is most well known for, incarcerating Japanese people during that time. And it gave then President Franklin D. Roosevelt these sweeping powers to detain, relocate or deport foreign nationals from Japan because the country was deemed an enemy of the United States and it specifically targeted the issei or the Japanese immigrant generation, including Sedaka’s father and mother. This specific law focused on foreign nationals, but a majority of the people who were imprisoned were actually American citizens. So Trump, in his inauguration speech, he vowed again to use the Alien Enemies Act.
President Trump [00:06:56] And by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks, bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities.
Cecilia Lei [00:07:25] He said all during his his bid for reelection that he has this mass deportation plan. So, you know, he’s saying as commander in chief, his highest responsibility is to defend the United States from threats and invasions. And he likens immigrants to these threats and invasions.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:48] I mean, what was Sadako’s reaction when she heard this?
Cecilia Lei [00:07:53] Sadako and incarceration camp survivors are just really worried about the alien Enemies acts affecting immigrants in the same way as they were with family separations and indefinite detention. But she really talked about wanting to turn that anger into action.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:08:09] The harm that man has done and could do. And we must stand strong and fight back. We just cannot say, okay, we cannot do that. We cannot do that. Absolutely not.
Cecilia Lei [00:08:25] She’s 91, so she walks slowly with a cane. So she’s limited by her mobility, but she really doesn’t let that discourage her. You know, a lot of the survivors talk about what can we do that’s within our reach. So she feels this responsibility to carry on her family’s legacy of being outspoken.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:58] Well, Cecilia, it sounds like Sadako feeling really fired up in this moment. How are other people feeling, especially in these survivor groups?
Cecilia Lei [00:09:17] Right. So every second Monday, Sadako and other survivors of the camps meet in this group called Let’s Talk. They meet at J-Sei the community center I mentioned, and Emeryville. They bring snacks. I think when I was there, there were like spam musubis and bowls of fruit and cookies with each other. So it’s a really cozy space. But there they’re talking about really, really difficult things. One man I met, Alan Maeda, he’s a 77 year old man who lives in Berkeley, and he just talked about being really scared about the division that Trump will continue to create in the country.
Alan Maeda [00:09:56] I fear that my showing up, my being the nail that sticks up is going to get hit down. You know, I feel to speak in opposition or disagreement is dangerous.
Cecilia Lei [00:10:10] And for people like Alan, you know, he actually got emotional.
Alan Maeda [00:10:14] I feel unsafe. My grandfather was in camp because he was a minister. My father fought in the 100th. So it’s like dad proved himself, but that’s not enough.
Cecilia Lei [00:10:32] So there was a lot of disheartened feelings, but the family stories and people sharing it is helping us not really just understand what’s going on today, but to really let people be more intentional and strategic about how to organize and really to stand up in solidarity for other folks.
Satsuki Ina [00:10:51] We know what can happen. We’ve experienced what happens.
Cecilia Lei [00:10:55] The group is made to feel so safe because it’s facilitated by another survivor. Her name is Satsuki Ina.
Satsuki Ina [00:11:02] This is a legacy. This isn’t something that is just going to end when the Trump administration and this is something that we’re going to have to stand guard for across many generations.
Cecilia Lei [00:11:13] She’s the co-founder of a social justice organization called Tsuru for Solidarity, which works to end immigrant detention. And Satsuki is also a licensed psychotherapist. So she really facilitates these these discussions in a really thoughtful way that allows them to talk about their collective community trauma in a productive way.
Satsuki Ina [00:11:36] You know, we’ve been doing these healing circles for survivors and healing circles for other organizations who have reached out to us and said, can you come and train our folk to do healing circles so that we’re taking care of ourselves as we approach highly emotional content experience that we’re going to be facing?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:04] I mean, Cecilia, it sounds like many of the Japanese Americans who are at this meeting are really mobilizing in this moment. And I’m wondering how they sort of go from sharing these stories to actual action.
Cecilia Lei [00:12:22] I did check in with Satsuki Ina the facilitator there group, during Trump’s first week in office, just to see what the work looks like now. And, you know, group members have been calling on local counties to ensure that their rapid response systems are in place. You know, there’s even volunteers signing up to offer their homes as safe spaces for undocumented immigrants. And they’re also talking about holding resiliency trainings to provide mental health strategies for for activists and organizers. Tsuru for Solidarity started in 2019 during Trump’s first term, and at that time they were protesting outside of detention centers, and, Psaki said. Their work didn’t get a lot of attention until the elders showed up.
Satsuki Ina [00:13:12] Whenever elders who were actual survivors of the prison camp show up at a demonstration. We’re more likely to get better coverage from the press.
Cecilia Lei [00:13:24] Then when folks showed up in their walkers with their hearing aids and canes, people really, really paid attention to that to understand what is this history and how does it connect to the present day?
Satsuki Ina [00:13:36] You know, when we were first organizing, people were reluctant to protest against the government because culturally that’s just you don’t do that. Because we got the elders to show up in a way, we were able to influence many people.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:53] And we’ve been talking, Cecilia, about survivors of these camps. It makes me curious about younger Japanese-Americans who are maybe a little bit further removed from this history. I’m curious how they’re thinking about their role in this particular moment.
Cecilia Lei [00:14:11] Yeah, I spoke to 25 year old KC Mukai, who volunteers also with Tsurufor Solidarity, and she’s also the co-chair of the Japanese American Youth Alliance. She’s a yonsei, or a fourth generation Japanese-American.
KC Mukai [00:14:25] I am the granddaughter of Shinichi and Iko Mukai. And they were both incarcerated when they were young. They lost years of their youth.
Cecilia Lei [00:14:36] And so, you know, she’s part of this generation, as we know, that has this awareness of intergenerational trauma. It’s not like talking to older generations where you have to make them feel comfortable to talk about these things. And I think one thing that really struck me about what she said is that she feels like Japanese Japanese-Americans have been afforded some privilege because they’ve been in this country for several generations, and they should do something with that privilege to help out and be in solidarity with other communities.
KC Mukai [00:15:09] We really want to rally, you know, all Japanese-Americans and everyone part of the nikkei community to come together and educate themselves on know your rights, training, you know how to be a sanctuary people or a sanctuary organization. You know, start really thinking about our role in this. I’m truly, truly hoping that others in my community can can come together and stand up as we’re doing now to demand that we stop repeating history. And I’m prepared to do whatever is possible to respond to that.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:45] It seems like there’s a lot of preparation happening. I do wonder how likely it is that Trump will use the Alien Enemies Act again and whether we could actually see what we saw in during World War Two happen again. Like, how possible is that actually?
Cecilia Lei [00:16:06] Yeah, I spoke to a few legal experts about that. You know, all of them said that Trump would likely have to face a lot of legal challenges if he truly wanted to use the Alien Enemies Act again, especially because, you know, it’s only been used during wartime. I spoke to one person, Carl Takei, from the Asian Law Caucus, and he said that Trump would really need to twist the language of the act in order to qualify certain groups as alien enemies. So, you know, he says he hopes that the courts would really interpret the act in its plain language, which would make things really challenging for the Trump administration. But, you know, one legal expert I talked to told me that whether or not the law can actually be used, that’s still effective to just even name check the law saying over and over again alien enemies. Right. Really sort of galvanizes anti-immigration supporters, you know, to really demonize immigrant communities.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:12] And to create a real culture of fear among immigrants.
Cecilia Lei [00:17:17] Right. And that’s something that the Japanese-American community knows so well. They were demonized during World War Two. You know, they were seen as not being American enough. So this is all very, very familiar for them.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:36] Coming back to Sadako. What’s it like for her to keep fighting this fight in her 90s? I mean, it really does seem like she has a lot of energy. But what’s your sense of how determined she is to keep fighting right now?
Cecilia Lei [00:17:50] Yeah. You know, I think I asked a question of like, isn’t this make you feel tired? Right. Like, you know, you’re at this late stage in your life. You’re talking about something that happened in your childhood and you’re still talking about it and having to reintroduce this history to people over and over again. But, you know, it gives her a sense of purpose and makes her feel active and engaged.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:18:17] As I said, often tears to my eyes just talking about it. But it’s so important. It’s so important. Eighth graders, you know, I tell them. You matter. Everybody matters.
Cecilia Lei [00:18:34] You know, she, for the past few years has gone to Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland, where she talks to young students. And, you know, she says talking to the youth and being really openly vulnerable is this is this form of fighting.
Sadako Kashiwagi [00:18:52] And I was I’m a children’s librarian. I went to library school where I was 50. I think one of the reasons I became a children’s librarian is that we always try to make things hopeful. So I tell them. Please. Talk to your elders. Ask your grandparent. What were you like as a child? You know what else? You don’t have to say. Was there something dramatic or anything? Just tone. I want to know what your childhood was like. And you learn that language, whatever it is, and be proud of who you are, because we were made to be ashamed of what we were.
