Barbara Takei

barbaratakei

Barbara Takei is a Detroit-born Sansei whose introduction to the Asian American movement in the late 60s was Grace Lee Boggs and the Detroit Asian Political Alliance. She puzzled over the missing stories of Japanese American dissent against the unjust incarceration for decades, but it wasn’t until her first Tule Lake pilgrimage in 2000 that she realized peaceful protest during WWII was erased by demonizing it as “pro-Japan disloyalty.” For the past two decades, she has served as an officer on the non-profit Tule Lake Committee and devoted herself to preserving Tule Lake as the site of Japanese American civil rights resistance.

Updated January 2023

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Remembering Roger Daniels

Por Barbara Takei
29 Ene 2023

The first book I read about Japanese American history was Roger Daniels’ book, “The Politics of Prejudice.” It was 1966, and in my research as a college freshman, it was the rare book on Japanese American history, one that began Roger’s long and illustrious career as a historian documenting the story of Japanese Americans and the wartime incarceration. Over the next half century, Roger’s scholarship was the bedrock of Japanese American historical research. It wasn’t until February 2010 that we met, at a 3-day Tule Lake planning meeting in Oakland, organize…

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Does Terminology Matter?

Por Barbara Takei
3 Jun 2013

In recent years, the Nikkei community has engaged in a renewed discussion to reject the euphemistic and false terms the government used to minimize the unjust and inhumane nature of the Japanese American incarceration. From 2009 through 2011, the Japanese American National Museum, the Manzanar Committee, the Tule Lake Committee, and UCLA’s George & Sakaye Aratani Chair in Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community organized workshops and community-wide symposiums in Southern and Northern California to stimulate discussion and develop consensus over replacing inaccurate…

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Speaking Up! Democracy, Justice, Dignity

Legalizing Detention: Segregated Japanese Americans and the Justice Department’s Renunciation Program - Part 9 of 9

Por Barbara Takei
10 May 2013

Read Part 8 >> The government pursued a hard line, determined to challenge the bid of each renunciant who sought restoration of citizenship. In bleak contrast to Goodman’s decision to restore citizenship en masse, the DOJ began sorting renunciants into 22 categories of offenses it characterized as serious enough to deny restoration of citizenship.1 Collins wound up spending many years battling the negative administrative classifications the DOJ assigned to his thousands of individual clients. Collins faced opposition not only from the DOJ, but from the National Office of the…

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Speaking Up! Democracy, Justice, Dignity

Legalizing Detention: Segregated Japanese Americans and the Justice Department’s Renunciation Program - Part 8 of 9

Por Barbara Takei
3 May 2013

Read Part 7 >> Creating Alien Enemies Edward Ennis’ Deputy in the DOJ Alien Enemy Control Unit, John Burling, was the designated hearing officer for the renunciation hearings at Tule Lake. Burling said that the renunciation hearings would be a careful, deliberate process, making it difficult to renounce. Instead, the DOJ set up what amounted to a deportation mill, stripping Americans of their citizenship and providing the government with a legal fig-leaf that justified the individual detentions. Burling even recommended “accepting these applications on the spot, an…

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Speaking Up! Democracy, Justice, Dignity

Legalizing Detention: Segregated Japanese Americans and the Justice Department’s Renunciation Program - Part 7 of 9

Por Barbara Takei
26 Abr 2013

Read Part 6 >> Why Did They Renounce? After its publication in 1946, The Spoilage remained for many decades the primary source on Tule Lake. This seminal work cited allegations of harassment by pro-Japan groups that led to the mass renunciations, using field notes written after the war ended, September 25, 1945 and December 19, 1945.1 Renunciants who sought to regain their U.S. citizenship from the Department of Justice recognized that the desired explanation for their renunciation was to blame the pro-Japan groups for pressure and coercion. Government records declassified in …