AUTHOR OF ‘PRISONS & PATRIOTS’ BOOK SPEAK AT JANM ON SATURDAY, JUNE 23

Dr. Cherstin Lyon, author of Prisons & Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience and Historical Memory, will discuss the choices individuals like Gordon Hirabayashi made during World War II in response to the U.S. Government’s illegal actions at a public program set on Saturday, June 23, beginning at 2 p.m. at the Japanese American National Museum.

Hirabayashi, who passed away in January and was presented posthumously the Medal of Freedom by President Obama, told Dr. Lyon in interviews that after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, leading to the unfair forced removal of thousands of people of Japanese ancestry, he had at some point decided that to obey an unjust law was to support it. Hirabayashi explained to Dr. Lyon that he chose to take "small steps to make sure his personal values matched his everyday actions. As time went on, and as his commitment to pacifism and the Constitution were challenged more directly, he took bigger steps." If a law was fair and just, he would obey; but if a law was clearly racially discriminatory or if it contradicted his most deeply-held spiritual beliefs, he would not.

What seemed so clear to Hirabayashi back then may not always be so clear to others today. As Dr. Lyon mentions in her book, "[w]hen individuals are asked to obey a law or comply with an order from a source of authority that contradicts their most deeply held values, it can be hard to remember that we are all still free to make our own choices." Moreover, in a democratic society such as ours, "we have the right to refuse any order, or any law." Though, "with that freedom comes the responsibility to accept the consequences."

For Hirabayashi, it meant incarceration in jail once and prison twice. Convicted of violating the exclusion order and curfew, Hirabayashi requested his time be served outdoors at a road camp. Because of the exclusion, the nearest facility was in Tucson, Arizona. There were no funds to send him, so Hirabayashi volunteered to report there on his own. "It was against my principles to pay my way to prison, so I hitchhiked," Hirabayashi recalled.

Dr. Lyon, who is an Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino, first met Hirabayashi in November 1999 when she was invited to interview him and several Nisei draft resisters, including Ken Yoshida, Sus Yenokida, Harry Yoshikawa and Noboru Taguma, who attended the U.S. Forest Service’s renaming ceremony of the former Tucson prison where they served their prison terms. The site was renamed the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site. Dr. Lyon has been drawn to stories of resistance, such as the way ordinary people resisted military dictatorships in South America, the way Chinese immigrants resisted exclusion policies around the turn of the twentieth century, and the way Native Americans whose tribal lands have been divided by the international borders of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada have worked to achieve stable border-crossing rights to tribal members cut off from certain services.

Dr. Lyon carefully listened to Hirabayashi and the other draft resisters back in 1999. With the utmost respect for WW II veterans, including those valiant Japanese Americans who fought in the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Dr. Lyon contends that people should not lose sight of the freedoms "won in court and in prison." Furthermore, she stated that those individuals willing to go to prison instead of obeying an unconstitutional law are directly responsible for keeping "the boundaries of our democratic freedoms large and inclusive." Indeed, those "like Gordon Hirabayashi make room for more ordinary conversations about the balance between our rights and responsibilities of citizenship."

In the course of 12 years of researching and writing Prisons and Patriots, Dr. Lyon sought the answers to several important questions: "Why did not more people resist the draft? What were some other ways in which individuals and groups expressed their dissatisfaction with wartime policies of exclusion and the segregated military? What, if anything, does this story teach us about the complex nature of citizenship in times of war and peace?"

Dr. Lyon is aware that her audiences sometimes can be a little uncomfortable deviating from a very narrow definition of patriotism and that there are still those who believe "that all 'Japanese' posed a threat to the U.S. during WWII." Also, according to Dr. Lyon, because of the "militarized society" in which we live, it is "difficult to discuss civil disobedience—especially draft resistance—without the conversation turning on narrow definitions of loyalty, patriotism, and duty to country." She remains hopeful, however, that the vast majority of Americans will be open to reading a book that may challenge traditional notions.

This program is free to National Museum members or with admission. For more information on Dr. Lyon and her work, go to Discover Nikkei to access the profile by Edward Yoshida at http://5dn.org/Cherstin-Lyon.