George Takei remembered standing at the front window of his home, watching soldiers coming up the driveway to take him and his family away. It was 1942, and he was five years old. Carrying only what they had hastily packed the night before, the family of five was transported to a "holding cell" (actually a stall in the stable of a racetrack) on their way to the first of a series of concentration camps, where he and his family spent the next five years of their lives.
Cora Smith* remembered wading in water up to her chest, clinging to her pregnant mother, as they tried to escape their flooded town in 1948. The single road out was jammed with vehicles. Cora, then a grade-schooler, was lifted onto the back of a Red Cross truck to be evacuated with a bunch of other children. It took three days for her mother to find her again.
* I am not certain I have remembered Cora's last name correctly; I apologize if I've gotten it wrong.
George's memory happened in Los Angeles. Cora's took place in Vanport City, which is now the Delta Park neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.
George's family home, his parents' dry cleaning business, and nearly all their possessions were lost to them forever. Their bank accounts were frozen. They were required to take a "loyalty questionnaire" containing trick questions that, when his parents refused to answer in a way that would compromise their character, got them sent to a squalid high-security camp. George recalled fleeing with his father from Jeeps full of armed soldiers who'd been sent out to deal with camp residents who dared to peacefully demonstrate against the camp's awful living conditions.
He and his family were incarcerated for five years due to Executive Order 9066, which relocated all Americans of Japanese descent to holding camps for the duration of World War II. All of them (except for those few who were later admited into military intelligence). That's 120,000 Americans, stripped of their possessions and locked up for years, guilty of no crime other than their ethnicity.
George told this story in his role as guest of honor on a panel entitled "Fighting for Civil Rights: The Japanese-American and LGBT Experience." Other members of the panel were Jeff Selby of Portland Japanese American Citizens League, Setsy Sadamoto Larouche of Oregon Nisei Veterans, Marty Davis of Just Out magazine, and Jessica Lee of Basic Rights Oregon. As a fixture of the original Star Trek series, he overshadowed the rest of the panel considerably; but even without the fame, he would've done this just by being George Takei. He carries himself with a striking air of nobility: incredibly gracious, handling even the most face-palmingly ridiculous questions from the audience with gentleness and respect, but he is clearly not a humble man. He knows the weight his words carry, and wields them accordingly.
Of course, George represented the other half of the panel's topic as well. He introduced the audience to his husband Brad Altman, whom (if I understood correctly) he has been with since the Star Trek days. George has been active in civil rights campaigns most of his adult life, and most recently in campaigning for marriage equality. Because he and Brad were married in California before the passage of Proposition 8, their marriage is recognized by the state of California, but it is not recognized by the federal government... which still denies them over 1000 benefits, rights, and privileges guaranteed to heterosexual married couples.
George's speech covered a lot of ground, but it had two main points. The first was the fragility of our civil liberties; it took one man's (FDR's) signature, he said, to put 120,000 Americans into concentration camps. The second was the necessity of "heroes," as he put it -- people who will put everything on the line to persistently and courageously defend those liberties for everyone. (As an example of the latter, he told us about Min Yasui, a lawyer from Hood River who tested the constitutionality of the curfew laws imposed on Japanese-Americans (before the internment) by walking around downtown Portland after dark, and finally turning himself in to the police for arrest. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which did not decide in his favor.)
* * * * *
When the floodwaters receded, Cora's mother went back to their home to see if any of their possessions could be salvaged, but it had already been scoured by thieves. The only item she was able to retrieve was her marriage certificate. Cora remembers a beautiful dollhouse she was given shortly before the flood, and her bitter disappointment when she learned she would never see it again. Cora and her mother were shuffled into a housing project with other flood refugees, and bounced around between projects for many years before they were finally able to buy a home of their own.
Cora told this story at an event put on by the Portland Housing Center called "Why Vanport Matters: From Displacement to Homeownership." It was also a story about civil rights, though the connection may not be as obvious.
Until 1926, Oregon's constitution contained laws designed to exclude African-Americans (and, to a lesser extent, other races) from the state. But the demand for labor in Portland and Vancouver shipyards during World War II brought a surge of workers from other parts of the country, including nearly ten times the state's previous African-American population. Most of these people, like Cora and her mother, were housed in a public housing development which had been hastily thrown together outside what were then the city limits. The dike that protected this development from the Columbia was clearly insufficient, and the known danger of flooding was downplayed by officials even on the very morning of the flood. Residents were assured they would be given ample time to evacuate, right up until the dike actually gave way.
After the flood, flimsy housing developments were thrown up in what is now North Portland. It was made clear to the predominantly black population who settled there that they were not welcome anywhere else. Even there, they were denied bank loans (PDF link), ignored or hassled by law enforcement, and discriminated against in multitudes of other unofficial, indirect ways. With the deck stacked against them, families like Cora's struggled to make a decent life for themselves. Many of them actually managed it. But if you know anything about Portland, you know what's happened to that part of town in the last 15 years. Those same families lost hard-earned homes to skyrocketing property values, as developers scooped up residences on the cheap and flipped them for ridiculous returns. The neighborhoods they built are theirs no longer, and their communities are scattered.
Cora's audience, many of whom knew of Vanport's legacy in a very personal way, wanted to know: but what can we do about this? At this point, the Portland Housing Center (an organization with the mission of helping people purchase their own home) stepped up to introduce a new program they're offering called Getting Your House in Order (PDF link). It's a "financial fitness course with a culturally and historically African American perspective." (One of the organizers assured me that everyone is welcome, regardless of race or income level.) This four-week course is designed to help people build a healthy relationship with money, something all sorts of Americans tend to have a tough time with. It starts in April, and it's free. And they'll feed you dinner. Not to name any names, but I know of at least one workshop covering a similar topic range that charges $100 per family and doesn't include dinner. So please, if you know anyone who might be interested in this opportunity, spread the word.
Posts
1 comment:
Thank you for that write-up. And maybe I'll have to take you to dinner and hear the rest.
Post a Comment