91�Թ�

(MBA, Harvard), former Visiting Lecturer, Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, is an advisor to Stanford e-Hiroshima. His parents, Ryuji and Nanako, are supporters of Stanford e-Hiroshima, which is an online course that 91�Թ� offers to high school students in Hiroshima. Taught by Rylan Sekiguchi, Stanford e-Hiroshima was launched in 2019 with the support of the Hiroshima Prefectural Board of Education. 91�Թ� is grateful to Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki for his vision and leadership and Superintendent Rie Hirakawa for her unwavering support.

Ryuji Yamada adjusts the window shades to savor the view that grows elusive to his aging eyes. If you gaze towards Diamond Head from the Yamadas’ condominium, kite surfers glide in and out of your perspective in some random Brownian motion; their paths, pace, and direction seem chaotic. They all share the same wind, waves, and current, but the skill of the rider to look ahead and channel the energies around them sends them on very different and wonderful journeys. 

“I was just 14 living in Hiroshima and still a minor when the bomb dropped. My brother was only one year older but considered an adult and was sent on work detail for defense preparations. He had to walk through ground zero to come home. My father had a meeting at City Hall, but the ferry was cancelled. We all survived, but the blast sent us in very different directions.

“They rebuilt the community with their personality, spirit, and bare hands, but I was pushed inward to my studies. I needed to comprehend the natural force that had wrought so much destruction.

“In the sixties, foreign exchange was scarce, and I was one of the first scientists that the Japanese government sponsored to do research abroad. At Cornell, Robert Wilson guided my career and brought me along to establish what became Fermilab in 1967. We built Fermilab as an oasis of fundamental research in the Illinois prairie. We thought that the pursuit of knowledge would unite us. Wilson’s famous defense in April 1969 of Fermilab to Congress seems even more relevant today.

‘Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country, but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.’”[1]

Rylan Sekiguchi has been selected as a cohort fellow for the program (M&S)—an initiative to attract remote workers, especially returning kamaʻāina (�Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� residents), to create a more innovative, resilient, and sustainable �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��. The rationale for the establishment of M&S is based on the following.

“Brain drain” is an enduring challenge for �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� as we lose key talent and family members to economic opportunities on the continent. M&S focuses on “brain gain” to grow and diversify �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��’s economy so that local folks can come home and never have to leave in the first place.

A recent , “�Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��’s Population Drain Outpaces Most States—Again,” in Honolulu Civil Beat features comments by M&S Director Nicole Lim. In the article, she notes, “The overall goal is really brain gain. How to tie people into �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� for the good of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��.”

Selected from thousands of applicants, Sekiguchi is one of 50 in the second M&S cohort contributing to the community through volunteer projects and developing personal and professional relationships with people from diverse backgrounds. Sekiguchi is working primarily with the , which is led by Executive Director Vicky Holt Takamine, a respected kumu hula (master teacher of hula), well-known Native Hawaiian advocate, and valuable proponent of M&S in the local community.

The Movers and Shakas program is based on three key pillars.

• Learn: Cultural education helps cohort fellows understand the historical and current context of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��, allowing them to build stronger personal relationships and connect more deeply with �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��.
• Contribute: Volunteering allows cohort fellows to contribute their unique professional skillsets and experiences to local nonprofits and startups while learning about �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� from community leaders in a reciprocal relationship.
• Connect: Community building centers around the two-way sharing of knowledge, ideas, and culture to foster strong bonds between individuals, within the cohort, with volunteer partner orgs, and with the general public.
   

Following a recent visit to the Bishop Museum, designated as the �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, Sekiguchi reflected on his experience. “Though I was born and raised in �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��, it wasn’t until I moved to the continent as a student at 91�Թ� that I began to truly recognize my connection to this place. After being away for 19 years, M&S has been an incredibly meaningful experience for me and an extraordinary opportunity to reconnect with �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��. It’s also been inspiring to connect with my M&S cohort mates, many of whom also have personal connections to the state. Someday, I hope to connect my 91�Թ� work more closely with the M&S community.”

December 7, 2021 marked the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. On the occasion of the anniversary, , Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo, gave a lecture on Pearl Harbor to high school students enrolled in 91�Թ�’s Stanford e-Japan, which is taught by Instructor Meiko Kotani. Yaguchi has been an advisor to both Stanford e-Japan and 91�Թ�’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), an online course about Japan and U.S.–Japan relations that is offered to high school students in the United States and is taught by Instructor Naomi Funahashi. From 2004 to 2009, I worked with Yaguchi during the “Pearl Harbor: History, Memory, and Memorial” summer institutes for American and Japanese teachers that were hosted by the AsiaPacificEd Program for Schools, East-West Center, Honolulu.

Prior to Yaguchi’s lecture, Kotani compiled questions from her students to share with Yaguchi, and he used them to conceptualize his lecture. The students were also required to view a lecture by Stanford Emeritus Professor Peter Duus on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Yaguchi informed the students that he would be introducing diverse perspectives on the Pearl Harbor attack and also encouraged students to think about the questions that they had written while he delivered his lecture. He encouraged them to consider two questions that he devised based on the students’ questions: “Why do you ask such questions?” and “What do the questions tell you about how you think of the past and today?” Yaguchi noted, “I am kind of spinning the table around.”

Yaguchi set the context for his talk by giving a brief geographic and historical background of Pearl Harbor. He pointed out that for ancient Hawaiians, the name of the harbor now known as Pearl Harbor was Puʻuloa, regarded as the home of the shark goddess, Kaʻahupāhau. Following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the U.S. Navy established a base on the island in 1899. Over the years, Pearl Harbor, along with the Naval Base San Diego, remained a main base for the U.S. Pacific Fleet after World War II. He also noted that Pearl Harbor is the most popular destination in Hawaii for American visitors.

Yaguchi pointed out that the excellent questions from the students were primarily about the United States and Japan. He posed the question, “But is Pearl Harbor really only about the U.S. and Japan?” and encouraged students to critically consider the following points, which were the five key points of his lecture.

1. We need to see history in a longer and wider perspective.
2. History is not only about powerful nation states.
3. History is not only about (mostly male) politicians and leaders making decisions.
4. Pearl Harbor means different things to many people.
5. We need to see Pearl Harbor from multiple angles—especially from the perspectives of race and gender (non-white, non-Japanese, non-male)—those who have been making/writing history.
    

He followed up each point with specific questions. For example, “What does Pearl Harbor mean to the indigenous people of Hawaii or the Native Hawaiians?”; and “Was Pearl Harbor an attack on the United States” or “Was Pearl Harbor an attack on Native Hawaiians as well?” were follow-up questions to point number four. Yaguchi pointed out that he was born and raised in Hokkaido, the northern-most main island of Japan, and to his surprise one of the students mentioned that he lives in Kushiro, a city in Hokkaido that is Yaguchi’s ancestral hometown. Since the Ainu are an indigenous people from the northern region of Japan, particularly Hokkaido, Yaguchi’s questions prompted some students to think about parallels between the Ainu and Native Hawaiians.

The five key points of his lecture led to many questions during the question-and-answer period. One student asked, “Is there anything that you keep in mind when teaching Japanese about American history or specific events such as Pearl Harbor?” Yaguchi replied, “At the University of Tokyo, I really encourage students to think about why you learn history in specific ways. Who decides what you need to study? I also encourage students to be critical of the education that you receive. University years are a time for you to reassess what you learn… We living in Japan or educating in Japan tend to connect Pearl Harbor as the beginning and the atomic bombs as the ending… or the cause and the effect. And this is a very common way of framing history. People in the United States do not necessarily think so.”

While listening to Yaguchi’s lecture, I reflected upon , which is the University of Tokyo President Teruo Fujii’s statement of the guiding principles of the University of Tokyo—the ideals to which the university should aspire and the direction it should take, under the title “Into a Sea of Diversity: Creating the Future through Dialogue.” In his lecture, Yaguchi extended the reach of UTokyo Compass to Stanford e-Japan high school students throughout Japan. Kotani and I were most appreciative the ripple effect of UTokyo Compass that he provided through his lecture. Kotani stated, “I am so grateful to Professor Yaguchi for introducing my students to not only diverse perspectives on Pearl Harbor but also for engaging them in questions related to epistemology.”

UTokyo Compass prompted me think about the importance of one’s “moral compass,” or a person’s ability to judge what is right and wrong and to act accordingly. Through Stanford e-Japan and the RSP, Kotani, Funahashi, and I hope to encourage high school students to remember to navigate their academic and professional careers with their own moral compass. In addition, as a compass always follows true north, I think that leaders should follow a set of unwavering personal values, including integrity. The students in Stanford e-Japan and the RSP are among the best and brightest in Japan and the United States and future leaders. I encourage them to singlehandedly change the world, to be changemakers.

91�Թ� recommends the use of a 13-minute lecture—titled “Civil and Human Rights: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy” by Dr. Clayborne Carson—for use at the high school and college levels. Dr. Carson is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor Emeritus at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, FSI, at 91�Թ�. In the video lecture, Professor Carson not only discusses Martin Luther King, Jr. as a civil rights leader but also examines his larger vision of seeing the African American struggle as a worldwide struggle for citizenship rights and human rights.

A free classroom-friendly discussion guide for this video is available for download on the website above. The organizing questions that are listed in the guide are:

• What are civil and human rights?
• What were the significant achievements of the Civil Rights Movement?
• What is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy in terms of civil and human rights?
• How are Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision, ideas, and leadership still relevant today?
• How is the American Civil Rights Movement similar and different from other rights-related movements?

91�Թ� also recommends the resources on the following websites for use in classrooms.

• supports a broad range of educational activities illuminating Dr. King’s life and the movements he inspired. Dr. Carson is the founding director of the Institute.

• works to realize Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the world as a large house in which “we must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” Dr. Carson is the director of the Project.

In his March 15, 2021 lecture for 91�Թ�’s Reischauer Scholars Program, actor George Takei—who played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek—added “and Stand Back” to the iconic Star Trek words, “Live Long and Prosper,” as he was greeting students. His addition of “and Stand Back” was a message to the RSP students that it is important to continue to socially distance during the pandemic.

During his riveting lecture, Takei didn’t need to draw upon his acting skills to engage his audience of students as he recollected his family’s life after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and drew parallels between his family’s experience during World War II and anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes (including killings and stabbings) against Asian Americans today. Takei was four years old at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, and following the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, Takei and his family along with approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent—two thirds of whom were American citizens like Takei—were forced from their homes.

As he did with his legions of fans in Star Trek, Takei had the students glued to their screens as he recalled the day that he and his family were forced from their home in Los Angeles.

On that day that I can never forget, I had just turned five years old. It was a few weeks after my birthday, April 20. My father had gotten us dressed up hurriedly and told us to wait in the living room while my father and mother did some last-minute packing in the bedroom. Our baby sister was an infant and she was in the bedroom with them in a cradle. In the living room, my brother and I were just gazing out the front window at our neighborhood and suddenly we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway. They carried rifles with shiny bayonets on them. They stomped up the front porch and with their fists, began pounding the door. I still remember how it felt, like the walls were trembling… My father came out of the bedroom, answered the door, and literally, at gunpoint we were ordered out of our home… Shortly after and escorted by one of the soldiers, my mother came out holding our baby sister in one arm and a huge duffle bag in the other, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. The terror of that morning is still alive in me. I will never be able to forget that horrific day. It is seared into my memory.

Upon hearing this, RSP student Kogen Brown reflected, “I was deeply struck by the fact that these details remained in Mr. Takei’s mind after all these years. I remember only a few snippets of my life from that age, and the fact that he remembers so many specific aspects about the time that he was interned really goes to show the emotional and psychological impact that internment had on Japanese Americans—even those who were so young that they didn’t know what was happening or why it was happening to them.”

The War Relocation Authority (WRA) was the federal agency created in 1942 to oversee the Japanese Americans who were removed from the West Coast during World War II. The WRA built and operated a network of camps, where those removed were subjected to forced incarceration. Takei and his family were taken to the horse stables in Santa Anita Racetrack where they were assigned to a horse stall, which was still pungent with horse manure. The family stayed for four or five months in the so-called Santa Anita Assembly Center while the more permanent concentration camps were being built. From Santa Anita, Takei and his family were sent by train to the so-called Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas. Takei recollected, “There, as a five-year-old child, I had an adventure. A discovery of a whole alien world. I am a southern Californian. I’m used to palm trees. In Rohwer beyond the barbed wire fence was the bayou. I have memories of camp as a fun experience, but that was a child’s experience. At the same time, parallel to my childhood experience, my parents had a grotesque experience—barbed wire fences, sentry towers, machine guns pointed at them. When we made the night run to the latrine from our barrack, searchlights followed us. My mother considered it an invasive, humiliating light but the five-year-old me thought it was nice that they lit the way for me to pee. Same experiences but two different memories.”

During his recollection of his life during World War II, Takei noted, “There are relevant lessons that apply to what’s happening today. We talk about Asian hate, hate of Asian people, and horrific things are being done to elderly Asians because of the pandemic we are going through. This kind of hate is what Japanese Americans were subjected to more than 80 years ago… back then, graffiti was painted on some of our homes, on our cars… like what’s happening today.”

Takei underscored the ironies of being detained behind barbed wire. He noted,

“I still can’t wrap my head around how horribly the U.S. government failed Japanese Americans,” reflected RSP student Kalia Lai, “Hearing from Mr. Takei that he and the other Japanese American students still had to say the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of school made me realize how empty those words, ‘with liberty and justice for all,’ turned out to be for Japanese Americans, and how inhumane the incarceration camps were.”

Takei also shared that in 1943, the War Department and WRA established a “loyalty questionnaire” as a means to assess the loyalty of all adults in the WRA camps. Takei spoke specifically about the final two questions, questions 27 and 28, which created confusion and resentment.

Question number 27 asked if Japanese Americans were willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered. Question number 28 asked if individuals would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization. U.S. citizens resented being asked to renounce loyalty to the Emperor of Japan when they had never held a loyalty to the Emperor. At the time, Japanese immigrants were barred from becoming U.S. citizens, so they wondered if renouncing their only citizenship would leave them stateless.

Despite the confusion, thousands from Hawaii and the concentration camps served in the U.S. Army. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was organized on March 23, 1943, after more than a year during which Americans of Japanese descent were declared enemy aliens by the U.S. War Department. Takei emphatically noted, “We weren’t the enemy, we were Americans.” The 442nd RCT became the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in U.S. military history. Following the end of the war, President Truman honored them and said, “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice—and you have won.”

Takei noted the importance for students to study about history as it teaches us important lessons and stated that he has made it his life’s mission to talk about the incarceration of Japanese Americans. “As a matter of fact, today we are living through a time that will be studied as a very important part of history by future generations,” expressed Takei. Recalling his years behind barbed wire, he emphasized that he and his family were viewed with suspicion and hate simply because of the way they looked. “There were no charges, no trial, no due process… Terror made toxic by racism started to affect the so-called leaders of our country, the politicians, but instead of leading, these politicians got swept up by the hysteria and became part of that hysteria… We have so much to learn from history because we are repeating the same kind of mentality that put us in these barbed wire prison camps.”

These words resonated in RSP student Noah Kurima, whose paternal grandparents were among the 120,000 who were incarcerated. Kurima commented, “What surprised me the most upon hearing Mr. Takei speak about his wartime experiences are the parallels that I see in our country eight decades later. As a 16-year-old, I would have hoped that more progress had been made in the area of cross-cultural understanding. The hysteria, racism, and failure of political leadership that Mr. Takei described from his childhood seem eerily similar to what I have seen in the media recently. I hope that the RSP students in the year 2100 will not be witnessing the same parallels that I am today.”

In a strongly emphasized message to the students, Takei said that the ideals of the United States “are noble but they become real and true only when the people infuse those ideals with truth with backing. At times of panic and hysteria, we start behaving irrationally.”

RSP Instructor Naomi Funahashi reflected, “I hope that my students especially take this message to heart. I honestly hesitated to close the session because of the clear impact that Mr. Takei was having on my students.” Funahashi gratefully acknowledged Takei and noted, “Sharing your recollections—particularly those of you as a five-year-old boy—we could feel your very palpable sense of terror and fear, and through your voice, you helped students to understand why it’s such an important issue to study today.”

George Takei is a social justice activist, social media superstar, Grammy-nominated recording artist, New York Times bestselling author, and pioneering actor whose career has spanned six decades. He has appeared in more than 40 feature films and hundreds of television roles, and he has used his success as a platform to fight for social justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and marriage equality. For the full story of George Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II, see his graphic memoir, . Naomi Funahashi and I are grateful to Brad Takei for his support of George’s lecture and this article, and also to Michael Kurima for his support as a liaison between 91�Թ� and George Takei.

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (91�Թ�) unequivocally condemns the systemic racism that permeates U.S. society and fully supports the recent calls for social justice and equity. I have been so moved and inspired by the protests across the United States that have brought world-wide attention to the systemic racism in the United States. Because of my age and the stay-at-home orders, I regret that I have not been able to participate in the protests. It is not due to my indifference. My family—in particular in late 1941 and 1942—also suffered from what would be called “racial profiling” today.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, my grandparents, who were immigrants from Japan, and my U.S.-born parents were forcibly removed by Executive Order 9066 from their homes in Salinas, California, in 1942 and detained initially in the Salinas Assembly Center, one of 15 temporary detention facilities along the West Coast for Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans. They were later transported to Poston War Relocation Center, which was built on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in the Arizona desert, and was one of ten more permanent detention camps that the U.S. government had initially referred to as concentration camps. They remained there until the end of World War II.

My father, as a high school student in Poston, became fully aware of not only the painful sting of scorpions but more importantly of the sting of indifference from Americans concerning their plight; and my mother, as an elementary school student, simply assumed that they had done something wrong because her family was surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers manned by U.S. soldiers with guns. During World War II, very few people spoke out as the constitutional rights of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—more than two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens—were violated.

As I listened to President Donald Trump’s June 13th remarks at the 2020 United States Military Academy at West Point graduation ceremony, I was hoping that he would—especially given the times—specifically mention Henry Ossian Flipper, a former slave, who in 1877 became the first African American to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point; as well as others like the African American Tuskegee Airmen who served valiantly in World War II. One of my uncles, who was drafted into the U.S. Army from Poston, trained with other Japanese American soldiers in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Around town, he saw the segregated entrances—“Whites Only” and “Colored Only”—and didn’t know which one to enter. He went to Europe to fight bigotry.

As a young student in the late 1950s and 1960s, I had never learned about these stories in my elementary and secondary school classes. I learned about them informally through my family and formally for the first time as a freshman in fall 1972 at U.C. Berkeley. Here I was taught that what I had learned in elementary and secondary school was the U.S. master narrative of history, in which the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Henry Ossian Flipper, and Tuskegee Airmen were not included, at least at the time.

91�Թ� fully supports “to reassess our work and how we can move our local community, nation, and the world to achieve racial justice” in light of the horrific killing of George Floyd and the long, tragic history of racial injustice and police violence targeted at the Black community. 91�Թ�—with roots that date back to 1973—is an educational outreach program of FSI. The goal of making Stanford scholarship accessible to K–12 students (and more recently community college students) has remained as 91�Թ�’s mission since its establishment. Now—perhaps more than ever—I feel the need to do more to help open up the still strictly confined master narrative of U.S. history to include the Black Lives Matter movement and more broadly the contributions of minorities to U.S. society.

Long before terms like culturally relevant (or sensitive) curriculum were being used, 91�Թ� has underscored the importance of helping to raise international and cultural awareness—through curriculum development—geared to students at a young age, when critical attitudes are being formed. 91�Թ� is about to launch a website that is called “” The website’s lessons focus on topics like immigration, civil liberties & equity, civic engagement, justice & reconciliation, and leadership. It is meant as a starting point for critical discussions, including courageous conversations about race and discrimination. We hope that this is a modest starting point for teachers to encourage youth around the country to discuss topics like the Black Lives Matter movement, being Muslim in America, and LGBTQ issues.

Among 91�Թ�’s offerings are a series of short lectures (Scholars Corner and Multimedia Library) by Stanford scholars with accompanying teacher guides. One focuses on “The Use of Lethal Force by the Police in Rio de Janeiro and the Pacification Process” by in which she explores the connections between poverty, crime, and police violence—topics just as relevant in the contemporary United States as they are in Brazil. For many years, I have hoped to expand these further with scholars affiliated with the , which is directed by . Several years ago, 91�Թ� recorded a lecture by Professor Carson titled “Civil and Human Rights: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy,” and I recommend its use in schools as his message is very timely. In addition, 91�Թ� has worked with educators of the Navajo Nation for many years; someday we hope to collaborate on a long-term project. One of the Navajo educators was a Stanford student in the 1960s and he shared his efforts to persuade Stanford to drop the Indian symbol as a mascot in 1972 despite resistance or indifference on the part of many in the Stanford community.

I agree with Professor Michael McFaul that “We must do better.” I definitely need to do better. 91�Թ� needs to do more to highlight BIPOC’s invaluable contributions to U.S. history and society and help to empower youth with a greater voice and platform today to address the systemic racism in the United States that is directly affecting their lives.

My mother, now 87, still vividly recalls the barbed wire that surrounded her as a 9-year-old American girl at the “assembly center” in Salinas in 1942. Reflecting upon the recent protests, she recently shared with me, “I imagine that Blacks feel like they have a fence around them all the time.” She also still nervously remembers the paranoia that her mother felt during World War II, and even after the war when her mother used to sometimes go outside in the middle of the night with a packed suitcase. After being escorted home by neighbors, she would tell her children that “She was going to Poston.” I know how much these stories still hurt me despite the passage of time. I believe that they help me to empathize as best I can with the plight of Black families in the United States today. But empathizing is not enough. We must ask ourselves, what more can we do to help take down the racial fences that still exist?

In 91�Թ�’s curriculum work, we always preface each lesson with organizing questions (essential or overarching questions) that we would like students to consider. I would like to pose three for us to consider during this time: What can we at 91�Թ� do to move our local community, the United States, and the world to achieve greater racial justice? What can 91�Թ� do to further make FSI/Stanford scholarship accessible to K–12 schools and community colleges ? What are the risks of remaining indifferent especially during times of crisis? These questions will be the driving force of our work in the weeks, months, and years ahead.