Forty-three years

Dear San Franciscans & Friend Customers:

Time has come for us to say, “Au Revoir” after faithfully created the world renown Chinatown by serving with quality merchandise for 43 years.

To you, San Franciscans and friend customers, the members of the firm of T.Z. SHIOTA, wish to acknowledge each and every one of you for your past patronage and co-operation.

At this hour of evacuation when the innocents suffer with the bad, we bid you, dear friends of ours, with the words of beloved Shakespeare, “PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW”.

Till We Meet Again,

T.Z. SHIOTA

What did the children think?

How the evacuation forced removal of people of Japanese descent from Seattle would affect a second grade class in a local school is shown in these two views in Seattle, Washington, on March 27, 1942. At the top is a crowded classroom with many Japanese American pupils and at the bottom is the same class without the Japanese American students. (AP Photo)

Reporting for processing

Japanese heads of family and persons living alone form a line outside Civil Control Station located in the Japanese American Citizens League Auditorium in San Francisco, California, to appear for “processing” in response to Civilian Exclusion Order Number 20, on April 25, 1942 (NARA)

August 28, 1955

The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi.

To all persons

On a brick wall beside an air raid shelter poster, exclusion orders were posted at First and Front Streets in San Francisco, California, directing the removal of persons of Japanese ancestry from the first part of San Francisco to be affected by the evacuation concentration camps.  The order was issued April 1, 1942, by Lieutenant General J.L. DeWitt, and directed evacuation forced removal from this section by noon on April 7, 1942. (NARA)

Alien and “non-alien” alike.  Babies and the elderly.

Removed

Two plainclothes men, left, watch as Japanese aliens are removed from their homes on Terminal Island, a vital Naval and Shipbuilding center in Los Angeles, California, on February 3, 1942. Some 400 male Japanese aliens — Terminal Island residents — were rounded up early on February 2 by 180 federal, city and county officers. (AP Photo/Ira W. Guldner)

Thanks, Mom

My mother:  If you go to [store name], would you please pick this up for me?

Me:  Mom, I don’t go there any more.  It’s like crack cocaine to me.

My mother:  You don’t need to go right away.  Just if you happen to drive by.  I don’t need it right away.  Maybe just some time this month.

My mother:  And only if you have a coupon.  If you don’t have a coupon and it isn’t on sale, don’t buy it.  I don’t want it at full price.

I am an American

This Oakland, CA store owned by a man of Japanese ancestry is closed following evacuation orders to force Japanese Americans into concentration camps in April of 1942. After the attack on Pearl Harbor the owner had placed the “I Am An American” sign in the store front window. (AP Photo/ Dorothea Lange)

Tom Kobayashi at Manzanar

Tom Kobayashi stands in the south fields of the Manzanar Relocation Center Concentration Camp, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in California’s Owens Valley, in 1943. Famed photographer Ansel Adams traveled to Manzanar in 1943 to document the Relocation Center Concentration Camp and the Japanese Americans interned imprisoned there.

(Ansel Adams/LOC)

‘Students from the Street’

C. Siddha Webber, Percy Wiggins, Allan “Tiny” Evans, Henry Jordan, Henry Crumpton, and Cecil Davis. Photo from ChicagoMag.com

The Foundation Years was a Dartmouth project that ran from 1967 through 1973. It identified prospective students from among members of the Chicago Vice Lords gang. Fifteen were admitted. Seven graduated; eight dropped out. Allen Evans was one of the first two students.

“Nobody thought we were going to make it,” he said.

But seven of them did.  That’s the part I keep thinking about.  I wonder about the other eight; the article doesn’t go into too much detail about any of the men’s lives.

Some years back I read about the Posse Foundation, and was impressed that somebody thought pretty hard about the components that go into making college kids successful.  I think one of the most important factors is the support network.  Can you imagine being one of 20 African Americans on Dartmouth’s 3,200 student campus?