"The Gooney Left" - Part II

This email circular landed in our email boxes yesterday:

Hello everyone,

I wanted to draw your attention to a month-long series of events that will commemorate Japanese American Internment. The kick-off event is this evening, and it is sponsored by History Works 2. I hope you will encourage your students to attend.

FACES FROM THE PAST, VOICES OF THE PRESENT:
JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT IN ART & HISTORY

The Asian American Studies Program at The Ohio State University announces a month- long series of events in February and March to commemorate the Japanese American Internment Camps of World War II. On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that authorized the incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans. They were forced to leave their homes, possessions, and friends behind and report to internment camps. The kick-off event for this "Month of Remembrance will begin this Thursday.

Dr. Arthur Hansen, Senior Historian of the Japanese American National Museum, “Barbed Voices: Oral History, Resistance, and the World War II Japanese Internment.”

Thursday, Feb. 10, 6:30pm, Ohio Historical Society

In spite of the popular public view that Japanese Americans accommodated their eviction and incarceration during World War, significant numbers of them resisted their oppression. This presentation emphasizes those Nikkei (people of Japanese ancestry) who were heard during the wartime and later recalled their resistance in oral history interviews. Dr. Arthur Hansen is a Senior Historian at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, faculty emeritus in the Department of History and Director of the Center for Oral and Public History at California State University, Fullerton.

Dr. Hansen also will be offering a workshop for OSU students entitled "Giving Voice to the Past: An Introduction to Oral History" Friday, Feb. 11, 1:30-3:00 p.m., Multicultural Center (Ohio Union, 4th floor), Rm. 436

Dr. Hansen's visit is sponsored by History Works 2: Building Foundations, a collaborative partnership between Columbus Public Schools, the Ohio Historical Society and the OSU Department of History. For more information, http://www.historyworksohio.org.

For more information about the entire series, please visit the website: http://ijs.osu.edu/remember.html or contact Prof. Judy Wu .

This email brought the following response from Prof. Eugene Watts, a retired professor who was a member of my department before being elected to the Ohio state senate in, I think, 1980. If memory serves, he continued to teach a course per year thereafter.

I want to call your attention to the excellent book, In Defense of Internment, by Michelle Malkin,or is this just a propaganda program from the gooney left?

Regards, Eugene Watts--who taught modern American history at OSU for 30 years.

Continue to next page