Peace empowers: The testimony of Aki Kurose, a woman of color in the Pacific Northwest

Frontiers

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 75-92

  Nomura, Gail M ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0035661513     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/fro.2001.0044     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. In her lifetime Aki Kurose won many awards and honors, including the Presidential Appointee, National Advisory Council on the Education of Disadvantaged Children (1980); the Seattle Public Schools Teacher of the Year, Excellence in Education Award (1985); a Presidential Award for Excellence in Education in Teaching of Science and Mathematics (1990); the United Nations Human Rights Award (1991); and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Award (1991). She was one of seventy older Americans interviewed for Studs Terkel's book Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Lived It (New York: New Press, 1995), 55-63. Although Terkel set a minimum age of seventy for the people he included in his book, he was so taken by Kurose's perspectives that he included her by listing her as "approaching 70." See also Sue Davidson, "Aki Kato Kurose: Portrait of an Activist," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 7:1 (1983): 91-97.
2. In her lifetime Aki Kurose won many awards and honors, including the Presidential Appointee, National Advisory Council on the Education of Disadvantaged Children (1980); the Seattle Public Schools Teacher of the Year, Excellence in Education Award (1985); a Presidential Award for Excellence in Education in Teaching of Science and Mathematics (1990); the United Nations Human Rights Award (1991); and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Award (1991). She was one of seventy older Americans interviewed for Studs Terkel's book Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Lived It (New York: New Press, 1995), 55-63. Although Terkel set a minimum age of seventy for the people he included in his book, he was so taken by Kurose's perspectives that he included her by listing her as "approaching 70." See also Sue Davidson, "Aki Kato Kurose: Portrait of an Activist," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 7:1 (1983): 91-97.
3. The Denshō Project is a nonprofit educaticnal organization whose mission is to preserve the history of Japanese Americans and communicate this history through building a digital archive for use in classrooms and libraries. The word denshō in Japanese means transmission or to tell (a story) from generation to generation. The Denshōarchive includes a visual history archive of more than two hundred hours of videotaped interviews, an image library of more than one thousand historic photographs, a document library of diaries, letters, court cases, legislation, and newspaper articles, and a series of curriculum modules. By February 2002, a Denshō educational website will be launched that will provide a secure internet access to the Denshō archive. The interviews have been indexed by topic in a 125 gigabyte digital archive designed with an easy-to-navigate interface. Researchers can search the archive by keyword and subject indexing, and view the video interviews with a written transcript of the interviewee visible. The Denshō Project is located at 1416 S. Jackson Street, Seattle, Wash., 98144, and can be reached at info@densho.org, by phone at 206-320-0095, and by fax at 206-320-0098.
4. Akiko Kurose, Denshō visual history interviews of July 17, 1997, December 2, 1997, and December 3, 1997, Seattle, Washington. Unless otherwise noted, quotes of Kurose are from these Denshō interviews.
5. A movement within the Japanese American community beginning in the 1970s called for redress for the wartime forcible removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. This led to the establishment by the U.S. Congress of a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civlians (CWRIC) in 1980. The Commission presented its findings in a report titled Personal Justice Denied, which was originally published in two volumes by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1982 and 1983 and was reissued by the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and published by the University of Washington Press in 1997. The Commission concluded that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was not due to military necessity but instead to "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" (18). The Commission recommended a presidential apology, a cash payment of twenty thousand dollars to each survivor, and a program to educate the American public on issues involved with incarceration of Japanese Americans. Based on these CWRIC recommendations, Congress adopted and President Reagan signed into law on August 10, 1988, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-383). For background on the Seattle redress movement, see Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro, Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); and Yasuko Takezawa, Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). See also Michell T. Maki et al., Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
6. A movement within the Japanese American community beginning in the 1970s called for redress for the wartime forcible removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. This led to the establishment by the U.S. Congress of a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civlians (CWRIC) in 1980. The Commission presented its findings in a report titled Personal Justice Denied, which was originally published in two volumes by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1982 and 1983 and was reissued by the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and published by the University of Washington Press in 1997. The Commission concluded that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was not due to military necessity but instead to "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" (18). The Commission recommended a presidential apology, a cash payment of twenty thousand dollars to each survivor, and a program to educate the American public on issues involved with incarceration of Japanese Americans. Based on these CWRIC recommendations, Congress adopted and President Reagan signed into law on August 10, 1988, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-383). For background on the Seattle redress movement, see Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro, Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); and Yasuko Takezawa, Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). See also Michell T. Maki et al., Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
7. A movement within the Japanese American community beginning in the 1970s called for redress for the wartime forcible removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. This led to the establishment by the U.S. Congress of a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civlians (CWRIC) in 1980. The Commission presented its findings in a report titled Personal Justice Denied, which was originally published in two volumes by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1982 and 1983 and was reissued by the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and published by the University of Washington Press in 1997. The Commission concluded that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was not due to military necessity but instead to "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" (18). The Commission recommended a presidential apology, a cash payment of twenty thousand dollars to each survivor, and a program to educate the American public on issues involved with incarceration of Japanese Americans. Based on these CWRIC recommendations, Congress adopted and President Reagan signed into law on August 10, 1988, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-383). For background on the Seattle redress movement, see Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro, Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); and Yasuko Takezawa, Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). See also Michell T. Maki et al., Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
8. For a history of CORE, see August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).
9. See Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 198-201, 205, 210-11.
10. Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community, 229-30.
11. Katy Carter, "LIHI Bigger, Better, More Purple," Real Change News, January 1, 2000, http://www.realchangenews.org/pastarticles/features/articles/news u use jan 01 00 .html.
12. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 273, 278.
13. Ann La Grelius Siqueland, Without a Court Order: The Desegregation of Seattle's Schools (Seattle: Madrona Publishers, 1981), 11-12. "Racial imbalance" was a code word for segregation.
14. Siqueland, Without a Court Order, 13-14.
15. Siqueland, Without a Court Order, 31-32, 196.
16. Siqueland, Without a Court Order, 32.
17. In a conversation with Seattle School District archivist Eleanor Toews on July 26, 2001, at Kenmore, Washington, I discovered that the school board had renamed an elementary school for Martin Luther King, Jr., but in the naming process had mistakenly left out "Jr." According to Toews, the error was only recently discovered, and there are efforts underway to rectify the error. I could find neither records nor individuals to accurately place the year Kurose started teaching at Laurelhurst Elementary School. Seattle School District archivist David Kennedy examined school directories and established that Kurose is listed in the 1976-77 school directories as teaching at Laurelhurst. Although no school directories were published in 1975-76, Kurose must have started teaching at Laurelhurst in 1976 because she is listed in the 1974-75 school directories as teaching kindergarten at Stevens, and she taught at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School for a year before transferring to Laurelhurst.
18. Mark Higgins, "Roots That Grow Deep Bring Folks Back to Their Well-to-do 'Hometown,'" Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 30, 1996, D1, D2.
19. At the memorial service for Aki Kurose held June 6, 1998, at the Asian Resource Center in Seattle, Ward Miles, a Quaker and friend of Kurose, explained Kurose's spiritual grounding in the Society of Friends.
20. Memorial talk by Kurose's former student Frannie Hays at the June 6, 1998, memorial service for Kurose; phone conversation with the author and Kurose's former student Diana Proctor, June 3, 2001, Seattle, Washington; and conversations with former students of Kurose on June 14, 2001, Seattle, Washington.
21. Rebekah Denn, "School Name Honors Teacher Who 'Believed in Peace,'" Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 2, 1999, B1, B3.
22. This anecdote is taken from Terkel, Coming of Age, 61.
23. Talk by Michelle Krippaehne at the June 6, 1998, memorial service for Kurose, taken from a copy of talk received from Michelle Krippaehne as well as loan of a videotape of memorial service.
24. When late in the renaming process some Seattle elites opposed the renaming of the school for Kurose, Laurelhurst was contacted to see if there was support to rename Laurelhurst Elementary for Kurose, but the school site committee decided not to pursue the idea of singling out one teacher in the naming of the school itself. Dennis Fitzgerald, "Aki Kurose School to be Dedicated on March 23," The South District Journal, March 15, 2000, 1-2. This was also confirmed in an interview with Nancy Chin, the principal of Laurelhurst Elementary School, on June 15, 2000.
25. See neighborhood profiles compiled by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at http:// seattlep-i.nwsurce.com/neighbors/rainiervalley/numbers.html, and http://seattlep-i.nw source.com/neighbors/laurelhurst/numbers.html.
26. Mark Higgins, "Community is On the Mend," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 11, 1997, D1-D2.
27. See http://texis.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/schoolguide/
28. Memorandum from South Shore School principal BiHoa Caldwell to Seattle School Superintendent Joseph Olchefske, October 5, 1999, in Leahe "Mom" Wilson's personal papers.
29. Letter from Jay Gainer, Chair, Instructional Council to School Board, October, 15, 1999, in Leahe "Mom" Wilson's personal papers.
30. Letter from Maureen O'Reilly, president, South Shore Middle School PTA to School Board, October 15, 1999, in Leahe "Mom" Wilson's personal papers.
31. O. Casey Corr, "School Board's Clumsy Act Embarrasses and Annoys," The Seattle Times, January 26, 2000, 64.
32. Editorial, "District should honor Kurose and Sharples," The Seattle Times, February 9, 2000, B6.
33. Corr, "Schoolboard's clumsy act embarrasses and annoys."
34. Interview with "Mom" Wilson, June 15, 2000, Aki Kursone Middle School Academy, Seattle, Washington.
35. Aki Kurose Middle School Academy 2001 Yearbook.