The four American-born children of Seattle residents, Koichi & Chiyo Aoyama, immigrants from Japan about 1928. Above: (clockwise from left to right) Henry, Pearl, Anne, Frank. While U.S. citizens. the rights of all four children were denied them in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by Imperial Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Along with their immigrant parents and 120,000 others of similar ancestry they were forcibly removed from their homes, communities and the lives they led prior to the beginning of World War II and imprisoned without benefit of trial to inland interior desert camps surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers armed with machine guns for the crime of looking like the enemy.Photo from collection of Mizu Sugimura.
"It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams
do not have to come at the expense of my dreams;
that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black
and brown and white children will ultimately help
all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less,
than what all the world's great religions demand
- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Let us be our brother's keeper,
Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper.
Let us find that common stake we all have in one another,
and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."
-Barack Obama, speech, March 18, 2008.
do not have to come at the expense of my dreams;
that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black
and brown and white children will ultimately help
all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less,
than what all the world's great religions demand
- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Let us be our brother's keeper,
Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper.
Let us find that common stake we all have in one another,
and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."
-Barack Obama, speech, March 18, 2008.
4 comments:
Thank you Mizu...I've been sitting with this all morning...then went and walked the labyrinth with both the pain...and the balm.
I stand in support of this truth and pledge to be self-responsible in it.
I stand with you both. A wonderful definition of freedom. ~Stephanie
Oh, these words are just wonderful! I am in awe! Thanks for sharing this, Mizu.
It's an out-of-the-blue kind of gift/pairing that really clicks for me as well, and I felt bound to pass it along. And I think that's why this works the way it does.
It's also why the text from whence it came will also communicate and ring so true (now and in the future) with so many different audiences long after the campaign season is past history.
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