Closing early, which is fine by me. I’m off the next 2 days & reaches the end of my mental rope weeks ago. What isn’t fine by me is the reason behind it, a credible threat of looting at the mall our restaurant is adjacent to.
Got this from a cop friend who’ll be on duty tonight. I don’t care who the fuck you are, this is as far from showing solidarity with #BLACK_LIVES_MATTER & #GeorgeFloyd as possible.
Already home, 3 to 3.5 hours early. Dumpsters & Jersey barriers are barring almost every entrance to the mall parking lot. Boss said he’d let me know if we still have a restaurant when he gets in tomorrow. In the meantime, priorities. Beer, then a bike ride with my little girl.
Selfie at our halfway point
We also explored the rock pier. Fearless girl wanted to look for rats under the rocks. Um, no, honey.
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🧵 #OTD in 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the incarceration - under the guise of benign "relocation" - of over 120k Japanese Americans. And now, not for the 1st time, a presidential candidate thinks this is a swell idea to revisit. #DayOfRemembrance
2. The perceived disloyalty of Japanese Americans, coupled with good ol' xenophobia that's as American as apple pie or baseball, drove this policy. So did Lt. Gen. John DeWitt, commander of the US Army's Western Defense Command. Such a charmer, this DeWitt.
3. DeWitt saw fifth columns of Japanese Americans around every corner & under every rock. This was a natural extension of the FBI and other LE agencies investigating potential Japanese American agitation since the 1930s. Not because it existed, but because they weren't white.
🧵 I just saw "tipping" tread on this app, so might as well fire up some brain cells and get started on this. I promise, it won't take 30 minutes, but also, please bear with me because this is all coming off the top of my head. Why do we tip?
2. Let's start with a quick primer about what happens to restaurant tips, an indignant threaded reply to someone who opined that servers make too much money.
3. Tipping began in Europe as a gift from a feudal lord to a serf for a service rendered by the serf. It was a gesture, & not necessarily a generous one. The practice continued into the 19th century when those cocky upstarts, aka rich Americans, began to visit Europe.
I’m limited to a certain # of tweets per thread, but like my old squad leader used to say, I improvised, I adapted, & I overcame. Started this labor of love a few years back, but the 2023 thread of daily threads for #AAPIHM begins here on 1 May, with links to successive threads.
I started this in 2018 because I was pissed off. At the time, @USArmy had a vanilla tribute to AAPI soldiers on the main Army page, but not even a link to the 4-4-Deuce. I’m still pissed, went to the @USArmyMuseum last summer & the tiny 442 exhibit feels like an afterthought.
If we - soldiers who share #AAPI heritage - are as important to our service’s history as you claim, @USArmyMuseum & @USArmy, then please do better. I didn’t even let my son see that sad display. I was spoiled, we’d been to @USMCMuseum just before, where they honor everything &
1/19. Today in the #AAPIHM thread, the battle of the Vosges from another POV, & one of the bravest men I've ever had the honor to meet. George "Joe" Sakato was born in Colton, CA, 3rd of 7 children to a couple who owned a barber shop & bath house. When FDR signed Executive Order
2/19. 9066, the Sakatos were given a choice of being "interned," or moving to the Zone of the Interior (landlocked states). They chose the latter & moved to Glendale, AZ, where relatives already lived. By sheer luck, their new address north of the train line exempted them from
3/19. internment, but Japanese Americans living south of the tracks were not. Joe & one of his brothers sold produce to the War Relocation Authority, which ran the nearby camp in Poston. Joe was drafted in 1944 & wanted to join the ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr…
1/22. Almost 300k Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders have served in our nation's military. Of those, 36 are Medal of Honor recipients. Today for the #AAPIHM thread, we honor a soldier who was court-martialed for fighting, yet still received the MoH, Barney Hajiro.
2/22. Hajiro was born in Maui as the 2nd of 9 children, & worked as a stevedore in Oahu to help support his family. Like many Hawaiian men, he was drafted after Pearl Harbor; like almost all Hawaiians of Japanese descent, he served in the HI Territorial Guard, predecessor to
3/22. the Hawaii Army National Guard. Military governor Delos Emmons disarmed, then disbanded the Territorial Guard, but also lobbied the War Department to form a provisional infantry battalion so that Japanese Americans in Hawai'i could prove their loyalty.
1/21. I covered the Lee brothers in a previous #AAPIHM thread, but considering the significance of this weekend, they deserve a closer look. The Lee brothers, Chew-Een (Kurt) & Chew-Mon (Buck) were born in Sacramento to Chinese immigrant parents.
2/21. Kurt joined the US Marine Corps in 1944 when he turned 18, eager to join the war effort, but the Marines specifically, to counter white people's misconception of the "meek, obsequious, bland Asian," as he called that stereotype. Due to his ethnicity,
3/21. he was redirected to Japanese language school after boot camp. Undeterred, Sgt Lee applied for Officer Candidate School, & was commissioned in 1945. This gave Kurt the distinction of being not just the first non-white Marine officer, but its first Asian American as well.