Six days after this Dr. Seuss cartoon ran, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, leading to the forced removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans. Geisel never apologized, only saying decades later that it and other racist cartoons were "embarrassingly badly drawn."
I'm not getting into the broader DR. SEUSS...CANCELED?! debate, but as someone who spent years researching this country's decades of anti-Japanese propaganda, I will say that I struggle with his role in educating young children. I don't buy his books for our kids.
I've watched this conversation grow over the past month or so and it's been a real rollercoaster.
OK while I have you there's a great book coming out in January and guess what...I wrote it. Maybe you'd like to buy it? simonandschuster.com/books/The-Eagl…
In 1942, as the U.S. government was rounding up 120,000 Japanese Americans, a question arose: what about orphans? The response: "...if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them they must all go to camp."
More than 100 kids were imprisoned at Children's Village, in the Manzanar concentration camp. If you're interested in that story, here's some more info from the awesome folks at @DenshoProject: encyclopedia.densho.org/Manzanar%20Chi…
Tens of thousands of kids spent up to four years in the camps, and thousands of others were born in them, their birth certificates bearing the names of hastily constructed towns surrounded by barbed wire.
I graduated from Saint Joe's in 2006, so Phil Martelli has been an extended part of my life for 15+ years. I have one story I’d like to share about him.
In December 2002, the end of my freshman fall semester, Saint Joe’s was supposed to play Boston University. Problem was there was a huge snowstorm in Philly that day: roads closed, schools closed, everything closed.
That of course means one thing when you’re 18: you get absolutely blitzed on Captain Morgan’s and go sledding on cafeteria trays.