Surf City Writer 歴史 Profile picture
Jan 25, 2022 12 tweets 6 min read Read on X
1/ I obtained a first edition of the book banned in 1969 by the #OrangeCounty #OCBoardofEducation. The banning was pushed by board member and John Birch Society member Dale Rallison.

It is the Pulitzer Prize winning book, "Hiroshima," by John Hersey.
2/ What did #OCBE not want students to see?
Descriptions of the impact of the A bomb by Japanese children.
3/ Banning the book would prevent students from learning about the impact to the emergency response, to hospitals, doctors, and nurses. The majority of healthcare workers in Hiroshima were dead after the bomb.
4/ Hersey followed the impact to several people, including Dr. Sasaki. The doctors that were left alive in the immediate aftermath worked around the clock until help arrived.

They still weren't sure what the "peculiar" bomb was, but noticed the x-ray plates were exposed.
5/ "They're going to set fire to us!"
Hersey describes the rain that fell and the winds that spread fires after the A bomb. Rumors spread that the rain was gasoline. People hid, including a large park where people took refuge.
6/ "Hiroshima" describes the slow rollout of symptoms from radiation.

Not everyone died immediately. For some it was a lingering death.

For those who survived, the Hibakusha (被爆者 or 被曝者) it was a life of health disabilities.
7/ Hersey describes people he profiled, Mrs. Nakamura, who had taken refuge at a Catholic Novitiate, beginning to suffer the noticeable affects of radiation.
8/ Hersey's book, "Hiroshima," reports on the impact of the atomic bomb one year later. Those who survived became a community "something like that of the Londoners after their blitz."

#OCBE wanted students to learn about Londoners, but not Hiroshima's residents.
9/ History kept from #OCBE students & the American public was the rationale behind targeting Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were civilian targets, not military targets.

The 'The Height of Burst of the Gadget' was not declassified until years later.

10/ This small 1946 book is 118 pages and about the size of a notepad.

It was considered DANGEROUS HISTORY by the #OCBoardofEducation #OCBE in 1969 and banned by their board.

In 2021-2022, OCBE is at it again with "concern" about CRT. It is an overreach of their powers.
11/ What's the danger learning multiple views of historic events? What's the goal banning analytical multi-perspective views?

We point to state indoctrination in other countries, while not recognizing the efforts by some to manipulate our own factual knowledge of history.
Adding this 2021 article about Hersey's book, Hiroshima, from Esquire. Once banned by an #OrangeCounty school board after pressure from their John Birch Society member. Still essential reading.

esquire.com/uk/culture/boo…

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More from @SurfCityWriter

Jul 20, 2022
1/ History meets politics. Michelle Steel’s .@RepSteel vote against #RespectforMarriage means she does not know California or American history.

100 years ago, her marriage was illegal in her own California district. 🧵 #history #CivilRights
2/ California banned interracial marriage 1850-1948. In 1922, Congress passed the Cable Act, which removed citizenship of any U.S. *woman* who married "an alien ineligible for citizenship." They meant Asians. This targeted Asian immigrants who were barred from US citizenship.
I wrote about an illegal marriage in 1909 in what is currently is Steel’s congressional district, between a white woman and a Japanese American man. It’s connected to an endangered National Treasure historic place she's refused to help save.

Read: historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-ma…
Read 14 tweets
Jan 25, 2022
Labeling someone a "terrorist" in a public forum or social media is targeting. It's an effort not only to malign, but also to incite others.

Ask me how I know.

On July 3, 2017, a Huntington Beach hate blog w/ anti-Asian imagery & rhetoric called me a terrorist...
My crime? Writing about & working to save @WintersburgHB in Huntington Beach, an endangered National Treasure historic place representing over a century of Japanese American history. The history that's "CRT."

Kim Sorgente is from Huntington Beach.
latimes.com/socal/daily-pi…
Several years of cyber stalking, harassment, threats from the hate blog & his pals, all in Huntington Beach, originating in early 2016.

The response received by @KatrinaFoley is very familiar to me. One detective telling me they had to wait until "something worse" happened.
Read 6 tweets
Jan 17, 2022
1/ Reminder that the #OCBoardofEducation removed a Martin Luther King book in 1971 because MLK was a "conscious support of communism."

Yes, the same board that today pushes anti CRT & anti ethnic studies as "communist" or "marxist."
#MartinLutherKingDay #OrangeCounty #California Image
2/ By 1971, there was a John Birch Society member on the #OCBoardofEducation & their members were targeting local school districts. In Anaheim, it was a textbook that discussed how to review media with a critical eye & recognize propaganda. Ironic. Image
3/ May 1971: .@latimes called attention to the board's book banning of the Martin Luther King biography, "the #OCBoardofEducation is at it again."

The OCBE had previously banned Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey's book "Hiroshima" and was banning a book by Joan Baez. Image
Read 6 tweets
Dec 31, 2021
1/ 1954: #BettyWhite cast Pasadena-born Arthur Duncan on "The Betty White Show."

~Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1954
2/ Stations in southern states threatened to boycott "The #BettyWhite Show" because she made Duncan a permanent cast member.

Her response: "I'm sorry. Live with it."

~USA Today, August 20, 2018
3/ This clip of The Betty White Show features Arthur Duncan, starting at 7:00 minute mark. #BettyWhite

Read 4 tweets
Nov 1, 2021
1/ This headline 91 years ago in what is now #HuntingtonBeach

Over 500 people descended on the burial site, carting away "skulls and other relics." Thousands of years of human history were picked apart and carted away to private collections.
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
2/ The late 1800s Buck Ranch was in Wintersburg near .@WintersburgHB, Edwards Street and Varsity Drive. Some items are in Bowers Museum collection, but not everything is accounted for & likely in private homes.
#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth

Read more: historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-pl…
3/ Early 1900s: Universe Effigy west of @WintersburgHB on Cole Ranch.
1970s: Multiple burial site 1320 ft NW of .@WintersburgHB.
Evidence of shell midden & other artifacts on endangered #HistoricWintersburg.
Significant burial remains in the Bolsa Chica Wetlands.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 30, 2021
Zoom w/ David Inoue .@JACL_National on H.R. 1931 Japanese American Confinement Education Act, which permanently reauthorizes the Japanese American Confinement Sites preservation program.

Missing from the #California co-sponsor list?
Michelle Steel.

congress.gov/bill/117th-con…
There is an endangered #NationalTreasure .@WintersburgHB in Michelle Steel's district representing this #AAPI history.

As an OC supervisor & now as congressional rep, Steel has not acknowledged it or taken any action to save it. Crickets.

savingplaces.org/places/histori…
I will thank Young Kim for being the *only* GOP congressional rep from #California who signed on as a co-sponsor for H.R. 1931.

If you post social media about anti-AAPI hate, but don't sponsor efforts to save #AAPI history, we see you.
Read 6 tweets

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