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Mary Adams Urashima ~ Author. Historian. National Treasure Historic Wintersburg https://t.co/wRs201xy4h Tongva land. The kanji means history.
Jul 20, 2022 14 tweets 6 min read
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.
Jan 25, 2022 6 tweets 3 min read
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…
Jan 25, 2022 12 tweets 6 min read
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.
Jan 17, 2022 6 tweets 5 min read
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
Dec 31, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
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
Nov 1, 2021 4 tweets 4 min read
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…
Oct 30, 2021 6 tweets 4 min read
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…
Sep 28, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read
1/ About Oka Elementary School in #HuntingtonBeach. It is connected to the history of endangered #AAPI National Treasure #HistoricWintersburg, which Steel failed to recognize or help save while OC supervisor & now as a congressional rep.

The school is named after Isojiro Oka. 2/ Isojiro Oka was arrested & taken by FBI on January 28, 1942, for the sole reason of his Japanese ancestry.

He arrived in Huntington Beach circa 1907. Isojiro Oka and Hisamatsu Tamura purchased land in Talbert (Fountain Valley) specifically to build a school.
Sep 25, 2021 9 tweets 3 min read
Leading with fear is the GOP tactic, pivoting from fear to fear, assigning blame.

When FDR proposed the WPA during the Great Depression, opposition painted it as "socialism." The reality was millions gained employment and the country benefits to this day from WPA works. The WPA built/improved 651,000 miles of roads, 19,700 miles of water mains, 500 water treatment plants, 24,000 miles of sidewalks, 12,800 playgrounds, 24,000 miles of storm and sewer lines, 1,200 airport buildings, 226 hospitals, and 5,900+ schools.
Aug 14, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
1/ In the 1910s, disinformation pushed idea Japanese immigrants were "taking over" California. They weren't, but, Alien land laws followed.

Information collected prior to 1941 was immediately used to arrest Japanese Americans, within days, hours after the attack by Japan. 2/ In the 1980s, disinformation again pushed idea that Japanese were taking over California, buying up businesses, properties. They were big investors, but reality was the largest foreign investment was the Dutch. Nevertheless, hate was directed at Asians.
Aug 11, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
Some things we did wrong.
We did not call on Afghan Americans to provide a deeper understanding of the conflict. They lived it. The family lines and politics are complicated and stretch back generations. The US relied on same old sources. Huge contracts awarded to unknown, sometimes brand new parties. They took advantage of cash society (no bank system for a while, handwritten receipts) and lived well in guest houses where they frequently disrespected local norms, customs. You don't win hearts & minds that way.
Jul 17, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read
Regarding the "America First" rally trying to hold an event in OC, now on their 3rd or 4th venue.

There are some who don't see the connection with the use of "America First" and the klan. It is a fully calculated use of a slogan used by the klan circa 1920s-1930s. The klan attempted to infiltrate Orange County circa 1920s, getting members elected to Anaheim city council, holding rallies, infiltrating religious organizations (cloak of morality), running for office in Huntington Beach, & in OC sheriff department.

These were not Democrats.
Jul 13, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Reminder that OCDE board member Mari Barke is married to Dr. Jeff Barke, a founding member of a new charter school and the same concierge doctor who was fact-checked by Facebook for spreading misinformation at California "re-opening" protests. politifact.com/article/2020/m… OCDE board member Ken L. Williams D.O. included this on his 2008 bio: "strongly believes in the reliable standards of Judeo-Christian values as the reason for our nation's greatness...conservative family whose parents immigrated to the United States from Canada and England." 🧐
Dec 8, 2018 9 tweets 5 min read
1/ That all of us should have to respond to this again means an editorial and news team briefing is in order. Let's recap the past two years of letters-to-the-editor and an Opinion piece on this topic by @latimes. 2/ In December 2016, @latimes retracted letters they published, "The Times regrets publishing letters about the Japanese American internment that weren't 'civil, fact-based discourse'", after historians and the Japanese American community provided facts. latimes.com/travel/la-tr-l…
Aug 6, 2018 7 tweets 3 min read
Five years ago, Steven Seagal was the face of Russia's weapons industry (2013 news clip).
Now he is "special envoy" to the US.
Then, Dmitry Rogozin was Deputy Prime Minister & part of Moscow dinner party with NRA, Butina, Torshin and Sheriff Clarke, in 2015.

Everything is fine. News clip: Austin American Stateman, June 5, 2013.
Jul 20, 2018 10 tweets 9 min read
Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (1925-2018) discovered a copy of "Final Report" produced by the Civil Affairs Division of the Western Defense Command in April 1943. Every copy of the report, drafts and notes, was directed to be destroyed.

#JapaneseAmerican #AAPI #history #twitterstorians The Final Report stated it was "impossible to establish the identity of the loyal and the disloyal with any degree of safety." Meaning all Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were US citizens, were to be judged solely on their ethnicity/ancestry.

#history #twitterstorians
Jul 12, 2018 8 tweets 3 min read
71 years after the Gouzenko affair.
Igor Gouzenko flipped and told a Court of King's Bench jury in Montreal, Canada, that it was Russia's intent "to undermine democratic countries within and inside..."
#history ~The Ottawa Journal, March 18, 1947