EVERY DAY, thousands of Portlanders travel Naito Parkway as it hugs the bank of the Willamette River, carrying a steady stream of humanity through the heart of the city. It’s a path that takes them past the cherry trees in Waterfront Park and within eyeshot of Chinatown, where freshly renovated buildings dominate the landscape. But while those who traverse this street might take the time to debate how to pronounce “Naito,” it’s unlikely they give much thought to the heritage of the man who lent his name to this thoroughfare—or question why the cherry trees were planted, or what other enterprises have occupied the nearby building at the corner of NW 3rd and Davis, where the fashionable Society Hotel now sits. As is too often the case in Portland, we have little memory of our city’s past, and even less recollection of our failures as a community. There are few better examples of this than the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
For most of my life, I’ve been as guilty of this social amnesia as anyone. Having grown up as a fourth-generation Japanese American in the insular embrace of Portland during the ’80s and ’90s, my upbringing was as white as the Franz bread in my lunchbox and the Birkenstock-shod feet of my neighbors. Unless you lived in North Portland, it seemed everyone here was Caucasian; the issue of race was one that seldom crossed my mind.
As an adult, my racial identity has often remained only skin-deep: I speak less Japanese than the average anime enthusiast, I’m innately suspicious of sashimi, and the first time I ever purchased a bag of rice was when I dropped my iPhone in the sink. For me, being Japanese American has usually been a fairly abstract concept and occasionally a minor annoyance: I’m doomed to bad driver jokes and listening to people butcher my name, but in all other respects, I enjoy the same privilege as any other thirtysomething male living in America’s hipster utopia.
It’s been surreal, then, to see my heritage brought front and center in national discourse in recent weeks. I’ve watched in astonishment as politicians and pundits have co-opted the issue of Japanese American internment in support of their arguments on immigration and national security. I’ve felt the chill run down my spine as Donald Trump rattled off a list of presidential proclamations as the precedent for his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country, and as the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, suggested we “sequester” all Syrian refugees. It’s forced me to reflect on the stories told by my grandparents’ generation—about a time when being Japanese American wasn’t just an abstraction, but a real and tangible burden.