Robert Asahina of New York University delivers the June Bradley Lecture.
The questions addressed in Just Americans—the challenges faced by immigrant groups, the allegations of "dual loyalty," the war powers of the president—are not just matters of history, but pressing current concerns. What might be called the "post-civil rights perspective" has led us to look at minority groups in America as victims who advance their cause by protest and Constitutional challenges. This has blinded us to a very different path followed by Japanese Americans during World War II. The significance of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team has been lost because the story of Japanese Americans as victims during the relocation has supplanted the story of Japanese Americans as heroes in battle. But President Roosevelt’s decision to end the relocation had nothing to do with Constitutional challenges (which ended in utter defeat with the Korematsu decision) or protest or civil disobedience. What refuted the argument from “military necessity”—the dangerous magical thinking that there is a simple fix to the problem of homeland security—was the heroic example of a determined band of brave soldiers, acting not as protesters and not even as Japanese Americans, but as "Just Americans."
Robert Asahina is a deputy managing editor of the New York Sun and a visiting scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute at New York University. He has been an editor at George, Harper's, the New York Times, GEO, and The Public Interest, a film critic for The New Leader and The American Spectator, and a theater critic for The Hudson Review. He has also been editor in chief and deputy publisher of Broadway Books, president and publisher of the Adult Publishing Group of Golden Books, and a vice president and senior editor of Simon & Schuster. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Book World, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and other periodicals.
