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The Gaslighting of Interned Japanese Americans
How can you be “Anti-American” when you’re ineligible for citizenship?
Although the term gaslighting is associated with Trump policy, gaslighting is making someone question their own reality in a political or interpersonal power play with false narratives meant to discredit victims. My mother’s family was victimized by false narratives about those from Japan during the last century.
My grandfather was a victim of the false narrative that he was a direct threat to the United States years before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. My Hawaii-born grandmother was a victim of the false narrative that she was a traitor to the United States when she married in 1930.
Anti-Asian policy dates back even further than my grandparents’ lifetimes. The Naturalization Act of 1870 only allowed Caucasian and African immigrants to become U.S. citizens.
My grandfather was born September 16, 1887 on the coast of Japan. He emigrated to Hawaii at the age of 19 to join his older brother’s family. My grandfather’s older brother had come to the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1892. After the United States unilaterally annexed the Kingdom of Hawaii on July 7, 1898, naturalized citizens of the Kingdom of Hawaii and their families should have been eligible for U.S citizenship when Hawaii became a U.S. Territory in 1900. My…
