Non sense

I was chatting with a Japanese acquaintance about current affairs and she mentioned that there were so many Ukrainian refugees in Japan now.  She kept exclaiming on how many there were, so finally I asked her how many, expecting a figure in the several thousands.  She said nine-hundred.  I started to mention that the US had taken in more than 15,000 and planned to accept 100,000 but then stopped.  She would just nod.  After all, as she had told me often before, America belongs to everyone.  I used to consider that something to be proud of.  But now I kind of resent it.  No it doesn't.  At least, it shouldn't.  It should only belong to Americans.  Does Japan belong to everybody?  Does Mexico?  How about Guatemala?

This same Japanese also remarked that the affluent Los Angeles suburb of San Marino, which has become heavily Chinese, is called Chan Marino by her friends.  That reminded me that I once overheard a conversation among Chinese students who referred to Japanese as "the Js."  And one time when I was sitting on the sand at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro with a Mexican friend some Orientals walked by.  My fence-jumping, bean-eating friend referred to them as pie-faced squinties.  His friend, sitting with us, called them Chingchongs.  Later we stopped by a Korean market and bought some delicious hot roasted peanuts in their shells.  The cashier did not smile at us nor speak.  I said hello to her but she did not respond, ignoring me and staring with open hostility at the Mexicans. She scooped up the peanuts and bagged them with a sour look on her face. Ignoring an outstretched hand, she put the change down on the counter, then took a step back. I wondered what I, a native-born, pioneer-stock American ofay, was doing in this place with these people. A hundred and fifty years ago any ancestor of mine would have shot and probably scalped the bunch of them.  Had he spotted me, he would have ordered, "Daughter, hie thee hence!"

La Tuna Canyon CCC/PoW camp.

San Pedro used to be a Japanese-American fishing town.  There are still remains of salt water baths they built down below the cliffs.  After Pearl Harbor, they were expelled and interned at the behest of governor Earl Warren and, according to Gus Russo in Supermob,  Jewish gangsters, who ended up acquiring most of the interned Japanese' property for pennies on the dollar.  A lot of the expelled San Pedro Japanese were initially housed in a former CCC camp in La Tuna canyon just south of Tujunga before being moved to Manzanar.  After they were gone, the camp became a PoW facility housing captured Japanese combatants -- they didn't all fight to the last banzai charge.  One of these PoWs so enjoyed his incarceration that after the war he returned to Tujunga, entered the construction trades and eventually built his own house on the hills north of the canyon. During the torrential rains and massive flooding that hit the area during the winter of 1969, his house was one of the few to remain standing.  The flooding washed out a nearby cemetery and his yard ended up littered with coffins, some of which broke open and spilled their contents.  The camp later became a golf course and I think now it's a housing development.

I have a northern Cheyenne ancestor who attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. One of his grandfathers was a  blood enemy of the US Army.  He was described by Isaac Coates, General Winfield S. Hancock's surgeon, who encountered him at Fort Larned, Kansas, in the 1860s, thusly: "He is quite six feet in height, finely formed with a large body and muscular limbs. His appearance, decidedly military. A seven-shooting Spencer carbine hung at the side of his saddle, four large Navy revolvers were stuck in his belt, and a bow, already strung with arrows, were grasped in his left hand. Thus armed and mounted on a fine horse, he was a good representative of the God of War; and his manner showed plainly that he did not care whether we talked or fought."  Yet his grandson was sent off to learn the white man's ways by his parents who wanted him to have a future as part of the American story.  After graduation, he joined the army and served as a mounted scout with the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, out of Fort Keogh, Montana. He fought at Wounded Knee -- against the Sioux.  One of his sons joined the navy and became a naval aviator flying a Martin T4M-1 off the USS Langley (CV-1).  He eventually became a member of Adm. Joseph Reeves' staff.  One of his sons also became a naval aviator as did one of his grandsons.  They all married hot blonde babes (like me!) and had lots of rug rats and house apes, all of whom grew up to consider themselves simply Americans.  The Indian part of their ancestry was just one part, but one they considered fully American.  After all, an American Indian helped found the Boy Scouts and the Campfire Girls (Charles Eastland, a Santee Sioux), Jim Thorpe (a Sac and Fox) was one of America's first sports heroes, Will Rogers, at one time America's most beloved humorist and social commenter, was a Cherokee, Charles Curtis, a Kaw, became Senate majority leader and later Herbert Hoover's vice president; had the Depression not happened he might well have become president, Capt. Ernest Evans, who became one of the navy's  greatest heroes in the Battle Off Samar, fighting his ship with such bravery that even the Japanese who sank her saluted the  survivors as they sailed past, was a Cherokee, as was BM1 James E. Williams, the most decorated enlisted man in the history of the US Navy, earning the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Medal of Honor as a patrol boat commander on the Mekong River in Viet Nam.  I could go on...and on...and on.  Americans all, and proud contributors to American history and heritage.  So what is going on now and why?  You tell me, because I don't see the point to it or who profits.

 Well, to hell with it.  It will all come crashing down by and by, either of itself or because we ordinary people give it a kick in the keister.

 In the meantime, Ima laugh at the world, party with my pals and just enjoy myself. Why not?  What's the point of being a gloomy Gus going around muttering we're doomed, doomed, I tell you!  Nah.  We're not.  Just put upon.  So forget it and jump up and dance with me!

“A woman must be a woman and cannot be a man.”
― Martin Luther