Sand Beneath One's Feet
No, this is not a commercial for the car, which has nothing to do with MOCA. It just looks well-positioned.
Venturing into Little Tokyo in Downtown LA, the Japanese American Museum caught my attention and so I went in, pleasantly discovering that there was free admission. Once I managed to find the exhibits inside the building, I realised that there was a lot of material regarding the internment of Japanese Americans during and after the Second World War, after Japanese forces had infamously bombed Pearl Harbour.
Much of the material was presented in an unbiased manner, given that they rightfully revealed the injustices and prejudicial attitudes displayed by members of the US government under Roosevelt and later Eisenhower, two men whose decisions eventually led to the order to discriminate against Japanese American communities in America by relocating them, seizing their assets, holding them in detention without trial and so on.
The most insidious aspect of the entire event was the fact that the government had approved the construction of so-called detention centres and holding areas to house these Japanese Americans indefinitely - convenient euphemisms for concentration camps. While the museum clearly showed that most of the Japanese Americans housed in the camps managed to live life rather normally by engaging in activities, games and work to keep themselves occupied, the fact that they had to contend with nasty conditions (since the workmanship of the building infrastructure was sloppy) such as the dust from the desert, or the icy winds that slipped through the cracks in the building floors and walls made it unnecessarily uncomfortable.
Even more unconscionably, the internment of these Japanese Americans was plainly persecution at work, since the government did not seem to have any intention to discern between the guilty and the innocent. Instead, they opted for a catch-and-ask-questions-later approach, imprisoning people and assuming their loyalty was to the Japanese emperor and therefore indicative of their willingness to die for him in the war against America.
What terrified me as I walked around the exhibits was not the fact that the Japanese Americans actually managed to keep their lives despite being in concentration camps, but that they were made to think that they might never return to their homes, their property, their families and lead the lives they sought to make for themselves when they ventured to America, the supposed land of freedom. While apologists for the decision to intern these Japanese Americans may say that concentration camps run by Americans would never have degenerated into those run by Nazi Germany, that argument can be demolished simply by identifying its hindsight bias. If Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were allowed to happen in the recent decade, then why not in the 1940s and 1950s, when media coverage was so much less, when people questioned less of government and allowed it greater scope for freedom to do whatever it wanted in the name of security?
The Japanese Americans who endured the experience tried to sound positive by saying that while they knew how precious freedom was in the world (and that they had found it in America), they were paying quite a price for it as they became the target of discrimination. As the museum exhibits mentioned, this incident would reveal just how fragile freedom actually was - that the rights of American citizens could be so frivolously and callously discarded on grounds of such primordial attributes such as race, religion and ethnicity.
I left the museum feeling absolutely disgusted by the fact that Japanese Americans who signed up for the US Army to fight the war against Nazi Germany and its Axis partners had to live with the fact that while they were putting their lives on the line for America, somewhere else their families were being housed in a concentration camp, enduring the indignity of it all. How brave they must have been, but they should not have been forced to take such an insult.
Anyone who still believes that freedom as an ideal can somehow be innate, or fundamentally ingrained in society or the individual, is a fool. There will always be people willing to subject freedom to its knees for the sake of their own objectives, and it is in society's interest and responsibility of citizens that they do not allow their passions to dictate their actions and persecute the convenient scapegoats. Freedom is a highly-valued concept, but the American administration and those who harboured intentions to discriminate all Japanese Americans simply on the basis of their nationality certainly failed to display their courage to uphold the very ideal they said they were fighting for.
Met up with Preeya and Kaixian in UCLA itself, and also with a German student, Paul, and a Chilean student, Gunther (who has a German name only because his parents wanted to continue reflecting the German blood in him, passed down by his great-grandfather - though he doesn't have a German accent). We headed for our first stop: the place immortalised by Savage Garden's song - Santa Monica!
Look at the vast expanse between the shore and the pier!
I'm speechless - Santa Monica takes the cake for being just gorgeously peaceful, untouched, vast and beautiful. Even the beachfront property has that coastal Mediterranean feel to it! Though it's nothing compared to the Interlaken scenery in Switzerland, the beaches here are incomparable to anywhere else, except maybe Thailand.
Venice Beach is also extremely pretty, though the tourist-infested walkways do turn me off quite a bit. They actually have people who sell drugs here openly, while I suspect that anyone selling what they call "incense" is really using euphemisms. Preeya bought an Obama tee, while Kaixian and I couldn't seem to find any McCain/Palin ones.
That's Royce Hall, if I'm not mistaken. UCLA is very much like NUS in a sense that you will have killer calves by the end of the quarter. The number of steps and the distance between buildings means that you'll be huffing and puffing all the way from one class to the next. I already foresee sprinting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I'll be hoping to do Usain Bolt proud.
More star-spotting today as I manage to catch the amazing Vanessa Williams - discovered that she was the first black Miss America! And of course, I have her music album of years ago, and I absolutely adore Wihelmina Slater-Meade in all her diabolical glory.
Before Rotten Tomatoes came along, I regarded this man's word as the gospel truth in terms of what movies were actually worth my time. Roger Ebert, you still have my respect, and always will.
The hills are alive with the sound of music...Julie Andrews, sing! Sing for me! (two fully intended allusions to two different musicals, if you can spot them)
The just-as-important purpose of this shot is also showcasing the Hollywood sign at the back, not just our faces.
A cheery Biden, a towering Obama, a stumpy McCain and a glamorous Palin. I seriously want a Palin tee.
Kaixian mentioned something that struck me as true: while Americans may not be any nicer than Europeans, and though European culture may be more attractive overall, the one thing that differentiates the former from the latter is that at least in LA, we don't feel as though we stand out so much because of the amazing diversity of this place! We blend in easily and thus we don't feel as though we are observing on the outside, and thus we can at least get some perspective on how Americans interact with one another.
Much of the material was presented in an unbiased manner, given that they rightfully revealed the injustices and prejudicial attitudes displayed by members of the US government under Roosevelt and later Eisenhower, two men whose decisions eventually led to the order to discriminate against Japanese American communities in America by relocating them, seizing their assets, holding them in detention without trial and so on.
The most insidious aspect of the entire event was the fact that the government had approved the construction of so-called detention centres and holding areas to house these Japanese Americans indefinitely - convenient euphemisms for concentration camps. While the museum clearly showed that most of the Japanese Americans housed in the camps managed to live life rather normally by engaging in activities, games and work to keep themselves occupied, the fact that they had to contend with nasty conditions (since the workmanship of the building infrastructure was sloppy) such as the dust from the desert, or the icy winds that slipped through the cracks in the building floors and walls made it unnecessarily uncomfortable.
Even more unconscionably, the internment of these Japanese Americans was plainly persecution at work, since the government did not seem to have any intention to discern between the guilty and the innocent. Instead, they opted for a catch-and-ask-questions-later approach, imprisoning people and assuming their loyalty was to the Japanese emperor and therefore indicative of their willingness to die for him in the war against America.
What terrified me as I walked around the exhibits was not the fact that the Japanese Americans actually managed to keep their lives despite being in concentration camps, but that they were made to think that they might never return to their homes, their property, their families and lead the lives they sought to make for themselves when they ventured to America, the supposed land of freedom. While apologists for the decision to intern these Japanese Americans may say that concentration camps run by Americans would never have degenerated into those run by Nazi Germany, that argument can be demolished simply by identifying its hindsight bias. If Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were allowed to happen in the recent decade, then why not in the 1940s and 1950s, when media coverage was so much less, when people questioned less of government and allowed it greater scope for freedom to do whatever it wanted in the name of security?
The Japanese Americans who endured the experience tried to sound positive by saying that while they knew how precious freedom was in the world (and that they had found it in America), they were paying quite a price for it as they became the target of discrimination. As the museum exhibits mentioned, this incident would reveal just how fragile freedom actually was - that the rights of American citizens could be so frivolously and callously discarded on grounds of such primordial attributes such as race, religion and ethnicity.
I left the museum feeling absolutely disgusted by the fact that Japanese Americans who signed up for the US Army to fight the war against Nazi Germany and its Axis partners had to live with the fact that while they were putting their lives on the line for America, somewhere else their families were being housed in a concentration camp, enduring the indignity of it all. How brave they must have been, but they should not have been forced to take such an insult.
Anyone who still believes that freedom as an ideal can somehow be innate, or fundamentally ingrained in society or the individual, is a fool. There will always be people willing to subject freedom to its knees for the sake of their own objectives, and it is in society's interest and responsibility of citizens that they do not allow their passions to dictate their actions and persecute the convenient scapegoats. Freedom is a highly-valued concept, but the American administration and those who harboured intentions to discriminate all Japanese Americans simply on the basis of their nationality certainly failed to display their courage to uphold the very ideal they said they were fighting for.
Met up with Preeya and Kaixian in UCLA itself, and also with a German student, Paul, and a Chilean student, Gunther (who has a German name only because his parents wanted to continue reflecting the German blood in him, passed down by his great-grandfather - though he doesn't have a German accent). We headed for our first stop: the place immortalised by Savage Garden's song - Santa Monica!
Look at the vast expanse between the shore and the pier!
I'm speechless - Santa Monica takes the cake for being just gorgeously peaceful, untouched, vast and beautiful. Even the beachfront property has that coastal Mediterranean feel to it! Though it's nothing compared to the Interlaken scenery in Switzerland, the beaches here are incomparable to anywhere else, except maybe Thailand.
Venice Beach is also extremely pretty, though the tourist-infested walkways do turn me off quite a bit. They actually have people who sell drugs here openly, while I suspect that anyone selling what they call "incense" is really using euphemisms. Preeya bought an Obama tee, while Kaixian and I couldn't seem to find any McCain/Palin ones.
That's Royce Hall, if I'm not mistaken. UCLA is very much like NUS in a sense that you will have killer calves by the end of the quarter. The number of steps and the distance between buildings means that you'll be huffing and puffing all the way from one class to the next. I already foresee sprinting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I'll be hoping to do Usain Bolt proud.
More star-spotting today as I manage to catch the amazing Vanessa Williams - discovered that she was the first black Miss America! And of course, I have her music album of years ago, and I absolutely adore Wihelmina Slater-Meade in all her diabolical glory.
Before Rotten Tomatoes came along, I regarded this man's word as the gospel truth in terms of what movies were actually worth my time. Roger Ebert, you still have my respect, and always will.
The hills are alive with the sound of music...Julie Andrews, sing! Sing for me! (two fully intended allusions to two different musicals, if you can spot them)
The just-as-important purpose of this shot is also showcasing the Hollywood sign at the back, not just our faces.
A cheery Biden, a towering Obama, a stumpy McCain and a glamorous Palin. I seriously want a Palin tee.Kaixian mentioned something that struck me as true: while Americans may not be any nicer than Europeans, and though European culture may be more attractive overall, the one thing that differentiates the former from the latter is that at least in LA, we don't feel as though we stand out so much because of the amazing diversity of this place! We blend in easily and thus we don't feel as though we are observing on the outside, and thus we can at least get some perspective on how Americans interact with one another.
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