RUTH CHIZUKO MURAI + Excellence in Written Reporting, Features Award + My Family Lost Our Farm During Japanese Incarceration. I Went Searching for What Remains.

This a great article by RUTH CHIZUKO MURAI who won the Excellence in Written Reporting, Features Award for her article.

Here's a snippt:

The disappearance of my family’s farm can be traced back even further than the executive order that forced them to leave. Japanese immigrants had started to come to California in the early 20th century, and the backlash started immediately, in the same mold of the anti-Chinese bias that was already prevalent.

In May 1900, the San Francisco Labor Council held a meeting to address the tensions. White laborers were fearful for their jobs, but San Francisco Mayor James Duval Phelan emphasized that Japanese immigration was not just a labor issue. It was an existential threat, on par with the surge that led to the fall of Rome. He stated that immigration was “not a labor question, nor a local one, but an American question involving the existence of our Republic.” In a speech applauded by the attendees, Mayor Phelan said he believed that Japanese “aren’t the stuff of which American citizens can be made.”

Read it in full down @ Mother Jones.