Kristen Hayashi
speaker
189 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Kristen Hayashi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Hello, all. Welcome to American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman. Just jumping in to say happy holiday season to you all. Hoping it's a fun one with family and friends and good health and prosperity ahead. I can't wait for you to hear what we have planned for the new year for 2025. We start strong right in January with the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Then we're sailing to the North American shores of early Jamestown, journeying to the battlegrounds of Vietnam and so, so much more. It's a new year with lots planned. It's just great to be able to do this, to do these podcasts and talk with the great guests we have. It's a real honor. And as always, thank you so much for listening.
Today, we have a fantastic episode for you from earlier this year when I spoke with Kristen Hayashi of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles to find out about the lives of Japanese Americans throughout the generations. Please enjoy. Autumn, 1944. World War II in Europe. The 1st Battalion of the U.S.
Army 141st Regiment out of Texas is stranded on a hillside in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France. 270 troops cut off behind enemy lines. Situation critical. Not far away, though, the army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team, including the 100th Battalion, is resting after having liberated two French towns from Nazi control only a few short weeks after arriving in Europe.
Despite a shortage of troops, the 442nd is ordered back into action to attempt a rescue of those stranded troops, soon to be known as the Lost Battalion. Trudging up and down steep grades, picking their way through fields and ravines littered with landmines, the 442nd lives up to its motto, go for broke.
For six interminable days, troops are engaged in pitched combat, until finally three companies break through and rescue the Texans. Still, the 442nd does not rest. Major General John Dahlquist insists they fight on until November 8th.
When their mission is accomplished and the regiment assembles for a recognition ceremony four days after being stood down from their month of action, Dahlquist impatiently demands to know why their ranks seem thin. Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Miller answers, That's all that's left, sir.
The 442nd and the famed 100th Battalion is to this day the most decorated unit of its size and length of service in U.S. military history. It was also formed entirely of second-generation Japanese Americans, Nisei, whose families were at the same time interned in prison camps back home in the United States. For these soldiers, these men, these Nisei, this war was a battle fought on two fronts.
We are a nation of immigrants, an alloy forged of millions of souls from disparate cultures united here in a land of liberty. The American promise fulfilled. Sound familiar? It's a traditional theme you'll be hearing a lot of this campaign season, certainly.
But you'll also hear the other side of that story, the strident opposition to this notion of a nation, how such immigration ought to be heavily regulated and restricted. Sure, we're a nation of immigrants. That's great. But don't get carried away. We've touched on this topic in past episodes, 155 on Irish immigration, one of our most popular.
And today we cover another specific demographic, no less fundamental to the American tale, that of the complex and astonishing story of Japanese immigration from later 1800s into the 20th century and how their experience and their history lays bare so many of the difficult issues of this nation still ongoing. It's a story that will surprise and enlighten you.
So let's meet our expert today, Kristen Hayashi, Director of Collections Management and Access and Curator of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, right there in Little Tokyo, one of my favorite neighborhoods in America. Hello, Kristen.
Hello. It's very nice to meet you, Don.
Thanks. I used to live in L.A., and Little Tokyo led the way to the redevelopment of downtown L.A. People only had to learn that ramen wasn't just in little plastic packages anymore, right?
That's right. And this year, Little Tokyo celebrates its 140th anniversary. And despite this long history, we also were just named one of America's 11 most endangered places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. So we want to ensure that Little Tokyo continues to be around for another 140 years. But it is a very special neighborhood.
And it's a beautiful museum that you work with there. I've been several times myself. Kristen, this is a vast subject matter we are about to handle. This is a perennial problem for us on all of our episodes. But I want to approach this sort of logistically. The discussion will be about... from the 1800s into really the mid-20th century and beyond.
But for the purposes of this, it's important that we give ourselves a glossary. There are four terms here, isei, nisei, sonsei, and yonsei. These are terms that refer to the generations of Japanese Americans who've arrived here. Can you explain why we have these terms and what do they really mean?
Sure. So as you mentioned, se is generation. And so we're counting generations like ichi, ni, san, shi, or yon is one through four in Japanese. So we apply that to the generations in se, ise, nise, sanse, and yonsei. So this represents, yeah, the different generations that have come to the United States and their descendants. So ise would be the immigrant generation.
And then nise would mean generation. The generation that was born here in the United States to immigrant parents, but they were U.S. citizens by birth. And then the next generation is Sansei and then Yonsei. So I'm Yonsei, I'm fourth generation. My great grandparents immigrated from Japan. And now we're getting into Gosei too, actually, given just the time.
But yeah, so we sort of use generations to sort of understand history in the Japanese American experience.
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