Applications for the Berkeley Chapter Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Scholarship Program are available for high school students entering their freshman year in any accredited institution of higher learning in the Fall 2023.

All 2023 applications must be filled out online (JACL.org) and submitted through National JACL.  National JACL will receive each application and forward the application back to the appropriate local JACL chapter for evaluation and awarding of a scholarship at the local chapter level.  To apply, please do the following:

• Go to www.jacl.org/scholarships
• Enter “Berkeley” as the local chapter on the application
• All applicants must be a JACL member
• Contact Berkeley Chapter Scholarship Chair, Ron Tanaka, ron_tanaka@yahoo.com,

Applicants must be planning to attend a college, university, community college, trade school, business school, or any other accredited institution of higher learning in the Fall 2023.  Students deferring enrollment will not qualify for the 2023 program.

DUE DATE – March 6, 2023

Applications must be submitted online to National JACL by Monday, March 6, 2023.  Berkeley Chapter anticipates awarding multiple local chapter scholarships.  Each scholarship may be up to $3,000.

 Scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic achievement, community involvement, school activities, work history, letter of recommendation, personal statement, Japanese cultural activities, and a group interview.   Special consideration will be given to applicants who are the first in their family to attend college and/or to those who qualify as low income.

 JACL MEMBERSHIP REQUIRED  

While JACL involvement is not required to apply for this scholarship, every applicant must be a Berkeley JACL member.  Please contact the scholarship chair, Ron Tanaka for a membership application.  Please submit your completed application and $35.00 membership fee by January 31, 2023.  A limited number of memberships are available at no cost to the applicant if the $35.00 fee creates a hardship

SCHOLARSHIP PRESENTATION & NATIONAL JACL AWARDS PROGRAM

All Berkeley Chapter scholarships will be awarded to recipients at a scholarship awards event scheduled for early May 2023.  All recipients are expected to attend this awards event (as guests of the Berkeley JACL) to receive their scholarship.  Because of the pandemic, this event was held virtually via zoom in 2022.

By April 3, 2023, Berkeley will forward “outstanding” application(s) for further consideration to the JACL’s National Scholarship and Awards Program for 9 National Scholarships ranging in award amounts from $1,000 to $5,000 per scholarship.  Recipients of these national scholarships will be announced in the third quarter 2023.

We must fight all forms of oppression and fight for all human rights including the violence and oppression the Israeli state has forced upon Palestinians, including the hate and violence that Jewish people are experiencing here in the United States, and including the small but vocal faction of persons engaged in unacceptable threatening and violent behavior about the political situation in the Middle East. Such threats, harassment, and violence have no place in this or any country. They are an affront to our founding principles and should not be tolerated.

Click here to download the Statement

The Berkeley chapter of the JACL protests the vandalism to the bust of former Oakland City Councilman Frank Ogawa by unknown persons, but stand — as we believe Frank Ogawa would have done — in solidarity with the rights of citizens who exercise their rights to protest injustice, with the movement for Black Lives, and against federal unmarked troops forcibly brought into our communities.

Frank Ogawa was the first Japanese American to serve on the Oakland City Council and experienced state racism when he was shipped to the Topaz concentration camp in Utah without due process during World War II. Berkeley JACL will always remember and honor Frank Ogawa’s great contributions to our community and will continue his work by supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and all efforts to end racism.

For more information, see Maina Chen’s article on NextShark about the incident.

The Berkeley JACL stands with Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen in her complaint against Mr. Hubbard, who asked her to change her Vietnamese birth name because he said it was offensive “in my language.” Professor Hubbard’s actions in requesting Phuc Bui to “Anglicize” her name were unacceptable, insensitive, and racist.

Today the Berkeley JACL sent a Letter to Laney College President Gilkerson regarding Mr. Hubbard’s offensive request.

Every person should feel included and welcome in this beautifully diverse nation, and especially in a city as diverse as Oakland. Our diversity and different intersecting identities should be celebrated, not taunted or changed for the convenience of others.

We call on Laney College to enact sensitivity training for all staff and to take the appropriate disciplinary actions against Mr. Hubbard.

For more information, you can read ABC 7’s coverage about the incident here.

The Berkeley chapter of the JACL, the nation’s oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization, is deeply disturbed by the most recent spate of killings and threats leveled at African Americans, most recently:

George Floyd, 46, Minneapolis, MN; Breonna Taylor, 26, Louisville KY; Ahmaud Arbery, 25, Brunswick GA.

More than any other minority group, African Americans continue to bear the burden of contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence. This is abhorrent to our founding principles of equal justice under the law, and it must end.

The Berkeley chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, the nation’s oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization, urges rejection of the dangerous anti-Asian language surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, as seen in the describing of the disease as the “Chinese Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus” against the recommendations of the World Health Organization. This racist language has encouraged the harassment and beatings of Asian Americans, including school age children, in the past months. We are dismayed that the the presidency itself has been sullied by this kind of disgraceful ignorance.

We have seen this scapegoating before in times of crisis. In 1982, Chinese American Vincent Chin was beaten to death on the eve of his wedding day by laid-off auto workers in the Detroit area. These workers, believing Chin was Japanese, misguidedly blamed Japanese Americans for “taking over” the American auto industry and causing their unemployment.  https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/why-vincent-chin-matters.html?referringSource=articleShare

 Needless to say, as Japanese Americans we have a special knowledge and a special duty surrounding scapegoating of ethnic groups, and it is critical that we align with all Asian Americans at this disturbing and threatening time.

As New York Times columnist Frank Bruni observed last week, the virus will “first bring out the quirks in our personalities, and then it will be a referendum on our character. We are now entering the character phase.”

Our chapter urges each of us to allow this crisis to bring out the best, not the worst, in each of us. Please resist and speak up against the scapegoating of Asian Americans for the current pandemic. It is utterly un-American.

2019 11-11 Letter to the Marsh

Stephanie Weisman, Executive Director and board member, The Marsh

David Hirata, Artist

Dear Stephanie Weisman and David Hirata,

The Berkeley Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (Berkeley JACL) is deeply offended by the title of your show, “The Jap Box.” It revives a hateful racist slur that causes deep pain for us and recalls a tragic period within the living memory of our community, when 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes during WWII because of racial hatred, war hysteria and greed. We were put behind barbed wire and guarded by armed sentries for years. Some 1,300 Berkeley citizens and immigrants, including members of our chapter and the parents and grandparents of board members, were rounded up and moved by the military to the Tanforan racetrack from the First Congregational Church, one half mile from your theater. There, they were placed in horse stalls before being moved 800 miles to the Topaz concentration camp in Utah. These Berkeleyans lost their businesses, homes, life savings, their basic human dignity. Their education was interrupted, their friendships and community relationships were halted.

The word “Jap” is at the epicenter of this experience because it was used not only as a racist epithet by strangers, but in newspapers and by the government itself during this horrific time.

By marketing this performance, printing programs, selling tickets online, and posting a sandwich board sign in front of the Marsh theater with this slur, you normalize it. In an age when swastikas and nooses are revived among white nationalists, it now joins the permanent digital traces on the Internet along with “Japs Keep Moving — This is a White Man’s Neighborhood” (1923), “A Jap’s a Jap,” (Gen. John L. DeWitt, 1943) and the “Jap hunting license” (WWII). The normalization of this vicious term signals a disturbing lack of regard for our history and our community.

Three members of the board saw the show Saturday night. We met with David Hirata afterward and had a discussion with him about the title. He explained his intent in using what he considers a historical term — the racist renaming of what was originally called the “bottomless box” (soko nashi bako) by its originator, the accomplished late-19th century Japanese magician Namigoro Sumidagawa, who toured the U.S. in the late 1800s. A white magician later appropriated the signature magic box and tricks, changed its name to “The Jap Box” and performed the show in yellow face.

We appreciate Mr. Hirata’s sincerity and willingness to listen. We suggested that his mesmerizing performance, his lifelong interest in magic and the story of how his identity as a Japanese American became intertwined with a Japanese magician’s object represents an opportunity to further interrogate his family and community history. We also suggested he take this opportunity to better understand why the title he chose is painful and a dangerous revival of a deadly term. His family history includes his grandfather being held in the notorious military stockade at the Tule Lake Segregation Center and an uncle who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

David Hirata also spoke about this issue with the Executive Director of the JACL, David Inoue, last week. We are aware of other outraged Japanese Americans who have contacted the theater to protest this title, some of whom received no response. We are heartened by Mr. Hirata’s statement that he plans to change the name of his show.

We fully understand and appreciate that art can and should raise difficult issues and make us uncomfortable — that is not what this is. The cavalier use of the word “Jap” in the title of this production, without historical context, signals a disturbing lack of concern for the trauma of a group of people and normalizes a tragedy that, now of all times, should be highlighted as a serious cautionary tale.

As Japanese Americans, residents of Berkeley, defenders of civil rights and supporters of the arts, we look forward to prompt action by The Marsh to begin to repair this harm.

Sincerely,

Board of Directors

Berkeley Japanese American Citizens League

The Berkeley JACL Chapter mourns for the 20 people killed and more than two dozen injured in the shooting at the Walmart in El Paso, Texas.  Our organization strongly condemns the racist and hateful beliefs that led to this tragic event. There have been too many lives lost in recent times. Just a few days before the shooting in El Paso, four many others lost their lives in a shootings in Gilroy and then more also in Dayton. Together we support the victims and their families in El Paso, Gilroy, and Dayton and  reiterate our commitment to continue to resist discrimination, hatred, and violence everywhere.