GRACE

I am honored to participate in this historic 100th anniversary commemoration of the Great Kanto Massacre and appreciate this opportunity to learn and bear witness with deepened understanding. It is an opportunity of great significance for me as a Japanese American and part of the Nikkei diaspora whose family members endured forced removal, indefinite detention, hostage exchange, and forced post-war deportation at the hands of the U.S. and Peruvian governments during WWII.

I come to remember the 6,000 to 10,000 murdered Zainichi Koreans and Chinese as well as Japanese labor organizers and socialists. We also acknowledge and support the courageous community organizers who are resisting the erasure of this history thus educating the public to prevent recurrence of such genocidal policies and actions.

I stand with the Zainichi Korean and Chinese communities to learn lessons and insights from the suppressed history of this Massacre, its historical and systemic roots, and its ongoing impact today. We in the US especially need to understand why and how societies can normalize hate crimes and justify acts of inhumanity and mass murder.

I stand with both citizens of Japan and non-Japanese alien residents – who share the belief that within our respective nations and among nations, we can envision and build a healthy, sustainable environment that upholds our right to human dignity and peace.

Yes, we can!   Ya-re-ba, dekiru!  ¡Si se puede!

MOMII

From the land Ohlone Huichin Turtle Island I bring solidarity to the Zainichi Koreans and Chinese community. My name is Momii Palapaz. As an elder Japanese American experience State terror everyday in the U.S. I am a member of the Poor Magazine/Homefulness Family. We are a Black and Brown, homeless, poor people and indigenous people led international movement. 

POOR MAGAZINE is strengthened by the courage Zainichi Koreans have conveyed, exposing the history of a brutally cruel, racist and misogynistic Japanese imperial government.  We send our deepest condolences on the tragic losses of families and friends from the 1923 Great Kanto Massacre.  Our founder, Mama Dee was sexually violated over 200 times before the age of 5 years old. Mama Dee identified strongly with the “comfort women.”  I have brought issues of a POOR MAGAZINE special on Mothers.  It has an article by Chang Ok Chun, a survivor of the brutality of imperial Japan.

I shudder and dread hearing reports of sexual trauma and violence, but they must be told and repeated often.  That’s why the testimonies of the “comfort women” are so important. 

Because you, the Zainichi Korean community, told stories, theret are no longer secrets.  We have to say and do something before we become your ancestors.

We are All Connected

All Power to the People

CRISTIAN

The Meiji Restoration, like the political transformation under the American occupation, was done to instead of with the Japanese people. The Japanese people have never been permitted to decide their political future or meaningfully engage in politics. The only time popular participation in Japan is permitted is when it is in service of hateful aims, such as the Kanto Massacre. The Kanto Massacre was a turning point in that the imperial project of the Japanese government gained widespread acceptance among ordinary people in the country, having deadly consequences for non-Japanese people. The Japanese government has denied the existence of the events, but this has only made the issue all the more salient. Only through sustained reflection and reckoning can Japan truly become a land of equality. Any struggle for justice, no matter how small it may seem, is a demand for democracy. In making amends for the actions of their ancestors, the Japanese people can reject the logic of their political system and breathe new life into their society. In this struggle, the Japanese, Zainichi, and non-Japanese people in Japan are not alone, as they can count the Nikkei Decolonization Tour and many others as allies. May Japan finally be free.  

DESUN

The Kanto Massacre involved ordinary Japanese in the mass killing of Koreans across the region. Ordinary working-class Japanese people, not just the military or police, obliged in the widespread call to kill Koreans. In this respect, the massacre was a collective racial project. The massacre made-known and solidified Koreans as the face of the enemy within the minds of ordinary Japanese across Tokyo. For instance, the Japanese press at the time rendered Koreans as criminal and anti-state agitators by associating them to alleged urban threats posed by socialists and escaped convicts. The consequences were disastrous for Koreans faced with a Japanese citizenry so anxious to prove their loyalty to a rapidly growing empire. As a descendant of both Zainichi Korean and working-class Japanese families, I hold this aspect of the massacre close to my heart. Ordinary everyday Japanese must reflect on their complicity in this massacre. 

While the massacre provided the Japanese a racial enemy within Tokyo, the massacre simultaneously solidified the racial borders of Japanese empire. In the aftermath of the massacre, the Japanese further ghettoized Koreans to colonial Korea, the coal mines across the empire, and the urban ghettos of Japanese cities for their continued exploitation and domination. The Japanese, by creating an anti-Korean urban colonial metropole, shunned Koreans to the colonial and economic frontiers of empire. Confronting the legacy of the Kanto Massacre, therefore, becomes one step towards confronting the processes of racism and colonialism across the farthest reaches of Japanese empire. [Am I drawing too tight a connection between local kanto massacre and the structure of global japanese racial colonialism? I can remove this paragraph and exchange with other content. Let me know] 

As a U.S. based historian, I am committed to investigate historical records regarding how the international community responded to this massacre. I intend to investigate the international conditions and responses of the massacre: How did the massacre reinforce international anti-communism of the 1920s or U.S. racial attitudes and policies towards Asian empires and colonies? How did Korean and Nikkei communities in the U.S. and Hawai’i address the massacre? What historical records can the U.S embassy, military, and other archives provide?