This Sh** Ain’t New

MIXED ASIAN MEDIA - MAY 19, 2021

By Autumn Henry

This is not meant to be a history lesson, though we could all use a reality check on the Swiss cheese educational system in this country. Our gorgeous “United” States, stolen from First Nations, built by slaves, fortified by immigrants, and not so united ever, at all.

My Chinese American grandmother, Bernice, was 12 when at least 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps by an executive order written by FDR. A few months after Pearl Harbor, fear and hysteria of Japanese sabotage boiled over and forced anyone with at least 1/16th Japanese ancestry (U.S. citizens) to “relocate” to detention centers for an indefinite amount of time. Families with small children and elders were given only a few days to put their affairs in order and allowed to take only as many belongings as they could carry.

Bernice’s father, my great grandfather Jimmy Ng, ran a thriving Chinese restaurant for decades in San Jose, CA from 1915. The building lived in what was the original Chinatown, and later Japantown of San Jose. The family lived nearby, and my grandmother had mostly Japanese American friends. As her friends’ families received their 48 hour notices to report for detention, Bernice remembers desperate deliveries of radios and other tween treasures to keep safe for her friends. She made promises, found space for the precious stock, and, of course, wondered when she would see her beloved friends again.

My grandmother recounted a moment to me from school, after most of the Japantown residents had reported for detention, when Asian racism and suspicion was made palpable to her. A boy noticed her arriving at school and sneered, “Why are YOU here? Why aren’t you with the others?” A foamy stew of preteen awkwardness, first generation identity, and an era of severe cultural assimilation collided with rich, historical hate, suspicion and systemic racism that day. Bernice knew she was the other, left behind by other others in a town that had been trying to chase out anyone who looked like her for several generations.

As the internment weeks turned into months, Bernice reported groups of “gypsies” (her word) move into the unoccupied homes of her Japanese neighbors. She remembers ghost-like laundry, hanging everywhere, and just as quickly as they arrived, they then left. Groups of Filipino migrant workers came to harvest the Japanese owned fields and farms left behind and untended. She says many of them stayed, even after the internment ended, and Japantown’s Asian diversity experienced a marked expansion.

My grandmother didn’t have much to say about how this moment in time made her feel when I interviewed her for a school project about 20 years ago. I’d never known this part of her story, until I’d casually asked if she remembered the Japanese Internment. Her recollection flowed openly, but she didn’t emote much. She passed peacefully some years back. I might have circled back and pressed her for more details now, in an effort to understand her Asian American experience, in an effort to understand my own. All those years ago, that boy chose to single her out and publicly question her very existence, emboldened by his country (also her country) to accept and act on racist beliefs. My grandmother’s poignant coming of age moment is living proof of the history of racism against Asians in the U.S., racism that led to the internment of American citizens while the rest of America and the world witnessed.  

Bernice’s Chinese identity seemed like a gauzy veil of history by the time I began trying to understand my own Chinese roots. She used what was left of her Cantonese at a Chinese restaurant here and there, like a fun parlor trick of ye olden days. She didn’t raise her kids to speak Cantonese, she divorced her Chinese American husband (my grandfather) in California, married an Italian American (my step grandfather) from Connecticut in 1960, moved her kids out east, and eventually blended some more kids into the mix. How much of her life was eagerly moving forward, and how much was leaving a former self and community behind?

With my family’s blended past, mixed Asian heritage seemed the norm for me growing up, but without roots, without pride, and without an educated understanding of the painful path to our current existence. The nonsensical violence against Asians that we’re experiencing rips open some big Band-Aids covering this nation’s historical hate and legacy of white oblivion. The institutionalized racism that brought us such blistering consequences as the Chinese Exclusion Act, yellow peril, the Japanese internment, and “China virus” has deepened the lacerations and legalized otherness. Each act of targeted violence against an Asian person reminds me that we are not safe. People we may pass at the grocery store, playground, beach, library, and school could hate us enough to assault me, my mom, my kids. But most importantly, I am reminded that this shit ain’t new.

Autumn Henry was born in Missouri, raised a Navy Brat and now calls Brooklyn home. Her career in esthetics was born out of a desire to perform humane Brazilian Waxing but quickly graduated into a full fledged career that focuses on holistic skin care and healing of the individual. Autumn is a fierce advocate for "graceful aging" vs "anti-aging" in a culture obsessed with unrealistic beauty standards. She is a proud wife, sister, daughter, cat mom and soon to be mother of an actual human.