Tags
American racism, book review, concentration camps, Constitutional Rights, Football, Heart Mountain, Immigrants, Japanese Americans, WWII, Wyoming
This was perhaps not the optimum time to be reading The Eagles of Heart Mountain: a true story of football, incarceration, and resistance in World War II America. I expected a book of triumph over adversity in the same order as Brown’s The Boys in The Boat. Not much of a football afficionado, I had planned to skim the book to vet it as a gift for a Japanese-American friend who lives near Heart Mountain.
Upon cracking the cover, instead of a narrative about resilient athletes, I got sucked into a detailed portrait of white privilege—an in-depth history lesson about blatant Caucasian American hubris, racism, ignorance, and rumor-mongering that stained some of this country’s political figures and heroes of the past: Warren Delano Sr, the great grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Franklin Roosevelt himself; General John DeWitt; Karl Bendetson, progeny of Lithuanian Jews; California attorney general Earl Warren, destined to become chief justice of the Supreme Court; among a long list of other players on the field of hatred and abuse.
To read this book during a month in which an armed insurrection lead by a morally bankrupt American President, bolstered by an unending cadre of crooked, short-sighted, racist, sexist, politicians and deal makers tested my emotional state. Author Pearson, a journalist by trade, pulls no punches in his choice of words. What our history books call “relocation centers,” Pearson refers to as what they are—Concentration Camps. Pearson’s investigative research skills shone through in the diligent research he performed before setting pen to paper.
The first half of the book delves deeply into the hows, whys, and wheres of America’s incarceration of Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese ancestry. I had always assumed that this debacle was a hasty and poorly thought out reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But Pearl Harbor was just the final straw in a lengthy effort to disenfranchise Japanese Americans. About halfway through the book, Pearson begins fleshing out the lives and personalities of Japanese athletes—the group of young men from up and down the west coast, who came together during the frigid winter in Heart Mountain Concentration Camp to participate in sports. In this section Pearson probes the high school football intrigues of small western towns and the extraordinary obstacles a rag tag team of incarcerated, Japanese-American young men had to overcome to excel at a game most of them had never played before.
The last quarter of the book explores the football narrative in greater detail. There are many characters and a lot of football jargon that was lost on me. My attention flagged in this part, but that is due to my lack of passion for sports. It was also during this section that I had the most difficulty tracking a timeline that transitions backwards and forwards between the years of 1941–45. This was a result of the author describing the life trajectory of each of the young football players as they are featured in the narrative.
For me, what stands out most in this story, is the ugly racism and hypocrisy of a “government imprisoning 120,000 Japanese Americans only to ask them a year later to pick up a gun and die for the same government.” In opposition to her husband and anti-Japanese sentiment, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote a telling truth about why Japanese Americans were treated like dogs. “This happened because, in one part of our country (the west coast), they were feared as competitors, and the rest of our country knew them so little and cared so little about them that they did not even think about the principle that we in this country believe in: that of equal rights for all human beings.”
I simply can’t get past how relevant that statement is to what is happening in America 80 years later.
Rangewriter 
Linda – Your post deserves wide recognition. It’s superbly written in showing the depth and width of racism in our history. Have you or WordPress placed it before the eyes of nationally known media figures as another legitimate source that shines a still wider light on the darkness of white privilege in our culture/society?……………………..Bob.
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Bob, so good to hear from you. I was just wondering how you and Jennifer are getting along during these troubled times.
Thanks for your enormous confidence in my writing. Actually, this book is quite well reviewed on the national stage, as I discovered as I researched a few details about the author. I first learned of it from a review in High Country News. It’s also been reviewed by Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, to name just a few. Although one might expect it to be only about football, it is about so much more and is very well researched and written. A good, if stomach-churning read.
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Replace the word America with Australia and it applies perfectly. In a couple of days we celebrate Australia day and even now most of dinky dye true blue Aussies believe Australia was discovered by Captain Cook in1770 when he claimed this land for the British Crown. Since then we continue to forget with great convenience that Australia had already been occupied for thousands of years by the indigenous people. They are the true custodian of this land and for well over 60 000 years.
True, we are now doing a bit of catch up even to the extend of changing a few words in the National Anthem recognizing that fact, even that little gesture did not come with some protests by the those staunch pro-British Queen gun boat lovers.
Anyway, I digress. This is a good and truthful article. I always found Americans to be friendly, helpful and sympathetic. I never liked the way it governs itself, all that placard swaying and wearing of funny caps. And those awful dietary habits with MacDonald’s and KFC, Coca Cola now exported all over the world.
It really is a form of colonization.
The good news is that China will now become the top world power and culture. At least they are not addicted to bombing as much as the US.
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haha. You’re descriptions leave me rolling on the floor. And they are so accurate. Here’s the funny thing about China, I hear the Chinese, as a people, have porked up enormously since the country opened up to western/American trade and cuisine. McD’s has been a real hit over there! I fear that once at the top of the pecking order China will follow the US’s bad habits on the bombing range as well. 😦
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Facts and history seem so much more improbable than fiction – maybe that’s why so many otherwise sensible people refuse to acknowledge the truth?
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Now there’s an idea I hadn’t actually considered. So my (few) Trump supporting friends could simply not believe how bankrupt he is morally and financially because it was so improbable? Hmm. That’s makes as much sense as any other explanation…
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Linda, Eleanor Roosevelt was a wise person. This was a shameful time along a list of others – slavery, Jim Crow, genocide (and theft of their land) of Native Americans, etc. Keith
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Yes, E.R. would have made an excellent president. You are correct. We Americans need to approach other countries with less hubris. We have a habit of waltzing in and foisting our “better system” on other poorly run countries. But our better system has, in many cases, been just as bad as those “troublesome” countries.
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Linda, I agree. When ER helped establish the United Nations, a Republican who was on the US team witnessed her in action and said, “I take back every bad thing I ever said about her.” American hubris carries over into business. I was part of a global firm, so when we had global meetings, the other participants grew tired of hearing what America was doing. To this point, an idea started in Australia was drafted and used globally, while another started in the UK was also expanded. Even US headquartered companies that are too US-centric miss out on good ideas if they don’t listen. Keith
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Excellent observations, Keith.
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