Some Days, It's Cookies

Intense afternoon today, watching testimony from the 1981 redress hearings in Los Angeles. The wrongs suffered by Japanese Americans during WWII are well known now, but forty years ago these stories had not been shared publicly much at all; many of those testifying had never told their own children what had happened to them, let alone a congressional commission. The details of these stories are heart-wrenching: businesses lost, dying children unable to get medical care, fathers picked up by the FBI and never seen again. But it’s the delivery that is revelatory for me, today – the faces and voices convey an emotional context I’ve never gotten from reading the words on a page. The catch in people's voices as they describe the indignities of being housed in horse stalls and fed like pigs, their meager servings slopped into pie tins. The incredulity, forced out through tears: "I couldn’t imagine my government would do this to me!" The bitterness of a mother whose son was drafted from the camp; she knew the government would see him as “cannon fodder.” Middle-aged nisei reliving the terror their six-year-old selves felt, waiting in line with their anxious parents to board a train to God-knew-where. The weeping woman who denied her children their own Japanese heritage because she wanted to erase it after what had happened to her – and now, she says, she knows she was wrong. A man, asked to summarize the main points of his testimony because it is getting late, smacks the table with sudden rage, "I will not be hurried by you as a representative of the U.S. government. Ever!"

And this astonishing moment: a white lady in sunglasses marches up to the podium and tries to rip the written testimony out of the hands of a dignified gentleman who has just shared a statement from the 100th/442nd Veterans Association. A security officer (also a white lady) throws herself between them and wrenches the man's papers back. The room erupts – sansei are on their feet chanting, "Get her out! Get her out!" – and the attacker is escorted from the room to jeering and wild applause.

Image: Two cookies on a plate, covered in sprinkles

I'm pulled back to 2021 by a knock at my door. Three small children – two Asian American neighbors and their toffee-brown friend – are standing on my porch, giggling. The littlest boy (whose devotion to Pokémon earned him the right to inherit Simon’s old Pikachu costume when I was clearing out the basement recently) proffers a plate with three cookies on it, each bearing a physics-defying load of sprinkles. His big sister (who sits next to my niece in class and played endless fantasy games in the garden all summer long) holds out three squares of painted paper and tells me I can choose whichever card I want. The friend (whom I’ve never met, but you’d never know it from his enormous grin) says, “No, I get to choose! I’m the guest!” and hands me the pink one. The swirly watercolor is still damp. I admire my gifts with effusive delight and beam my thanks at the mom waiting on the sidewalk. The kids bounce back down the steps; I turn back inside to watch the rest of the redress testimony.

Hours later, I’m sipping my bedtime eggnog and brushing neon sprinkles off my shirt, feeling grateful: for the cookies, for the walk-in booster shot I got at the Vietnamese pharmacy this morning, for the salmon supper my housemates cooked, for the menorahs flickering and Christmas lights twinkling on my evening walk. My gratitude is shot through with a fierce protectiveness. I can’t shake the image of those three beautiful, gleeful, innocent faces on my porch this afternoon. My body is kind of a wreck these days, but I am more than ready to throw it in front of anybody who tries to hurt those kids – or scare them, or shame them, or silence them, or make them feel anything but loved and valued and at home. The same goes for the Vietnamese elders waiting to get their shots at the pharmacy. I think about the perils they might have faced as six-year-olds – or in the last year, for that matter – and I wonder about the Jewish family I saw gathered around the menorah in their window as I walked by.

When I close my eyes I can see the web of human connection that holds us all together. I know it is frayed and thin in places. I know its history is full of ragged holes that have destroyed entire communities and let countless individuals slip away into the darkness. And I know there are people out there living in pain and fear and shame right now, that I don’t know how to stop. (It’s not always as straightforward as tackling a crazy white lady in a congressional hearing, after all.) But that doesn’t mean I’m powerless. I can – and do – contribute my energy, creativity, and resources to the web that holds those kids, those elders, that family -- and me. I need to keep working to repair the broken places in that web, to fortify the weak connections, and to extend its reach, so it will include all the people who have been cut off or abandoned. Sometimes this feels like a hopeless, thankless, endless task, a crushing responsibility that I cannot escape. Some days, though – it’s cookies.