thenoobyorker:

“Well, I was in Oakland getting ready to get on a ship for a boat ride back to Hawaii. I was in my uniform with three rows of ribbons and a captains bars on my shoulder, I must have looked pretty good. Like a big hero with a hook on my right hand, where it used to be. And so, I thought I’d just get a nice haircut so I’d look neat. I looked around Oakland, here was a barbershop. Three chairs. I remember that. All three empty. The barbers are just standing around, so I walked in. This one barber approached me and he looked at me and he said, ‘Are you a Jap??’ You know, that was a strange welcome. And I said,’I’m an American.’ ‘Well, I’m asking you, ‘Are you a Jap??” I said, ‘My father was born in Japan, my mother is Japanese. I suppose that makes me one.’ ‘We don’t cut Jap hair.’ And I thought to myself, here I am in uniform. It should be obvious to him that I’m an American soldier, a captain at that. And that fellow very likely never went to war. And he’s telling me we don’t cut Jap hair. I was so tempted to strike him. But then I thought if I had done that, all the work that we had done would be for nil. So I just looked at him and I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry you feel that way.’ And I walked out.”

Former Senator Daniel Inouye on experiencing racial prejudice as a decorated soldier in uniform in Oakland, California.

There’s a video at the link.

LTMC: This is somewhat apropos of a discussion I had recently about the infamous “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy (or more accurately, the “Prayer-room-in-a-community-center-2-blocks-down-the-road-from-Gound-Zero” Controversy).  I was reminded of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a Muslim American soldier who died on August 6, 2007 while deployed to Iraq:

My peers were trying to argue the familiar (and frankly, frustrating) point that it was insensitive of the Park 51 proprietors to build a Mosque near Ground Zero.  This, of course, implies that Corporal Rashad Sultan Khan, who arguably fought to protect the American Soil that Ground Zero sits on, must nonetheless refrain from worshipping anywhere near it; on the premise that exercising his faith is insulting to the victims of 9/11.  In other words: you can fight to protect this symbolic piece of American soil, just don’t worship on it, because it’s insulting.  

(Of course, this all ignores the fact that roughly 100+ Muslim Department of Defense employees worship 80 feet from the place where 184 Americans died when a plane hit the Pentagon.  But that musn’t be acknowledged: because acknowledging that American Muslims are already worshipping near the site of one of the 9/11 attacks might reveal that the whole controversy was completely, 100% political—leaving nothing but prejudice to support the argument).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of my peers would tolerate the accusation that, by making this argument, they were courting bare, unadulterated prejudice against all Muslims—including the likes of Corporal Rashad Sultan Khan—based on the actions of a few fanatics.  As if guilt-by-association, and the unjustified vicarious imputations of moral culpability it entails, were suddenly a legitimate form of moral calculus.  Despite my attempts to extract a firmer basis for the argument, I was offered none—or at the very least, nothing I hadn’t heard before.

I bring all this up because Daniel Inouye clearly suffered a similar imputation of vicarious moral culpability when he walked into that barber shop in Oakland.  His uniform did not matter.  Being born and raised in America did not matter.  Making the “ultimate sacrifice” did not matter.  All that mattered was he was a “Jap.”  And simply by being one of “them,” the owners of the barber shop imputed moral culpability onto him for the actions of the Japanese government in World War II.  

Meanwhile, people like Corporal Rashad Sultan Khan find themselves in a similar position today. Corporal Rashad Sultan Khan not only wore a military uniform, but made the so-called “ultimate sacrifice.”  Yet because he is a Muslim, there are those who have argued—and clearly continue to argue—that he must refrain from stepping foot within two blocks of Ground Zero if his stride happens to be accompanied by the name of Allah or the Prophet flying reverent from his lips.  In other words: you can pray on the battlefield under the American flag; just don’t pray over here.

One wonders what would happen if Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan lived long enough to return from Iraq, and attempted to pray near Ground Zero in uniform.  Some no doubt would argue that it is insulting to the memory of the victims.  And it would be no less invidious or wrong than what happened to Daniel Inouye in Oakland.  And it is endlessly frustrating that there are still people who don’t understand why that’s the case.