UCLA Publishes Wartime Edition of Amerasia Journal

Los Angeles-The UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press announces the publication of the special wartime edition of Amerasia Journal, on the state of Asian Americans and Asians in the U.S. in the six years following September 11, 2001. Entitled “World, War, Watada,” this 170-page special edition focuses on Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned U.S. officer to resist the Iraq War.

“Amerasia Journal is the first and only national scholarly journal to gather, interpret, and present, from varying perspectives, the ideas and voices of Asian Americans themselves on the case of Lt. Ehren Watada and the war,” writes editor and UCLA professor Russell C. Leong. In this issue, Asian Americans and South Asian Americans take stands against racial, ethnic, and religious profiling and the curtailment of their civil, cultural, and political rights. Scholars and researchers also contribute pieces that bridge the “ivory tower” of the university with the realities of war, globalization, and
national identity in the twenty-first century.

This volume examines the multiple dimensions of the Lieutenant Watada case, connecting Watada to the history of Asian American resistance to injustice. From a legal perspective, Prof. Eric K. Yamamoto and Ashley Kaho’omino’aka Kaiao Obrey of the University of Hawai’i law school view Lieutenant Watada’s stand as part of a “long line of resistance” within the broader context of World War II Japanese American internee draft resistance and executive branch abuses of American civil liberties in the name of national security. They also discuss the applications of the Nuremberg Principles to the Watada case.

This issue also includes letters by Mits Koshiyama, Paul Tsuneishi, and testimony prepared for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in July 30, 1981 by his father, Satoru Tsuneishi. Koshiyama, a Heart Mountain World War II draft resister, ends his personal letter to Lt. Ehren Watada, as follows: “Do what your conscience tells you what to do. We got punished by a prejudiced court but in the end, we prevailed.”

Other contributors include writer Frank Chin, constitutional lawyer Mari Matsuda, and the Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress September 11 Committee.

Mari Matsuda, a professor of law at Georgtown University, in her essay discusses Lt. Watada as a Japanese American, as a citizen, soldier, and patriot, and argues that while Watada may be on trial as an individual Asian American, his principled stand and tribulations challenge all of us to examine our own positions on the war, on citizenship, and the real meaning of patriotism in this era.

The special wartime edition is designed by Mary Uyematsu Kao, who took many of the photographs of the Los Angeles NCRR demonstrations in support of Lieutenant Watada found throughout the volume.

Amerasia Journal also locates the case of Lieutenant Watada and the government’s response within the wider framework of national identity, globalization, and worldwide resistance to the Iraq War
after 9/11. U.S., British, Pakistani, and Chinese scholars examine a variety of interlinked political and cultural topics related to current cultural and political changes worldwide.

Arif Dirlik, an editorial board member of Amerasia and historian of modern China, shares an essay on “Contemporary Challenges to Marxism,” examining Marxism as an economic theory in relation to the challenges of globalization. In an e-mail interview with Amerasia, Tariq Ali, the internationally known writer, filmmaker, activist, and an editor of New Left Review, continues with an examination of globalization in relation to the political and economic status of minority immigrants and refugees in the U.S., Germany, Britain, and France.

Also, Luo Xuanmin, of Tsinghua University, Beijing shares an essay on Lu Xun/Zhou Zuoren (1881-1936), who is generally considered the most important Chinese writer of the twentieth century. Luo believes that Asian Americans, in order not be marginalized today, must translate
their cultural works to a global audience.

Irum Shiekh, a 2007 post-doctoral fellow with the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, talks about her methods of accessing, interviewing, and analyzing the experiences of post 9/11 Middle Eastern detainees through her work as a Muslim woman academic researcher in her essay
“Government Spy or Terrorist? Dilemmas of a Post 9/11 Academic Researcher.” Shiekh had done forty interviews with individuals arrested and deported to Pakistan, Egypt, India, and Trinidad between June 2002 and June 2007, and compares these findings to her fieldwork with Muslim detainees and deportees with her previous research on Japanese-Peruvians who were interned during World War II.

This issue also features a riveting fictionalized account of a Filipino American immigrant family and a marine’s training to fight in the desert sand, a view from inside the theater of war. Marlon M.
Layugan’s short story, “Enemy in the Sand” shows the experiences of one among many young women and men of African American, Latino, Native American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander, and Anglo descent drawn into the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Layugan
is an American-born Filipino and a UCLA student who deployed with the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 2004 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom where he spent time at Camp Al Asad and Camp Al Qaim.

This limited edition volume, with can be ordered directly through the website of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center:

(http://www.aasc.ucla.edu). The cost is $15.00 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling and 8.25% sales tax for California residents. Ordering by mail, please make checks payable to “Regents of U.C.” Visa, Mastercard, and Discover are also accepted; include expiration date and phone number on correspondence. The mailing address is:
UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 3230 Campbell Hall, UCLA,
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546.

Phone: (310) 825-2968. Email: aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu

Direct online orders: http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/aascpress/comersus/

Annual subscriptions for Amerasia Journal are $35.00 for individuals, and $295.00 for libraries and other institutions. Amerasia Journal is published three times a year: Winter, Spring, and Fall. A free subscription to the Center’s Crosscurrents Newsmagazine is included in a subscription to Amerasia Journal.

Table of Contents:

Kazu Iijima, 1918-2007, In Memoriam by Glenn Omatsu

To Our Readers: Is Resistance Your Real Name? by Russell C. Leong
Contemporary Challenges to Marxism: Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, Globalization by Arif Dirlik

Tariq Ali: An Interview with Amerasia Journal
Government Spy or a Terrorist? Dilemmas of a Post-9/11 Academic
Researcher by Irum Sheikh Translation as Violence: On Lu Xun’s Idea of Yi jie by Luo Xuanmin
Letter to Lt. Watada by Mits Koshiyama
From Heart Mountain to Iraq: Lieutenant Watada and a Long Line of Resistance by Eric K. Yamamoto and Ashley Kaho’omino’aka Kaiao Obrey
Japanese, American, Citizen, Soldier, Patriot by Mari Matsuda

Enemy in the Sand by Marlon Layugan

Letters of Satoru and Paul Tsuneishi by Satoru and Paul Tsuneishi
“Building a Movement to End this Illegal and Immoral War” by The
Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress September 11 Committee
Veterans Day Statement by the Asian American Vietnam Veterans
Organization (AAVVO)
A Call to Resist by Frank Chin
Curtis Choy & the Making of Watada, Resister: An Interview with
Amerasia Journal