by Sehba Sarwar
Blair 8th graders examine objects in the Japanese American National Museum exhibition, Common Grounds.
“I was only seven years old when we were taken to Santa Anita stables,” said June, a 90-year-old volunteer whom the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) had invited to join Blair eighth and ninth graders on their field trip to JANM and Little Tokyo. “I don’t remember much about my family’s incarceration,” she told students. “Except the smell. They put us in the stables and gave us pillowcases, which we had to stuff with straw. We had to stay there for five months before we were sent to Rowher [concentration camp].”
As June shared her experience, four Blair ninth graders jotted notes. Through a funding opportunity via California Humanities, they are serving as “teachers” in three Blair middle-school classrooms. Though they attended the field trip a year ago and have seen JANM’s Common Ground exhibition, this time, the young teachers were approaching the field trip through different lenses – that of instructors.
“We can take photos of the exhibition,” one student told her partner teachers, who are sharing stories of the Japanese American experience with students in Ms. Benson’s sixth grade dance class. “They’re not going on the field trip, so we can show them what we learned.”
Other students present in the field trip were those in Ms. Cobian’s Dual Language Immersion eighth grade classes, who are reading Nos Llamaron Enemigo that’s based on the life of George Takei. They are learning about the U.S. President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 through which 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in concentration camps that were scattered in mostly deserts on the west coast.
Dr. Mathew Kodama, principal of Pasadena High School (PHS), serves as guide for PHS students at the Japanese American National Museum.
A day later, Mr. Jean Raya who teaches English at Pasadena High School (PHS) braved the rain with fifty of his tenth graders to board a school bus bound for Little Tokyo to explore JANM’s exhibit and conduct a scavenger hunt in Little Tokyo. Phase Two of the Building Empathy project was kicked off in Fall 2023 with a professional development session featuring Leslie Ito and planning sessions with Ms. Bertha Aguilar, Mr. Jean Raya, Ms. Jesus Cobian, and Ms. Esmeralda Lomeli alongside student teachers, who are participating in the project.
Through classroom instruction and field trips, students are learning a history that they did not know, and they are making connections between the racism that Japanese Americans experienced with contemporary issues. One student noted, “the history of Japanese Americans is a lot like the history of African Americans because of racial profiling and incarceration.”
Another student said, “The connection I make to the present day is the Mexican immigration … and how the walls were built.”
Joining adults at the PHS field trip was Dr. Mathew Kodama, PHS principal, who served as a chaperone and guide for Mr. Jean Raya’s students; his grandparents had met while incarcerated in Tule Lake. “Bringing PHS students to JANM is really an exciting opportunity to talk to our students about the immigrant experience of Asian Americans and to make connections with current trends in American immigration,” said Dr. Kodama. “It’s always important to remind our students of the past so that they can move forward in a better direction.”
Selfie by Blair Dual Language Immersion teacher Ms. Jesus Cobian with JANM volunteers with Building Empathy director, Sehba Sarwar.
Building Empathy is a project of the Pasadena Educational Foundation and Pasadena Unified School District supported by funding provided by the State of California through the California Civil Liberties program, administered by the California State Library, and with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Sehba Sarwar is a novelist (Black Wings, Veliz Books 2019) whose short stories have been anthologized by Feminist Press, Akashic Books, and Harper Collins India, while her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Callaloo, LA Times and elsewhere. She serves as Student Engagement Manager at Pasadena Educational Foundation and facilitates Pasadena Unified School District High School Student Think Tank.
