Lisa Doi and Mary Doi

00:05 I'm speaking to you from Evanston, Illinois on November 11th, 2020 and I'm going to be speaking with Lisa. Who's my daughter?

00:17 Hi, my name is Lisa Doyle. I'm 29 years old today is November 11th, 2020 and I am in Chicago, Illinois and I am talking to Mary Joy who is my mother.

00:29 Thanks so much Lisa. So we're taking part in something called the stories of Arts resilience. I'm going to read to you the the overarching goal of the project. It's an oral history project documenting perspectives of arts and Museum Professionals in regard to their challenges accomplishments and methods of preserving during the covid-19 crisis. I think this is a wonderful opportunity to get to do this, but I want to Anchor this in some epidemiological facts and then start of a broader historical context for our conversation. So it's one of the things I do know that if I were listening to this in the future, I would like a little bit of a snapshot of how covid is impacting the United States. So I went to the CDC and I looked at their website and I'm going to just spew out some statistics. So according to the CDC yesterday on November 11th, there were more than 10 million.

01:29 Essence of covid-19 that have been reported and it's resulted in 2230 7731 deaths in the United States. Both these figures may be an under account. But I just wanted to really put the fact in there that this is what the epidemic looks like today with massive outbreaks in many states across the United States.

01:57 I wanted to say that covid-19 has impacted black brown and Native communities very hard very very hard and for Asian-American, there's a slight additional burden if that's like in it. I think it comes out of trump and other politicians labeling covid-19 as the Chinese virus or the Wuhan flu and I think it's done. It's impacted Asian American communities by generating assertive giving open approval for hate crime and I went in again. I did a little Googling and between March and June the CBS News reported that there were over 2,100 anti-asian hate incidents and crime that include

02:51 Physical attacks verbal assault workplace discrimination and online harassment. So that's kind of setting the microscopic stage of what covid-19 looks like today for me, but I thought you knew this project also realizes that 20/20 has truly been unprecedented in the challenges that represents both globally and locally and personally, you know, and it's compounded by the murder of George Floyd the ensuing social economic political health and safety upheavals as well as tremendous loss of life, but I I'm going to kind of take a telescopic view of the time and anchor it in my opinion about how this this is an amplified time in the Japanese American community and I think that really I'm going to go back to

03:51 The Muslim ban in 2017 as a call for action for Japanese-Americans and then it's going to include the treatment of Asylum Seekers. I think it was a specially

04:07 Ignited the community was the imprisonment and separation of children from their parents among the Asylum Seekers and it really galvanized people to speak out and organized because he's an incarceration spell hauntingly reminiscent of what are Community face during World War II. So to me this time has a national vitality and the Japanese American community that it reminds me of the redress movement in the 1980s. So it's this is for me the more complicated historical moment that were living through and I'll acknowledge that neither you nor I are artists or Museum professionals, but I know that you're very involved in an organization that uses an art form origami it in a very particular way. And so I'd like you to tell me about name the organization tell me about the organization and tell me

05:07 A bit about origami

05:11 Sure, so I'm an organizer with a group of progressive Japanese-Americans called to do for solidarity and to do in that title refers to origami cranes. Also called Studio City is the Japanese word for Crane and Seager for solidarity coalesced in early 2019 through some direct actions in Texas and Oklahoma by Japanese American survivors of the World War II incarceration who particularly survivors who were held at a Department of Justice site Club Crystal City, which is in Texas and this site is very close to a contemporary facility called the Dilley family residential Center, which is the largest.

06:02 Site that's detaining families seeking asylum in the United States. And so a group of Japanese American survivors went to Crystal City in 2019, and then traveled from Crystal City to Dilley to Stage a protest in opposition of the Detention of of the families and then returned to Oklahoma that same summer because there was going to be a the Trump Administration was trying to open another family detention site at Fort Sill Oklahoma, which was also used as the Department of Justice site during World War II Japanese-Americans into it as you mentioned. It was really formed from

06:50 Japanese Americans who were saying you know, there is a tremendous parallel in this moment to our own history, but that also that began at work began prior to the administration that work began during the Obama Administration when this family detention policy was initiated and a Japanese American lawyer with the ACLU named Carl 2K who was working on their detention policies brought in a Japanese American Psycho therapist named Gina to some of the facilities during the Obama are and that's really when I talk to you got for the sense of the parallels between her own experience being incarcerated as a child to what was happening in the 2010 and then

07:41 As best practice of detaining families grew that's really when Japanese-Americans began to mobilize. But I think is you also said, you know, this is not the first time the Japanese-Americans Hazard of mobilize politically.

07:57 When I was growing up, you took me to protest after 9/11 to try to prevent the kind of mass incarceration that happened to my grandparents and great-grandparents were happening to Muslim Americans. And then since 9/11 Japanese-Americans across the country have been protesting the kind of surveillance and detention. The Bush Administration Obama administration of the Trump Administration have have inflicted upon Muslim communities. And then as he mentioned after Trump's Muslim ban, there was renewed and support for Muslim American communities by Japanese American organizers.

08:40 To one of the things that you do also does is uses the symbol of the origami crane as part of our organizing strategy and I see I really as a base building activity where we're able to take something that may be on its face doesn't seem like a super political action like folding a paper crane and use that to start a conversation with people about why we're taking this kind of political stamps from this action of holding a crane and

09:12 While they're separate histories, I think the folding of origami cranes in this way did begin after World War II after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with Sadako and the Thousand cranes it soon became a popular children's book in this notion that a young girl who was exposed to radiation to the folded a thousand cranes that became a symbol of peace really did service order the starting point for a political position or a potential for the option of these cranes and that hundreds of thousands of crane each year get sent to the atomic bomb Memorial is in Hiroshima to stand for explicit, you know denuclearization, please as well as a broader. No hope for peace in the world until I think that's actually the political.

10:13 Origins of the symbol and then within the Japanese American Community we've been able to expand a cultural symbol into a political symbol into a political symbol for this right? And I think that's the power of the Arts and the Arts create symbols that can really become reality that they are they are aspiring to a certain kind of reality that social action can help impel, you know, so I can but also the crane the origami crane the crane in general in Japan, you know, this is a really long symbol of longevity. So it's probably a symbol that's been used the thousand years or more for lunch Apple.

11:03 And the at the Japanese American Twist on using the origami crane is something that you and I talked about during a very early cultural connections presentation rituals of the life cycle that we did with the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian. And the reason I kind of jumped at this opportunity to participate in this particular cultural connections program was that when our Chicago Japanese American historical society is often asked to present a program. They'll ask for an activity to go with the program and it will be make origami make the origami crane and I always resented that so much because it's outside groups are telling me what symbol or what object they they associate me with and and I didn't like being told so I don't know 25

12:03 What year is I rebelled against the origami crane and then in studying it I learned that Japanese-Americans were appropriating it for other kinds of occasions specifically weddings and Anna 50th anniversaries. So I can understand this symbol of using the crane for the longevity of a marriage or four wishes of a long happy marriage. So I saw it first this transformation this enlargement of a symbol to new Realms and this particular origami Construction. Crane crane collages is not something that's done in Japan. This is really a Japanese American interpretation of

12:51 How really a new way to think about the origami crane which for many Japanese-Americans like you and me who are not very Japanese is also a way to to appropriate Our Heritage and bring it into something that's contemporary and partly I know when you do when you when

13:11 Cranes flashes at weddings. Typically you'll have many people folding those thousand cranes because it takes so much time and we just did three cranes last two Christmases ago. And it took I don't know how many of us five of us like a month to fold three thousand cranes with we're doing 3 3 on collages but it also represents then the social sphere around that the couple that's getting married or the anniversary couple, you know, so I think it's I think it's powerful as a symbol of ethnic identity and this is specifically a Japanese American ethnic identity. So I see cranes being made into collages of cranes or of the family crest or of I guess the most

14:04 Maybe out of bounds. When was it was a crane collage of a golden retriever that the couple that was getting married has as their pet so, you know, this is the meaning of the symbol of the crane I think is so expandable transformable. And so when the crane is adopted by two or four solidarity for me and I admit this is idiosyncratic for me. It's hard to rehabilitate in the crane that something that for 25 years. I have to push the yet now becomes something that I can accept an and endorse even though I can't fold them. I just find them too difficult. So if you can if you want to expand a little bit on this symbolic meaning of the crane and maybe how the meaning of the crane for even forced to do for solidarity changed over time as other so

15:04 Social events impact what to wear for solidarity at hope to do in June of this year.

15:13 Sure. So I think one of the things that you are one of the important things that you talked about is

15:21 Diasporic culture so Japanese-Americans your 3rd Generation Japanese-American. I'm 4th generation Japanese-American. And so we received a very particular Japanese culture from the late eighteen hundreds. They came to the United States and then sort of got frozen in time as well as evolved independently of Japan. And so I think that that's true that's not unique to Japanese America, but I think that happens and lots of cultures in diaspora where you have these two maybe origins in a home country, but they become something else in a new country and

16:07 And I think that's just sort of thought of not you need to Daphne's Americans writing that did happen with the to do.

16:15 In a one of the coordinators have to do for solidarity is a Buddhist priest named Duncan Williams, and he talks about

16:26 Cranes birds in Buddhism

16:29 Have a wing of wisdom and a wing of compassion and I think of that is a a way that I think about this to you is that you know, you're folding to use with a wish that are for wisdom and compassion.

16:42 And I sent the sort of interbeing to the original.

16:47 Identity was continuing to organize. We were hoping to have a large-scale protest in Washington DC in June of 2020, but that got cancelled because of the pandemic and part of the ask there with that. We were going to fold a hundred twenty thousand cranes to represent 120000 Japanese Americans who are incarcerated and then that number grew because we we must have called that number grew to

17:13 About five hundred fifty thousand cranes to represent the Japanese-Americans worker serrated plus the number of people detained seeking Asylum each year a rough estimate and as we were planning this event in DC one of the questions that was raised was about what we do with the we're going to we're going to bring these creams to the White House and we were going to hang them on the White House fence in an act of Civil Disobedience and and in and ask that the Trump Administration stop detaining families and stop and change their policies around Asylum Seekers.

17:51 But one of the organizers was asking, you know, what do we do with the cranes after that and I think some other we are not in a Shinto.

18:03 Way in addition to a way in which rooted and sorted by an animistic tradition as well as to remove a different kind of a non-western relationship between ancestors. Her point was heard of effuse cranes are being folded for individual people either in honor of them or in memory of them than the cranes free The Souls of those people inside of them. And so we can't simply throw the cranes away, you know, because these cranes have should have become

18:38 It attached to people whether they're alive or in their past, they become attached to people and so we have to treat them as if they had souls. And so one of the suggestions was actually that we that we might burn the cranes room in the way that you would cremate a body into soda release the spirit from the crane, but I think I'm going to bring him to the vet another folk tradition folk art that that to do has taken up both National and in Chicago, which is a Japanese tradition called upon which is the summer usually a Summer Festival to honor the dead and

19:21 One of the big ways you do this is my damn saying and there are the assertive traditional folk dances that you do during the Open Season to remember your ancestors. And so as as we canceled our June event, I'm smaller socially distance events popped up across the country over this summer many of those took the form of Oban fall festivals and celebrations where people would gather and dance together. I'm at attention attention by 2 recently did one outside of Cook County Jail where we were, you know,

19:55 Playing Taiko drums dancing together with cranes outside. And so if the cranes can represent an honor, the spirits of ancestors or bone is another way we can remember and honor the spirits of ancestors, whether they're like my personal ancestors or sort of a broader conception of ancestors. I think that but one of these things with these thieves

20:19 Folk art Traditions can do is carry meaning and that meaning can change over time and space as they get rid of modified to the diaspora needs of a community.

20:34 So what happened to the planned for March? How did that what happened to you know, you couldn't do it. Did you do something else?

20:43 Yes sensitive going to Washington DC. We held a virtual event on June 6th, and then on June 7th. We had to seven events across the country through small-scale actions at sites in New York at the Berks family Detention Center in Pennsylvania at Cook County Jail in Chicago at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington at a Japanese American Assembly Center site in Tanforan, California. And then at Adelanto, which is another ice Detention Facility in in the LA area to instead of doing all we did a more dispersed serious programs on June 6th and 7th.

21:34 And the you know is I recall the programming on June 6th.

21:42 That the focus actually I felt enlarged in response to you know, how many events including the death of George Floyd and other acts of the in car stereo State. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that seems that sewer for solidarity developed? Can you tell me what were the thing and how were they woven in? And then what does the crane represent as the

22:13 As the ideas that sewer for solidarity is is carrying and large.

22:19 Yeah, so I think as a as I think about to do really started in response to.

22:26 Immigrant detention policies, but when I think about what undergird both immigrant detention and Japanese American incarceration it is this broader carceral State and a broader.

22:42 Conversation about the disposability of people and ideas that sort of put put people in hierarchies and say that they are so good good Americans in their fat Americans and therefore the consequences to bat Americans are acceptable because we've said that these people are bad and I think that's really the same kind of logic. That supports a system of mass incarceration that it supports a system of hyper policing that supports system. Where are largely people are being detained bureaucratic reasons and pretrial detention because they can't afford bail and bond.

23:25 Because of plea deal is because although you served on the feast have access to public representation in practice the time for a trial and resources for a trial are so long and often not available that we have huge portions of people in jails for pre-trial detention and end in prison because of plea bargaining that these are all really all ideas that are connected to each other and I think that's something that both nationally would to do for solidarity and Loosely in Chicago our conversations that that people have been starting to have for the past several years to use you started our conversation by talking about Asian-American hate crimes because of the covid-19 pandemic and

24:20 I've been an integral conversations.

24:24 Nationally with other Asian American organizations about how do we respond to these hate crimes and what sort of the category of hate crime in general the category of something that has a an aristocrat essentially a good purpose behind it. But in practice hate crime law most commonly gets used as a ad on a sentencing add-on between black and brown youth where you know an altercation between black teenagers and Lenox teenagers. That's a hate crime add-on because you know

25:05 Because it's not available in the wall for that add-on. There's talking to Asian American organizations about 1. How do we respond to hate crimes in ways that you not expand hate crime legislation because of its current misuse as well as do not reinforce a car stereo system that says we should be prioritising using police as our Primary Response to hate crimes. And so I think that's also a really of this moment question that perhaps ten years ago. If this if this had happened those would not be than actual conversations National conversations in my station American progressives, maybe 10-15 years ago, you know, the most left of the progressive group might be having this conversation, but I think this would have mainstream response would have been about strengthening hate crime legislation would have been about increasing please collection of Asian American community.

26:05 Incarceration. American Community leader is Progressive Asian American Community leaders are standing up to say yes. This is a problem that we're seeing, you know increase violence against asian-americans community members and we can find solutions for those that do not continue to rely on please and that do not continue to expand hate crime legislation until we fix the loopholes in hate crime laws that exist right now. So I think that makes me really hopeful about

26:37 The future of of Asian America

26:42 Does the origami crane have any role in this expanded the sort of telescopic scope of tour for solidarity?

26:51 Yeah, I think one of the pieces.

26:56 It's always.

26:59 Why what are the questions about where did the saying come from? There is no at this point. We have several hundred thousand cranes that we've collected one of the groups that I I want to talk about in terms of who sent in crane is that is a art class at San Quentin prison in California. And so we have claims made by incarcerated artists that are part of our sort of collection of cream and if the cranes are you know and creams if you said are a symbol of longevity but birds often had become a symbol of Liberation in their ability new to fly and fight as a metaphor for freedom on it. So I think that there is also rooted in these pains in the hope of Liberation and the hope of his kind of freedom and I think

27:45 In particular, I'm struck by.

27:50 What do what do cranes as a political Act made by incarcerated artist for the freedom of other incarcerated communities? What is that? What does that teach us about what solidarity and to me that's sort of like the Pinnacle what's solidarity looks like that. It's solidarity between

28:10 Incarcerated people across a range of different contacts whether they were incarcerated when they were children, whether they're incarcerated as adults today, whether they're incarcerated families today the Seas

28:22 Multiple groups of people can sort of come together and say our Liberation is bound is bound what each others and so you know these this this crane is as much for you as it is. I'm in as much for your freedom as it is for my own good you mentioned you mentioned that prisoners are folding cranes. Can you tell me about other groups that have folded cranes and maybe the accessibility of folding paper cranes to to embrace populations? That might not go out to a protest March. Yeah. I think that's one of the best things about the crane is it's really accessible. I mean, I know you said that you find it hard to fold them. But generally it's within the scope of most people origami ability. It's not the hardest thing you could do is maybe not the easiest but you know, most people can learn to fold a crane and I think it starts

29:22 Themes non-threatening. It seems like a non-threatening activity that can open the door to brought our conversations. So when we could meet in person

29:33 Church groups Christian and Buddhist Church groups on Quaker groups were folding cranes on school groups youth group Lake Boy Scout groups are folding cranes. And then as we've moved into a virtual space we've continued to hold fold in the cross the country where people to meet on zoom and fold cream together, and I think

29:58 It opens the door to a deeper conversation about immigrant detention about policing about State violence that maybe if we just held an event you held a lecture wouldn't be as appealing to people as so I can pull the crane. And so I think it does help bring people into to do for solid programming and I and I cancel the crane, but I can string grains and I have a little little string here.

30:32 And I think you're going to shut my I can't get I can't reach my strength. Is little strength trained.

30:40 You know, I guess I see another way that the origami crane has heard of expanded its use and I'm going to talk specifically about when we went on the pilgrimage to Crystal City. Okay that there's a Japanese idiom. I guess we'll phrase called put Kodomo. No, I need and that means for the sake of the children. So my grandparents may have come to America for the sake of their future children with tiny, but I also know that this is something where the Japanese American Community has used that phrase in combination with the Detention of children. And the the the chant now becomes Kodomo no time. I need there are children set up set them free and what we saw in Crystal City Texas with the introduction of the origami butterfly representing sort of the children locked up in Asylum.

31:40 In addition with the origami crane and I just thought that this was a wonderful wonderful use of symbols that uses origami symbols for Japanese-Americans. Hopefully embracing other communities and I just wanted to put that in something there about quarter moon on Monday because I think you skipped over a step in terms of the history of which is that after the war I think there was a moment on Kodomo. No tameni, at least in popular memory was used was interpreted as we have to protect our children people like you by not telling them about this history by not by not burdening them with what happened to us what happened to your parents. And so I think there's going to be a public history that says and

32:40 Japanese Americans do not talk about being incarcerated your parents do not talk to you about being frustrated until the redress movement in the 80s open the floodgates to hearing these kinds of stories and one last thing about Tiggers. That's the work of these cranes in the work of to do is a work about healing and healing that that iteration of Kodomo no time. I need that iteration that said we have to we have to do the thing where we think we're protecting our children by not telling them about it until I came to do uses the crane is uses the crane and uses a lot of other things is a symbol for healing to to set up repair that moment of rupture that moment of sort of

33:25 Immediate hoping to protect children by not passing on this burden But ultimately maybe LED that burden to be unresolved and I know we're running close to our time. So I'm wondering if I could ask you a question, which is about you know, that's one of the public memory of it that your parents didn't talk to you about their incarceration experience. But I also know that you've had a white history of collecting the stories of Japanese-American survivors, and so maybe you know

33:57 Can you maybe talk about that turn from when people wouldn't talk to you about their history to then starting to hear these stories come out into the what what did it mean to you to be able to hear to be able to collect oral histories of Japanese-Americans who are incarcerated?

34:13 It's an interesting question. And I don't think I really captured that because I was interested in in life cycle rituals when I was talking to people but I I know that I now have the opportunity to watch online some of the video tapes that were that were made during the commission on wartime relocation and internment of civilians, which is the is the way that we had enough testimony to justify requesting redress and reparations and then getting it and so to me that's another instance where although it's not my own parents. There's a wealth of you know, contemporary video of of the hearings as well as theirs video or there's oral histories of these in so many repositories including Down Show in Seattle and the Japanese American National

35:13 Museum in San Francisco national museum in LA and the history history Group in San Francisco. So I'd say that this is well-documented but I was going to ask I was going to make some comments about the project and I think this project is so important and during the summer. I was watching some Zoom Conference of Museum professionals. And one of the speakers was Lonnie Bunch who is the Secretary of all the Smithsonian institution museums and had is the one that actually initiated in and curated the African American Museum. And so I think he was talking about the need for museums to beat Nimble in a time like this to collect these contemporary histories of what is going on.

36:13 And I think that that's what the stories of art resilience is doing and applaud applaud that cultural Alliance for that and I think the other thing that Lonnie Bunch said was that community-based organizations are especially great.

36:32 Groups to go out and collect these sorts of stories. They have access to the community. That's kind of a natural thing. And so I just think that this is a very worthwhile project even though we didn't really talk about Arts resilient. I hope we talked about the resilience of an art form and a particular symbol in that art form the origami crane to be resilient and I'm going to ask you if there's anything else that you want to say about the topic.

37:04 Yeah you had

37:08 You'd previously mentioned the potential for to do for people who maybe wouldn't otherwise go to a protest and I think one of those things that that's important to me and that's important to me about to do is that it is an intergenerational group. So we have we have people in their 90s. We have people who are Elementary School students who are participating important to me in the Japanese American community in Chicago and in the nationally, it's just say, you know, maybe you my mom don't call yourself a community organizer, but I learned Community organizing from you and I I think when I think about that the sun say and you say generation in Chicago, you know, everything I learned about being Japanese American and

38:08 Japanese American community and the significance of Japanese American history as a tool of resistance. I learned from from you know people who came before me people who may be didn't call themselves activist, but we're teachers were my Dharma School teachers, you know, we're actually professional Educators and they're in their careers. And so I think I think you know, maybe origami cranes are for for people who may be down south identify as protesters, but I think that everyone who supposed to do is a protester and it's it's our inability to expand our vision of what protest looks like our inability to expand our vision of what resistance looks like him political resistance. Looks like it has to look like this one thing. I have to look like marching in the streets, but I think it can take many forms, and I'm just very grateful to you to you and and the people you

39:08 Raise me with for teaching me and my generation how to do this. Thank you Lisa. That was very very nice and I didn't expect it.