To be or not to be
Growing up, I thought each generation has its own wars. Mine was Vietnam. I had questions. What had it done to deserve destruction more personally? Why was I supposed to kill people who looked a lot more like me than the folks telling me to offer them.
I became a conscientious objector, working in a hospital, moving patients, changing linen, while the wide world around grew overheated. On the home front, the fight for civil rights spread, and that war in Vietnam continued to raise questions in the late 1960s I go back to college at UC Berkeley. It's not hospital quiet, but energetic. Student noisy. I see people like me and know I'm not alone anymore. There's Chinese and Japanese Americans looking for each other enough so that we could make a button out of the occasion I became we sharing concerns about wars and the rage unloosed on non violent people seeking simple justice. But while the raw material of history in the making hit the daily newspapers, our college courses still trumpet the virtues of Western civilizations without much regard to inequality or the consequences of colonialism.
Our group proposes an experimental class in Asian American history. We had no idea who'd be interested, but got an overflow crowd of 550 students, that little button across the bay, students at San Francisco State began a strike for ethnic studies. Berkeley struck in sympathy. The protests lasted for months. Cal had its own teach ins and also extreme mood swings from day to day. We became an academic program in 1970 we were some grad students who were academic enough to be held accountable for building this Asian American Studies curriculum.
We were aided by a whole host of undergrads just waiting to be turned loose to collect family and social histories, railroad building, the World War Two, internment camps and the surrounding communities which had given rise to our history. So beyond campus borders, we got involved in community work too. The program continues at Berkeley, notably calling a hunger strike several years ago to ward off threatened job cuts. But with respect, I want to say it's not enough, so maybe it's time for a new button