Internment

Gary Moskowitz GLENDALE -- Russ Tanakaya thinks it's important for Glendale students to learn about Japanese-American internment camps in California during World War II. Tanakaya is the project coordinator of Glendale Unified's Japanese-American National Museum Project. District freshmen learning about California history will begin taking tours of the Japanese-American National Museum this month. The purpose of the student tours will be to educate Glendale students about the placement of thousands of Japanese Americans into internment camps in California during World War II. Groups of ninth-graders in the district -- some 2,600 -- will be bused to the museum in downtown Los Angeles beginning Wednesday.

A potent concoction of bitterness, confusion and heartbreak had been brewing inside 79-year-old Glendale resident Dottie Stone ever since she was liberated from a Japanese internment camp in the Philippines during World War II. Her pent-up feelings were derived in part from the nightmarish years she endured at the University of Santo Tomas, a college the Japanese converted into an internment camp, where she ate little more than rice and watched...

Relocation/internment camps were for alien enemies with whom the United States was at war. Presidential Proclamations: 2525 Alien Enemies-Japanese, Dec. 7, 1941. 2526 Alien Enemies-German, Dec. 8, 1941. 2527 Alien Enemies-Italian, Dec. 8, 1941. These proclamations are identical in scope and effect on the populations of these nationalities. In some of the camps, all three nationalities were in the same camp. In such there were separate schools for each nationality.

Your article, "Students to study Japanese internment camps," quotes Allen Brandstater as saying, "Racism had nothing to do with those camps, and Pearl Harbor had everything to do with it." He may be correct for that time. I was not there. For our time, he could not be more wrong! The lessons to be learned by all that attend the tour will have more to do with not jumping to conclusions about an individual based on the actions of another, just because they belong to the same race or religion, have the same national origin or any other similar characteristic.

I respectfully disagree with your editorial about the expansion of the Americana at Brand ("Redefining 'blighted,'" Dec. 4). Rick Caruso has delivered for Glendale, while the former sound studio has sat vacant for years, and the motel contributes too little to the economic base to justify its existence in a "redevelopment zone. " Further, no one is taking these properties; the owners have a chance to propose a plan (and the city said they would allow more than 45 days if necessary)

Allen Brandstater ought to invest in a dictionary. He states that calling the World War II Japanese internment camps "concentration camps" is "utter nonsense." However, the dictionary defines a concentration camp simply as "a camp where prisoners of war, enemy aliens or political prisoners are confined." Since there was a war, and many of the prisoners were enemy aliens, these camps were, in fact, concentration camps. "Internment camps" is simply a euphemism that has often been used because there is such a negative connotation associated with the Nazis.

Across Glendale this month, bookworms are uniting for the Glendale Public Library’s “One Book/One Glendale” program, reading the same book to join discussions at a series of public forums. In its inaugural year in Glendale, the community reading event began in Seattle in 1998 and has taken off around the country since then, said Pat Zeider, a senior library supervisor for the Glendale Central Library. “The focus is to choose one book and then try to bring the community together,” she said.

The Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley and Little Landers Historical Society have joined forces in an effort to obtain historical status for "Tuna Camp" a World War II Japanese detention center that currently is the site of the Verdugo Hills Golf Course. "Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense materials, national-defense premises and national-defense utilities....I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commander.

The issue of race being a factor in the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II has been raised once again, this time by Mr. Ray Shelton in his Community Commentary of June 26. "Not so," says Mr. Shelton; Japanese internment due to racism is a "false claim." He goes on to state that "Japanese-American citizens who signed loyalty oaths were allowed to leave the camps." This is, strictly speaking, a false claim itself. Signing of a loyalty oath was, indeed, a requirement to leave a "separation center" (as the War Relocation Authority called them)

Since Bob MacKay took over as coach of the Glendale Community College men's tennis team in 2003, he's never fielded an all-freshman squad. That will change this season, and it's left MacKay eagerly examining the program's prospects of players, who hail from Glendale to Latin America to Asia. “We are excited because of all the different challenges that we face,” said MacKay, whose team will begin its season at 2 p.m. Friday with a nonconference home match against Mount San Antonio College.

"I hope to one day be able to extend a hand to others in the same manner you have done to me, to be able to make a difference in one's life by providing others with tools to thrive in their chosen field," said Trichele Bubla, recent graduate of the registered nursing program at Glendale Community College. Bubla was referring to the scholarship she was given by the college's Patrons Club. On Jan. 17 (Thursday) some 60 members of the Patrons Club, now 65 years old, patted themselves on the back for the tens of thousands of dollars donated to students at the college over those years.

Chad Nacapoy and Jim Ramos were fairly familiar with each other whenever the Cal State Los Angeles and Cal Poly Pomona baseball teams met the last two seasons. Nacapoy served as a catcher for Cal State L.A. and Ramos was the head coach at Cal Poly Pomona. The two crossed paths at Pomona last spring when Nacapoy attended an invitational tryout with the Tampa Bay Rays. The two exchanged greetings and would keep in touch during the next several months before Nacapoy was scooped up by Tampa Bay in the 38th round in the 2012 Major League Baseball First Year Player Draft in June.

Walt Disney Studios will no longer release movies from its partner DreamWorks Studios around the world. The two companies have renegotiated their longstanding agreement. Going forward, Disney will only release movies produced by DreamWorks, the independent studio led by Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider behind "War Horse" and "The Help," in the U.S. and Canada and a handful of foreign countries. DreamWorks has instead signed a deal with Mister Smith Entertainment, a new company headed by Summitt Entertainment co-founder David Garrett, to handle sales in most overseas markets.

It's not always about the wins or personal statistics. For Kelly Korras, a former Glendale Community College pitcher and current Westridge School softball coach, her international softball debut this summer was all about the experience. "It was a dream come true," said Korras of competing in the International Softball Federation's (ISF) 13th Women's World Fastpitch Championship, which is held once every two years, with South Africa. "I have always wanted to be able to compete at that level and I finally got to. I learned a lot from watching the other teams and playing against them.

It's been a busy year for Kelly Korras, but the former Glendale Community College softball pitcher and new Westridge softball coach won't get much of a summer break. That's fine by Korras, as she'll spend a chunk of her summer training for and pursuing her dream of playing softball at the international level after she was selected to the South African national softball team for the upcoming International Softball Federation's 13th Women's World Fastpitch Championship, which kicks off July 13 in Canada.

The European-style prep school that is in escrow to buy the former General Motors training facility in Burbank's Rancho district from a Santa Monica developer is moving ahead with plans to call the site home. The Lycée International de Los Angeles, which has four campuses, including one each in Los Feliz and Pasadena, filed paperwork requesting an administrative use permit with the city to allow a school to operate at the site, officials said. The roughly 5-acre site is zoned for office use. Students in pre-kindergarten to 12th grade attend the bicultural and bilingual school.

English isn't Ara Armain's first language, or his second. But that didn't stop the trilingual Glendale High School senior from recently advancing to the semifinal round of an English-language poetry competition. The winners of the International Poetry Contest, sponsored by World Poetry Movement, an organization dedicated to promoting the work of amateur writers, will be announced on Feb. 1. “I was thrilled,” Armain, 19, said of receiving notice earlier this month that he had been named one of 300 semifinalists up for the $1,000 grand prize.

One day after it was widely reported in the press  that embattled Walt Disney Studios' worldwide marketing president, MT Carney, was leaving, her departure has been announced internally via a pair of memos to the staff at the Burbank entertainment giant. One was sent by the studio's chairman, Rich Ross, who hired the Hollywood outsider in April 2010: I want to share with you that MT Carney has made the decision to leave the company and return to New York to be with her children.

Armed with umbrellas and slickers, thousands of children, parents and officials crowded the streets of Glendale Wednesday morning for International Walk to School Day, designed to promote healthy lifestyles and pedestrian safety. It was the third consecutive year that local schools have taken part in the national event. Participation numbers were projected to hit 20,000, the highest of any district in California. “We got all 29 Glendale Unified schools participating this year, as well as three private schools that signed up,” said Kara Sergile, a parent at R.D. White Elementary School and a pedestrian safety advocate who spearheaded the effort.