Asian physician
Battles virus at clinic
Battles hate on street
— John Okamoto
John Okamoto, a member of Japanese Presbyterian Church is Seattle, is a friend, life-long public servant and dad to a doctor working in the ICU. He’s one of those people you meet and immediately know their name could be Kindness. He’s the kind of person whose unassuming presence makes your shoulders ease and whose truth-telling is at once gentle and powerful — as is his piercing exhortation delivered in haiku.
When John and I sat down for conversation, the pandemic had begun wielding fear in all of us, and some of us were growing acutely wary of a secondary virus: a virus of hate. The spread of COVID-19, from its onset in China, inflamed a pernicious spread of scapegoating suspicion and scorn against people of Asian descent. In the U.S., more than 2,000 hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) were reported in the first three months of the pandemic.
From shunning to verbal and physical assaults, racially motivated attacks against the AAPI community continue to rise. Patients in hospital beds are spitting on Asian American physicians caring for them. They yell, “Go back to your country.” People who look like me are all too familiar with being on the receiving end of taunts like this. It is a very lonely place to be.
John knows the deep cuts bigotry inflicts and the long time it takes for its bruising trauma to heal. During World War II, the Okamoto family was forced out of their home and farming property in Kent, Washington. An executive order authorized the mass incarceration of American citizens who had “the face of the enemy.” Japanese Americans were filed into buses and transported to concentration camps. Neighbors stood under signs pinned to their porches reading “Get out!” Others watched in silence.
While the family was imprisoned behind barbed wires, John’s father served in the renowned 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army. Comprised of second-generation Japanese American soldiers, the unit would become among the most decorated in the U.S. military. John’s father, Tosh Okamoto, received the Medal of Honor with others in the 442nd for their sacrifice and bravery in accomplishing the war’s most dangerous missions.
Life after the war remained entrenched in a national consciousness of contempt against Americans whose patriotism was insufficient to overcome years of racist rhetoric and legislation that deemed them as “enemy aliens.” The Okamoto family picked up what they could from their loss. They would carry on the family’s legacy of service and become community leaders and activists for the causes of the mistreated.
I have witnessed the Japanese American community be among the first to protest indignities afflicted on migrant families in detention centers. I have seen them stand with compassion and solidarity with the queer community. They are caring for forgotten veterans. They persist in the work of racial justice.
The Palestinian American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, captures the gravity of kindness that I recognize in those who have endured bitter injustice in her poem “Kindness” that begins: “Before you can know what kindness really is, you must lose things.”
Our proximity to loss grants insight and tenderness to the plight of those who are withering between regions of kindness. With their wisdom, people like John and his fourth-generation Japanese American daughter who is battling for every patient are shaping our collective aspirations for a generous and just future.
As we shared our fears about the surge of anti-Asian attacks, John lamented xenophobia’s familiar threat seething so close to a pedestaled narrative of a nation rich in diversity. How urgent it is that we each stand squarely to resist racism in all its forms!
On the threshold of a national reckoning with racism, perhaps we can meet at the juncture of pain: pain from being pressed down, pain from pressing others down. We have all lost so much. Our lament and desires from the desolate landscapes of our common history form a worthy place to cultivate the beloved community.
Charlene Jin Lee is a practical theologian and community activist based in Los Angeles.
