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Greetings in Japanese sound quite odd when literally translated to English.

Studying a language other than your own native tongue is always a trip. Wrapping your head around completely different grammar and syntax rules, trying to create sounds your mouth isn't used to, sometimes learning entirely new alphabets (or characters when there is no alphabet)—all just to be able to communicate with more of your fellow human beings. (Seriously, when are we going to decide on an actual universal language?)

Linguistics is wild, as evidenced by Japanese teacher Hikari's video demonstrating what Japanese introductions would sound like if they were translated literally into English.


One of the first greetings you learn in Japanese is "hajimemashite," which is generally interpreted as "Nice to meet you," or "How do you do"—something you say when you meet someone. But the literal meaning of the phrase is "at the beginning" or "first time," which of course sounds odd in English. (Similarly to if you were to literally translate "How's it going?" from English to another language, the understood meaning of "How are you feeling right now?" wouldn't come through, since the words "it' and "going" have nothing to do with how you're feeling.)

Then there are name introductions, which seem like they should just be straight up names, but aren't because of what they mean. "I'm Under the Forest." "I'm Inside the Field." Huh? And wait til you see how they share their ages. Watch:

If Americans spoke like Japanese #japanese #japanesebelike #japaneselanguage #japaneseculturewww.youtube.com

To make things a little clearer, the name "Under the Forest" is almost certainly Morishita, a common last name in Japan. (Japanese people generally introduce themselves by last name.) The translation "under the forest" comes from Chinese characters used in Japanese, Kanji, that most Japanese last names are written in. Morishita is 森下 in Kanji, with 森 (mori) meaning "forest" and 下 (shita) meaning "below" or "under." "Inside the Field" would be the name Tanaka, with a similar explanation, but with different characters.

As far as ages go, that's a whole other cultural quirk. In Japan, time is separated into imperial eras based on whoever the emperor is, and each era has a name. "Shining harmony 63" means she was born in 1998, or the 63rd year of the Shōwa ("shining harmony") era. Moons are months, and days are, well, days.

Japan is the only country where Japanese is an official language, but thanks to the tech boom there in the 80s and 90s and the rise of the popularity of anime worldwide, the Japanese language has seen continually growing interest outside the archipelago nation. According to University of Pittsburgh, there are around 125 million Japanese speakers worldwide, with some concentrated pockets outside of Japan in Hawaii and Brazil.

(Side note: Having studied Japanese myself, I can attest that it's a very fun language to learn. The alphabets and Kanji are the hardest parts—the phonetics are consistent and the grammar is quite logical, with far fewer exceptions to the rules than English.)

In addition to videos like this one, Hikari offers Japanese lessons on her YouTube channel. You can follow her here.


This article originally appeared on 7.25.24

On screen representation — or a lack thereof — has consequences. And when people of color can't see themselves in the media because their stories have been given to white people to tell, it takes its toll in real ways.

It works the same for any marginalized group, like LGBTQ people, people living with disabilities, or people from certain religions.

This phenomenon, known as "whitewashing," is illustrated perfectly in a new gut-wrenching video by New York-based comedians Chewy May and Jes Tom. In the PSA, viewers see why the decision to cast actor Scarlett Johansson, who is white, as the lead in "Ghost in the Shell" — a film based on Japanese anime — perfectly exemplifies how whitewashing can be so harmful by putting a face to the people it hurts.


No matter how you try to defend why an actor like Johansson should play the lead in a film like "Ghost in the Shell," you can’t deny the impact it will have on audiences.

Check out the video below:

Barely three months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, allowing for the relocation of anyone on the West Coast deemed a threat to national security.

Soon, nearly 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry (many born in America and half of them children) were assigned identification numbers and loaded into buses, trains, and cars with just a few of their belongings. After a brief stay at temporary encampments, they were moved to 10 permanent, but quickly constructed, relocation centers — better known as internment camps.


Departing for relocation. Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

In 1943, renowned photographer Ansel Adams visited one of the camps.

Adams was best known for his landscape photography, with his work appearing in galleries and museums across the country. But he welcomed the opportunity to see and capture life at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the fall of 1943.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

These are just a few dozen of his photos capturing the unthinkable experience of being a prisoner of war in your own country.

Life at the internment camp was hard on the body and spirit.

1. Nestled in Owens Valley, California, between the Inyo and Sierra Nevada mountains, the camp faced harsh conditions.


Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

There were relentless blasts of desert dust, heat during the day, and punishingly cold temperatures at night.

2. There were 10,000 people crowded into 504 barracks at Manzanar, covering about 36 blocks.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

3. Each barrack was divided into four rooms, shared toilets, showers, and a dining area, offering families little to no privacy or personal space.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

Furnishings and creature comforts were sparse. Just a cot, a straw-filled mattress, and blankets. Up to eight individuals shared a 20-by-25-foot room.

4. Due to the severe emotional toll and inadequate medical care, some Japanese Americans died in the camps.

Marble monument with inscription that reads "Monument for the Pacification of Spirits." Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

Others, including some at Manzanar, were killed by guards, allegedly forresisting orders.

Though he was a civilian employed by the military, Adams was able to capture aspects of the camp that the government didn't want depicted in his work.

5. The housing section at Manzanar was surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by military police.


Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

But shots of armed soldiers, guard towers, or barbed wire weren't allowed, so Adams worked around it. Instead, he captured these subjects in the background or the shadows.

6. So while he couldn't take a photo of the guard tower, he took one from the top of it.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

As serious as conditions were, internees attempted to make the most of an unimaginable situation.

7. They were allowed to play organized sports, like volleyball.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

8. Baseball games were popular too.


Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

To maintain order, teams of players from each center were allowed to travel from camp to camp to play ball.

9. Churches and boys and girls clubs were established.

A Sunday school class at the internment camp. Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

10. There were singing groups.

The choir rehearses. Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

11. And even a YMCA.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

In the face of adversity, everyone did their best to stay busy.

12. Kids went to school...


Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

13. ...had recess...

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

14. ...and studied for uncertain futures, all behind barbed wire.

Students listen to a science lesson. Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

15. The adults worked inside Manzanar. Some maintained the dusty, arid fields.

There were 5,500 acres of land for agriculture at Manzanar. Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

16. They grew crops like leafy greens and squash.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

17. Or raised cattle.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

18. Others worked as welders...

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

19. ...nurses...

A nurse tends to babies at the orphanage. Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

20. ...scientists...

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

21. ...or shopkeepers.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

22. Workers earned $12 to $19 a month. Some pooled their earnings to start a general store, newspaper, and barbershop.

Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

By the end of the war, more than 11,000 Japanese Americans had been processed through the Manzanar camp.

And despite being held for supposedly posing a threat to national security, not one Japanese American was charged with espionage.


Photo by Ansel Adams/Library of Congress.

The Manzanar camp closed in 1945. Japanese Americans returned to neighborhoods and homes they barely recognized. And 45 years later, they received a formal apology.

In 1988, after a decade-long campaign, Congress passed The Civil Liberties Act, which required the government to pay $20,000 in reparations to each internment camp survivor. In 1990, the first of nine redress payments was made. A 107-year-old reverend, Mamoru Eto, was the first to receive his payment. Later, President George H.W. Bush delivered a formal apology.

"I took that as evidence that — in spite of the things the government did — this is a country that was big enough to say, 'We were wrong, we're sorry," one survivor told the BBC.

By standing up to hysteria and xenophobia — and refusing to forget this unforgivable era in American history — we can continue to do right by the thousands of Americans put in an unthinkable situation.

These photos remind us of why we will never go back to a place like that again.

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A mini history lesson about the concentration camps on American soil.

74 years ago, a U.S. president ordered an entire ethnic group to be placed in concentration camps on U.S. soil.

During World War II, a young boy was forced from his home with his family, placed on a cramped train, and sent to an isolated camp across the country with no knowledge of when he would be able to return home. He and his family were confined to camps for years, solely on the basis of their ethnicity.

This isn’t the story of an inhumane atrocity that happened across an ocean or in another country. It happened on U.S. soil in 1942.


Kids boarding a bus for relocation in Byron, California. Photo via U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

And the young boy in this story is George Takei, the "Star Trek" actor, who was one of more than 117,000 Japanese-Americans detained in U.S. concentration camps during the early 1940s. He talked about his experience on Democracy Now!:

"We had nothing to do with the war. We simply happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. But without charges, without trial, without due process — the fundamental pillar of our justice system — we were summarily rounded up, all Japanese Americans on the West Coast, where we were primarily resident, and sent off to 10 barb wire internment camps — prison camps, really, with sentry towers, machine guns pointed at us — in some of the most desolate places in this country: the wastelands of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, the blistering hot desert of Arizona, of all places, in black tarpaper barracks. And our family was sent two-thirds of the way across the country, the farthest east, in the swamps of Arkansas."

Japanese internment is a dark period in America's history, but in many history classrooms, the camps are only touched on briefly — if at all.

American citizens receiving their instructions for deportation. Photo via U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

In my public school U.S. history curriculum, the internment camps were just a couple of paragraphs in a textbook, and we didn't talk about it in class at all. During college and through my own research, I learned so much more about the camps and the people inside of them — and why it's still important to talk about them.

Here are four key things that you should know - but might not have learned - about the forced relocation of Japanese Americans on U.S. soil.

1. Japanese internment began Feb. 19, 1942, and most evacuees were detained in the camps for about three years.

On that day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that paved the way for detainment and the relocation of Japanese-Americans. In the coming months, almost 120,000 West Coast residents were removed from their homes and sent to 10 camps across America.

The detainees were instructed to only bring belongings that could fit in one suitcase, and they were forced to leave behind their homes, businesses, and schools. Most of them had no idea if or when they would return. Can you imagine how terrifying that would be?

Most families didn't know where they were going or when they would come back. Photo via U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

2. Most of the camps were isolated, and they lacked the resources and freedoms of the outside world.

The camps weren't fully constructed when the detainees were being evacuated, so some families were held in "assembly centers" like Tanforan, a racetrack. According to a survivor, they slept in horse stalls, didn't have access to running water or heat, and had limited access to bathrooms.

After Japanese-Americans were moved from the assembly centers to the more permanent camps, they usually lived in barracks, where there was limited privacy. The camps eventually had clinics and schools, but they were understaffed and under-resourced.

A notice informed Japanese-Americans they would be evacuated. Photo via U.S. government/Wikimedia Commons.

3. The detainees worked hard to make the camps feel like home.

Compared to the victims of the Nazi death camps, most of the people incarcerated in Japanese internment facilities had a much higher quality of life, and outright violence was rare. The detainees knew they wouldn't get to go home anytime soon, so they started making the camps their own.

Japanese-Americans wrote, published, and distributed their own newspapers in the camps. People who had been leaders in their communities pre-internment ran for elected office in their camp's community council. Young people put together bands and held dances. And even though most of the camps closed in 1945, survivors still meet periodically for reunions.


A community council holds a meeting in the Topaz, Utah, concentration camp. Photo via U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

4. When the camps closed, many Japanese-Americans didn't — or couldn't — go back home.

In his interview, George Takei said that going back to California from the camp in Arizona was a "horrific, traumatic experience." Because the internment period devastated businesses owned by Japanese-Americans, many families lived in poverty in the years after the war. The families who were detained left almost everything behind, but there was very little to come back to.

"We lost everything. We were given a one-way ticket to wherever in the United States we wanted to go to, plus $20. And many people were very embittered about their West Coast experience, and they chose to go to the Midwest, places like Chicago or Milwaukee, or further east to New Jersey, New York, Boston. My parents decided to go back to Los Angeles. We were most familiar there. But we found that it was very difficult. Housing was impossible. They would deny us housing. Jobs were very, very difficult." — George Takei, via Democracy Now!

Fumi Hayashi recounted to the Oral History Archives Project: "I remember once around Christmas time, wondering when we'd ever get out of there. And it's sort of like, 'Does the government really hate me this much?' ... It's a hard thing to accept, and there's no answer." Photo via U.S. Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons.

We want to think that something as terrible as uprooting and imprisoning an entire ethnic group could never happen in America, but it did. And it could happen again (just ask Donald Trump and his supporters).

So it's important to keep remembering—by telling our stories and listening to the people who tell theirs.