Origami | Zero Carbon Travel

In Arizona, across the Colorado River from California, there’s a desert hamlet called Poston in an area governed by the Colorado River Indian Tribes. Spanish Missionaries visited in 1775 and their King recognized tribal sovereignty. Mexico lost the whole territory after the War, and the US government established reservations to ‘protect’ the Mohave, Chemehuevi and others here. Today, despite some irrigation improvements, much of the population is poor, and each winter many RVers spend months living cheaply in the desert nearby.

But from 1942 to 1945, the US concentrated as many as 17,000 US citizens of Japanese ancestry forcibly relocated from their homes on the west coast to three camps, known as Roastin’, Toastin’ and Dustin’. The highs are over 105° all summer long. Besides the 50 year memorial (pictured above) to the families, children and highly decorated WWII veterans once incarcerated here, there’s not much left to see, except a few origami cranes left by visitors.

But there’s much to think about. Constitutional rights and freedoms, so cherished in this country, are an ‘all or nothing’ deal. For you to enjoy a right or freedom, you must recognize that same right belongs to all your fellow citizens, regardless of their background or beliefs. Our legal system depends on the idea that the law applies equally to everyone, that no one man is above the law and that there are no permanent classes of people entitled to extra privileges. If we want to continue to enjoy our own full rights as citizens, we must make sure that no other US citizens are trammeled, as they were here, ever again.

[Programming note: Monday posts for the rest of the year will be national parks. Thursdays will be other national park units and affiliates. And I may have a bonus post on a few Saturdays. I am catching up on a backlog of park visits, so even if the House Republicans shut down the parks, my posts will continue].

Off I-15 in Utah towards Great Basin, there’s an excellent museum about Topaz, one of the American Concentration Camps for US citizens of Japanese ancestry. Since it’s near the Bonneville flats, the incarcerated Americans collected shells to make art for sale (see photo), one of many detailed exhibits. The prison site itself was stripped bare, so there’s not much to see on the museum’s informative guided tour except barbed wire and a few foundations.

Fred Korematsu was one prisoner here. He lost at the Supreme Court 6-3 in 1944, but he eventually got his conviction overturned by a California court in 1983. In 2011 the DOJ issued a rare ‘Admission of Error’ in Korematsu’s case, for suppressing a military report dismissing the threat of spying by Japanese Americans (not already confined) and of racism motivating the military leadership. Another prisoner, James Wakasa, on the other hand, was shot without warning inside the fence while walking his dog. Over twenty men from Topaz died fighting in Europe for the highly honored 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Utah is a well ordered state, clean and conservative, like Japan in some ways. People prefer order to disorder, which is one reason many don’t like change. But mistakes must be fixed, or they typically get worse. Fixing the climate crisis will cause disruptions, but solving the problem is the only way to a better future.

Imperial Japan tried to impose ‘order’ on its neighbors through its military. One person’s order is another’s oppression. Order solves lots of problems, but when order is used to amplify an unfair policy, that’s what puts over 100,000 Americans including children in prison camps for four years, without trial, losing their homes, unable to communicate freely and pressured under harsh conditions.

A Japanese American project folded over 100,000 paper cranes, one to represent each American imprisoned. Orizuru are fractional wishes, and completing a thousand is meant to make a wish come true. Hanging many strings of cranes together is also an expression of solidarity, commitment and dedication in Japanese culture. But due to some failure of imagination, the cranes are kept here in storage, a few handed out to kids, instead of being displayed.

There’s not much enthusiasm at Topaz for establishing a joint venture with the park service, as the locals believe they’re doing a fine job alone. But the least the US government could do is organize a public display of the origami cranes at each of the American concentration camps it built. When order is used to coordinate and amplify wishes to make lives better, it can change the world.