THE IMPERIAL PALACE: MADAME BUTTERFLY AND NISEI

Some selfies in the Imperial Palace, Chiyoda

Last afternoon, The Jones visited the Imperial Palace in Tokyo invited by the Japanese Emperor. It was an enormous pleasure for the family to be invited and they were very excited during the event.

It was an amazing visit where the family could discover the ancient Japanese lifestyle.

The Tokyo Imperial Palace is the primary residence of the Emperor of Japan. It is a large park-like area located in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo and contains buildings including the main palace, the private residences of the Imperial Family, an archive, museums and administrative offices. It is built on the site of the old Edo Castle. The total area including the gardens is 1.15 square kilometres.

 More information: Into Japan

After the capitulation of the shogunate and the Meiji Restoration, the inhabitants, including the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, were required to vacate the premises of the Edo Castle.

Previous fires had destroyed the Honmaru area containing the old donjon, which itself burned in the 1657 Meireki fire. On the night of 5 May 1873, a fire consumed the Nishinomaru Palace, formerly the shogun's residence, and the new imperial Palace Castle  was constructed on the site in 1888.

Madame Butterfly in East Garden

In the Meiji era, most structures from the Edo Castle disappeared. Some were cleared to make way for other buildings while others were destroyed by earthquakes and fire. In the late Taishō and early Shōwa period, more concrete buildings were added, such as the headquarters of the Imperial Household Ministry and the Privy Council. These structures exhibited only token Japanese elements. From 1888 to 1948, the compound was called Palace Castle. On the night of 25 May 1945, most structures of the Imperial Palace were destroyed in the Allied firebombing raid on Tokyo. 

More information: Yabai

In August 1945, in the closing days of World War II, Emperor Hirohito met with his Privy Council and made decisions culminating in the surrender of Japan at an underground air-raid shelter on the palace grounds referred to as His Majesty's Library.

Due to the large-scale destruction of the Meiji-era palace, a new main palace hall and residences were constructed on the western portion of the site in the 1960s. The area was renamed Imperial Residence in 1948, while the eastern part was renamed East Garden and became a public park in 1968.

More information: Matcha

They do not depend upon mere legends and myths. 

They are not predicated on the false conception that the Emperor is divine and that the Japanese people are superior to other races. 

Emperor Hirohito

Today, the family has enjoyed a beautiful walking across East Garden. They have revised the Past Simple and its irregular forms and they have taken profit of the day to celebrate Silvia Jones's birthday and talk about last world news, historic facts and personal preferences.

More information: Past Simple (Irregular forms)

Silvia Jones is celebrating her birthday

The family has received an unexpected visit. Maria Callas, who is a great friend of Ana-Bean Jones, has joined the family in the gardens and has offered them an incredible performance with some of the best solos of Madame Butterfly, the famous Giacomo Puccini's opera. The Jones have perceived the spirit of her around East Garden.

The Jones have talked about their favourite games because this afternoon they are visiting Nintendo Company Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment. Both enterprises are world leaders in games.

  

The Jones and their favourite games

The Grandma has explained the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II. 

It was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast. 62 percent of the internees were United States citizens.These actions were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans in the mainland U.S., who mostly lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps. The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans. Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with one drop of Japanese blood were placed in internment camps.

More information: History

 

Order 9066 against Japanese American people

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the deportation and incarceration with Executive Order 9066. Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942, while some 5,500 community leaders had been arrested immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack and thus were already in custody. The majority of nearly 130,000 Japanese Americans living in the U.S. mainland were forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942.

The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau denied its role for decades, but it became public in 2007.

More information: BBC

In 1980, under mounting pressure from the Japanese American Citizens League and redress organizations, President Jimmy Carter opened an investigation to determine whether the decision to put Japanese Americans into internment camps had been justified by the government. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The Commission's report, titled Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and concluded that the incarceration had been the product of racism. It recommended that the government pay reparations to the internees.

More information: American History

Racist campaign against Japanese American people

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government and authorized a payment to each camp survivor.  

The legislation admitted that government actions were based on race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei, literal translation: second generation; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship, and Sansei third generation; the children of Nisei. The rest were Issei first generation immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.

More information: PBS

I was four years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941 by Japan, and overnight, the world was plunged into a world war. America suddenly was swept up by hysteria. 

George Takei