Monday, February 27, 2017

2017 3.11 Events in Boston

If you are aware of a 3.11 event that I have not listed, please post a comment with a link to the event or details if the info isn't on a public webpage. I will update this post if I learn of any other events.

This year is the sixth anniversary of the tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear disaster that happened in Japan on March 11, 2011. Fukushima continues to face challenges in the massive clean up at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant which "the Japanese government estimates will take four decades and cost 8 trillion yen ($70.6 billion)". Some people in Tohoku are still living in "temporary housing". Communities have shrunk due to people moving away for jobs and housing and the likelihood of being able to repopulate grows smaller with every passing year.

Although the world's attention has moved on to other disasters, some groups in Boston continue to be involved in educating the public and supporting Japan through this crisis. If you are interested in learning more, please consider attending one of these events. Events are listed in chronological order.

I'm sorry I didn't get this post up soon enough to help publicize The Japan Society of Boston's event, Research and Reflections on Fukushima Today: Recovery Progress Since the Triple Disaster of 03.11.11, which was held on February 21, 2017.

Update 3/1/17: I just learned that MIT Japanese Tea Ceremony will not hold their annual 3.11 Japan Memorial Charity remembrance and fundraising event this year.


3.11 Memorial Event


Tewassa, a Cambridge-based volunteer group that produces "message quilts" for schools and organizations in the Tōhoku region, will be holding a memorial event.

Date & Time
Saturday, March 4, 2017
4:00 - 6:00pm

Location
GrayMist Studio & Shop
364 Huron Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Public Transit & Parking
GrayMist is accessible by the 72 and 75 buses from Harvard Square. There is free on-street parking along Huron Ave. and neighboring streets.


Children of the Tsunami Screening & Fundraiser for Ashinaga



 
Children of the Tsunami (watch for free on vimeo)
Directed & written by Dan Reed
2012 | Japan | 59 mins | Documentary  
On March 11th 2011 Japan was hit by the greatest tsunami in a thousand years. Through compelling testimony from 7-10 year-old survivors, this film reveals how the deadly wave and the Fukushima nuclear accident have changed children's lives forever. The story unfolds at two key locations: a primary school where 74 children were killed by the tsunami; and a school close to the Fukushima nuclear plant, attended by children evacuated from the nuclear exclusion zone.

The Tufts Japanese Culture Club's event is a fundraiser to benefit Ashinaga, a Japan-based non-profit that provides financial, educational, and emotional support to children worldwide "who have lost one or both parents as a result of illness, accident/disaster, or suicide, as well as children who have a parent with a disability that prevents them from working". Since 2011, the Tufts JCC* has been very active in fundraising and educating the Tufts community on the ongoing post-3.11 challenges.

Snack Sale & Crane Folding

Stop by the Mayer Campus Center to purchase mochi, cookies and rice crackers! JCC* students will also be folding origami cranes for a senbazuru (one thousand origami cranes) which will be installed later in the Tisch Library.

Date & Time
Thursday, March 9, 2017
noon - 3:00pm

Location
Tufts University
Mayer Campus Center
44 Professors Row, Medford, MA 02155


Children of the Tsunami Film Screening

Date & Time
Thursday, March 9, 2017
8:00pm

Location
Tufts University
Aidekman Arts Center
Alumnae Lounge
40 Talbot Ave., Medford, MA 02155
Directions & Parking

Admission
Free, but donations for Ashinaga gratefully accepted.


Voices from the Waves (Nami no Koe) | Shinchimachi


Screening will be followed by Q&A with Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Film Director and Reischauer Institute Resident Fellow.

Moderator: Alexander Zahlten, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Voices from the Waves (Nami no Koe) | Shinchimachi
Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Ko Sakai
2013 | Japan | 103 mins | Documentary

From 2011 to 2013, RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI and Ko Sakai conducted a series of interviews with residents in the Tohoku region of northern Japan, an area heavily hit by both the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. Their research resulted in three films which have since come to be known as the Tohoku Trilogy: The Sound of the Waves (Nami no oto 2011), Voices from the Waves (Nami no koe 2013), and Storytellers (Utau hito, 2013). In Voices from the Waves, residents from the region face the camera in close-up view to deliver recollections of the earthquake and tsunami. Centering on the rich regional folk tradition of storytelling, the film explores the experience of discovery in the encounter between speaker and listener. Through Hamaguchi’s lens, Voices from the Waves poignantly showcases how a single event may live a thousand lives through the act of telling and how different voices can render that one event into similar yet unique pieces of storytelling. This interaction between speaker and listener becomes an empowering and transformative process, an affirmation of human resilience, and provides hope for recovery and a return to normalcy in the region. (Screening time: 103 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles)

Reischauer Institute Japan Forum special film presentation

Date & Time
Friday, March 10, 2017
4:00 - 6:15pm

Location
Harvard University
Kang Room (S050), Japan Friends of Harvard Concourse, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138


トレイン トレイン 

TRAIN TRAIN


Students from Tohoku University of Art and Design are coming to Boston Children's Museum for the fifth year to mark the anniversary of 3.11. For the third year the students will have an art and friendship exhibit. The public is invited to attend the exhibit opening. The exhibit is open through Monday, September 30, 2017. Children can meet the artists from Japan and engage in a hands-on activity. See photos from 2014 (here and here) when they had fun making monsters. The exhibit is brought to the museum by artist Minatsu Ariga and her “ART THINKING” project team at the university.

Exploring trains as a symbol of determination and kindness carrying HOPE to our Future!
This art exhibition “トレイン トレイン TRAIN TRAIN” invites visitors on an imaginary adventure to our future.

Trains are not quitters. They just keep moving forward every day whether in the rain, in the wind, against the summer heat, or against the winter snow. Trains often remind us of the importance of hard work, patience, tenacity, and willpower.

Trains carry many things and people, and trains help them reach to their destinations. Trains remind us of the importance of kindness, generosity, and compassion for all humanities and the earth we live in.

In this art exhibition, artists use “trains” as their storytellers and welcome us to reflect our lives through exploring those stories. Where is your train going? Between a station and a station, trains connect us together and lead us to our tomorrow with hopes and dreams.... Please also tell us your train stories. What is your train story like? Is it romantic, dynamic, soulful, gentle...?

The artworks in this exhibition are created by the members of the “ART THINKING” project team at Tohoku University of Art & Design in Japan. After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in their hometown in March 2011, they decided to use the special power of ART to make the world a better place and connect with many friends like you! So they bought this exhibition to Boston as their fourth annual international friendship making project.

Our hope is that this exhibition also brings opportunities for the visitors to peek into today’s youth culture and children’s experience in Japan. Visitors are encouraged to make connections and share their own stories. Through this cross-cultural experience in this art exhibition “トレイン トレイン TRAIN TRAIN”, we hope to engage visitors in joyful discovery of learning and foster their appreciation of the world.

Date & Time
Friday, March 10, 2017
6:00 - 8:00pm

Saturday, March 11, 2017
12:00 - 3:00pm


Location
Boston Children's Museum, Japanese House Gallery 
308 Congress St., Boston, MA 02210

Admission
Please see the museum's website for admission details.
Please note that "Adults unaccompanied by children must leave proper photo identification at the Admissions Desk. Examples: State Driver’s License or Passport."


Cranes on the Square


Cranes on the Square 2016
This year is the fifth annual Cranes on the Square event organized by local Japanese language teacher Timothy Nagaoka. Volunteers will teach people how to fold origami cranes which will form a temporary public art piece in Copley Square then be collected and delivered to people in the disaster area. See photos from last year's event here.

Date & Time
Sunday, March 12, 2017
11:30am - 4:30pm

Location
Copley Square, Boston, MA 02116

Sunday, February 19, 2017

2017 Day of Remembrance Events in Boston

 San Francisco, California, 1942.
Exclusion Order posted at First and Front Streets directing removal of persons of
Japanese ancestry from the first San Francisco section to be effected by the evacuation.
Dorothea Lange, National Archives Identifier: 536017


Today is the 75th anniversary of the Day of Remembrance, the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the US government to incarcerate Americans and foreign nationals during WWII. The largest DOR event being organized in the Boston area by the New England chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and the MIT Center for International Studies is on Saturday. There is also an event at Tufts on Thursday.

If anyone knows of any other DOR events happening later this month, please let me know and I will update this post. You can also submit events to the Never Again Facebook community that was put together by people in the national Japanese American community. The community is public but note that the Events page doesn't seem to be visible if you don't have a Facebook account.


Executive Orders - Past and Present


Please join Tufts Japanese Culture Club and Muslim Student's Association to commemorate Day of Remembrance. Together, we remember the lives affected and lost by Executive Order 9066, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and authorized the forced removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast during World War II. Through our personal stories of family members interned and Islamophobic violence following 9/11, we strive to illuminate moments in American history in which groups are casted as “enemy alien” and disloyal. We must view today’s Executive Orders against immigration as fully connected to the past.

This evening's event will feature:

- "PILGRIMAGE", a documentary by Tad Nakamura that tells the inspiring story of how an abandoned WWII concentration camp for Japanese Americans has been transformed into a symbol of retrospection and solidarity for people of all ages, races and nationalities in our post 9/11 world.

- PERSONAL STORY SHARING about our families' experiences in internment and following 9/11. Hear from Japanese Culture Club and Muslim Student's Association members, Anna Kimura, Joseph Tsuboi, Chelsea Hayashi, Shaan Shaikh, and Nazifa Sarawat.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Co-sponsored by Tufts University Asian American Center

Date & Time
Thursday, February 23, 2017
8:00 - 9:30pm

Location
Aidekman Arts Center
Alumnae Lounge
40 Talbot Ave., Medford, MA 02155
Directions & Parking


Starr Forum: National Security & Civil Liberties: 1942 & 2017 

(Facebook event page)

The panel will begin with reflections on the 75th anniversary of internment of Japanese Americans, then assess and respond to issues raised by the current wave of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

Invocation: Hoda Elsharkawi, MIT Muslim Chaplain

Moderator: Kenneth Oye, MIT Political Science and NE JACL Co-President

Panelists:
- Paul Watanabe, Director of UMass Institute for Asian American Studies
- Margie Yamamoto, NE JACL Co-President incarcerated as a baby during WWII
- Barbara J. Dougan, Civil Rights Director of Council on American Islamic Relations of Massachusetts
- Nadeem Nazem, Cambridge City Council
- Shannon Al-Wakeel, Executive Director of Muslim Justice League and Massachusetts ACLU Board Member


Refreshments provided.

Sponsors: MIT Center for International Studies; UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies; Asian American Journalists Association, New England Chapter; Asian American Resource Workshop; and New England JACL


Date & Time
Saturday, Februrary 25, 2017
2:00 - 4:00pm
Panel will be streamed on the MIT Center for International Studies Facebook page

Location
MIT Media Laboratory
Bartos Theater
20 Ames St., E15-070, Cambridge, MA 02142

Parking & Transportation
Two hour metered street parking is limited due to construction and Cambridge tickets aggressively. There are several nearby parking garages, but all are expensive.

The closest T stop is Kendall/MIT.