Grandma’s blackberry pie, Executive Order 9066 and the Fourth of July | Editorial

Independence Day makes me think of my grandma.

Fourth of July on our farm meant grandma would bake wild blackberry pies and make homemade vanilla ice cream. Grandma and I would go pick the berries. The truth was grandma would pick them and I would eat most of what made it into my bucket. The best part of that deal was I didn’t get in trouble and still got to eat all the pie I wanted, which was a lot.

Grandma made her crust with lard, still the best and most flaky crust I have ever eaten. She topped her pie with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Fourth of July brings back the memory of that wild blackberry pie, the days on my folk’s farm on top of the hill and grandma.

Independence Day also brings back the memory of a Fourth of July grandma told me a story that has stuck with me for more than 50 years.

Grandma talked about the internment of the Japanese-American farmers who had lived in the valley after the beginning of World War II in 1942. How the government took their property and possessions and put the people in internment camps.

She told me about an auction that was held by the government, selling farm equipment taken from the people  sent to the camps. She said farmers she and grandpa knew went down and bought the equipment for very low prices.

Grandma and grandpa had about a 25-acre farm in Enumclaw and they made a go of it during the Depression. Grandpa milked the cows in the morning and worked in the woods during the day. I’m sure grandma and grandpa could have used some of that farm equipment.

She told me grandpa refused to buy any of the equipment because he knew those farmers. Grandma and grandpa thought it was wrong. Grandma still thought it was wrong nearly 20 years later, when she was telling me about it.

Grandma and grandpa knew what that war meant. They lost their 19-year-old son Elmer, my uncle, in a daylight raid over Berlin. He was a tail gunner on Idiot’s Delight, a B-17. His death was a tragedy in their lives, but, grandma and grandpa’s sense of what was right and what this country should stand for was not affected by their son’s death.

United States Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942 and resulted in the internment of thousands of Japanese people who were Americans. There were also people of German and Italian heritage taken, but the vast majority were Japanese.

The order was challenged and went to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Korematsu v. United States. On the 6-3 decision the Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to carry out order 9066.

This decision has not been overturned and it still allows our government for national security reasons to take away the Constitutional rights of a people based on race.  I am not arguing the right or wrong of the decision or the issue of national security in time of war versus Constitutional rights.

There is a high legal standard to be met for an order like 9066 to be judged by the courts as valid, but the order still stands today as a legal precedent. We should all be aware of it and the twists and turns a country’s psyche takes in times of national distress.

The meaning of Independence Day to me is a discussion of who we are and who we should be as a people when times are good and when we are threatened.

National emergencies can bring out the worst in the worst and best in the best.

Thoughtful dialogue, awareness of our nation, our community and participating in the experiment of governing is what will protect our independence.

This means participating in our local communities. All the acts of working out governing on a daily basis adds up across the nation to the sum of what America is today.

Newspapers have a profound responsibility to tell the stories of the community and to let voices of the community be heard.

I am trying to do this every day, not always as well as I should or I would like. I believe participation is the key. Dialogue in the newspapers, website, blogs, social media like Facebook and Twitter, and face to face — it all matters. These are the ways for us to talk, listen and think about who we are, what we have done and what we should become in the future.

I believe it is important that we leave something for our children beyond the desire for the best house, the biggest RV and property on the lake.

Grandma left me with the memory of wild blackberry pie with homemade vanilla ice cream and a story about who my grandparents were as Americans.

I hope I can do the same.