Mr. Nakata & Dr. Seuss
Note: I’m posting this story with Mr. Nakata’s permission.
The week before last, I and more than two hundred faith leaders from around the state of Oregon sat and listened to the stories of George Yoshio Nakata who, at the age of nine, was taken along with his family to a racially-based concentration camp in Idaho. His first-hand account stunned and silenced the attendees, many of whom thought we had done a good job learning our history about the Japanese internment camps, but most of whom had never sat with a survivor to hear his story first-hand.
In the course of sharing his memories of growing up in Portland’s Japantown, Mr. Nakata told of the epithets and abuse he suffered when he ventured too far outside the borders of his proscribed neighborhood. Then he took what seemed at first like a turn down a side trail.
“You know Theodor Geisel,” he said with a hurt and angry set to his jaw. “Dr. Seuss. He was honored for his books for children — but we never honored him in our house, because he always drew Asian people with squinty eyes and buck teeth.” The hurt in Mr. Nakata’s voice was clear, as he repeated, “We never honored him in our house.”
At the end of Mr. Nakata’s talk, a sacred silence settled over everyone present. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced on Zoom. In the hushed conversation our small group had after his presentation, we committed to do better than our congregational ancestors who ignored or even condoned the treatment of Mr. Nakata and his family.
A few days later, the estate of Dr. Seuss announced they were no longer publishing six of his titles, because of their racist imagery. And the public narrative around that announcement focused almost entirely on the white people feeling like they were losing some part of their childhood or culture or whatever.
However, all week, I have only been able to think of an elderly man remembering himself as a nine-year-old boy chased down the street by epithets, and the pain and anger that Dr. Seuss’s books reignited in him. Our small group committed to do better by Mr. Nakata and his descendants than our ancestors did. No longer publishing or reading six books seems like one very small way to do that.
Subscribe to receive email notifications each time Tyler posts a new article
