From Heart Mountain to Iraq: Lieutenant Watada and a Long Line of Resistance

Abstract

First Lieutenant Ehren Watada is a third-generation Japanese American who refused military orders to deploy to Iraq. He talks by video conference with second generation Japanese Americans Frank Emi and Yosh Kuromiya, leaders of the World War II Japanese American internee draft resistance. Watada is traversing their path of solitary protest. He is refusing to be deployed as an officer in an Iraq war he believes to be illegal.

The setting is apt The resisters speak from their homes, sharing a sense of family and cultural identity -- bonds forged across time and space by race and moral conscience. An especially appropriate meeting. For Watada, these men guide and inspire. For Emi and Kuromiya, Watada recalls the power and pain of resistance.