George Haruyoshi Ishihara

George Haruyoshi Ishihara / February 22, 1921 - March 17, 2009

Ishihara Park is named in honor of Mr. George Haruyoshi Ishihara, a resident of Santa Monica’s Pico Neighborhood from 1958 to 2009. Mr. Ishihara was a Japanese-American raised in Washington and Northern California.

During World War II, Mr. Ishihara enlisted in the United States Army and served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

He was a member of the 552nd Field Artillery Battalion that liberated Jewish people held captive at the Dachau Germany Internment Camp and other surrounding camps.

During this same time, Mr. Ishihara’s family was separated and interned at two relocation camps in the United States due to their Japanese heritage.

Given his enlistment in the US Army, Mr. Ishihara was able to negotiate the reunion of his family at the Minidoka Relocation Camp where they stayed until their release on September 25, 1945.

Mr. Ishihara moved to Santa Monica in 1958 where he and his wife, Chizuko, raised two children.

He was well-regarded by neighbors and served the local community through volunteer work and involvement in the Santa Monica Gardeners Association and the Japanese American Museum.

In 2009, Mr. Ishihara passed away in Santa Monica at the age of 88. In memoriam.

[americanifesto - 場黑麥 - jpr - urbanartopia - whorphan]

a familiar troll

A troll haunts my feed, always lurking, always waiting. From behind a blind he pounces on pieces I post to my page, then lashes out at me with withering hatred designed to harm. He is family, you see, and has given himself leave to flense and dig and root and tear, shredding at my social postings publicly.

There are anger and frustration behind his words, volumes of simmering rage that have cleared finally the cresting dams of reason, and of rhyme. Upset he seems at the state of things in this here land of plenty, blinded by a steady blast of racist white-pride bloggers. Perhaps something inside him is wounded at the thought that privileges are ending.

To respond to injury with injury goes against the ancient teachings, but failing to respond in defense of myself leaves mine own heartstrings wounded. Obscurity, then, is my only redoubt, to which I now rush gladly.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

bare and spill

Having spent the past year experimenting on his friends and family (without their consent, of course) and probing just how far he could push an ego until it fought back, this liesmith finds that many Americans have grown accustomed to a person baring his soul and spilling his guts at the drop of a hat, and that baring and spilling is now so commonplace that it causes a stir if does not occur as expected. Instead of being a rare, cathartic event during which one party helps the other deal with or process a traumatic or important event, baring and spilling has become as routine as saying Thank You to a door held open out of politeness – if it does not occur, the person who refuses to bare and spill is looked upon with contempt, and treated with disdain. (This bad habit has an evil twin: that of saying “I Love You" 70 times a day to persons one doesn't really love quite enough to merit saying it to them constantly.) Taking his experiment one step further, the author has stopped baring and spilling to persons to whom he had previously talked unfettered about everything, which has lead to a variety of changes in a number of relationships.

In part, he blames daytime television shows for this overall shift in American habits; their tendency to thrust behavior previously reserved for the therapist's office before the eyes of emotionally-repressed Ynki housewives seems to have helped convince these women to search for the same kind of emotional release in their relationships with girlfriend and husband. (Rarely if ever do the daytime hosts warn of or outline the risks associated with undertaking psychological counseling on one's own.) Guests to these talk shows would routinely break down, releasing their pent-up angers and fears and joys and proclaiming how wonderfully purified they felt after having bared their souls. Housewives whose lives are often ruled by routine soon became addicted to the idea of release and emotional excitement without fully understanding the dangers associated with unassisted, amateur psychology. Some stones are best left unturned, and some secrets were never intended to leave the mental closets in which they reside, but the addiction to backyard pseudo-psychology grew, and spread; it has become so intricately enmeshed in our current society as to be one of its more common features. Today, we seldom accept statements at face value or respect the right of our counterpart to his modicum of privacy, preferring rather to keep prying and peeling back the layers until – for good or ill – we have peered into the tenderest folds of our victim's most dark and dismal core. (The author is guilty of this behavior, just like most other Americans.)

People who pry so incessantly rarely care about helping others lessen emotional turmoil or improve mental well-being; they care more about the power they feel watching a being just as fragile as they are flounder about before he descends into a spiritual malaise of his own making. How, though, might one avoid the trap of the pseudo-psychologist and maintain a pure and honest heart? By staying quiet, politely refusing to play along, and keeping one's business to oneself. We who understand the raw and awesome power of full disclosure, therefore, sparingly spill and barely bare; some beasts are simply best left chained.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥