Ozomatli brings me back!

Something about the move and the transition to NC threw me off completely... but I am back, though we'll see how the blogging transition goes. Here are some things I've skipped blogging about:

1) Well, this isn't a skip. I went to see Ozomatli last night. Great guys, awesome show; kind of odd venue, since it was a concert hall, and people were torn between sitting and standing. Especially in the balcony, since the ushers were doing their best to prevent anyone from moving around significantly. I can understand that you don't want any diving.

2) Superchunk! My new hometown band. I went to a concert at the Duke art museum, and it was also awesome. I happily head-banged, or at least head-bopped, the whole time.

3) Sadly, I missed seeing Billy Bragg. The non-classical musical scene around here is pretty good; if I had any taste for bluegrass and country, I'd be in heaven.

4) At long last, I am reading Mark Kurlansky's Cod. Almost done. Rare that I spread out reading a book this long, but it's not suspenseful. I mean, I know what happens to the cod.

5) No travels lately. San Antonio in November.

6) Been on a huge Ricky Gervais kick lately. I generally am, since I adore him, but I polished off all of Extras and am moving backwards to the Office. I'm furious that no sooner do I leave Chicago than he shows up there to do a standup gig. How much do you want to bet he ain't hitting Raleigh anytime soon?

Go for what?

Who doesn't know what 'go for broke' means, even if it's not used every day? There was a time when it was a weird, unknown slang phrase, which is how it became the motto of the 442nd, the Japanese American infantry regiment of WWII that became the most decorated unit of its size in American military history.  These men came from the internment camps and Hawaii, leaving their incarcerated families behind, to fight to defend the rights and privileges that they were being denied. Their heroism is really one of the remarkable stories of the war, and of civil rights history.

I was honored to meet some veterans who were hanging out by the Go for Broke monument in Little Tokyo, L.A. That's my photo with one of them, standing in the half-moon. To make it even better, the photo was taken by a vet who served with the Military Intelligence Services in the Pacific, which is an even more untold story.

When I say 'hanging out,' of course I mean volunteering to educate and raise awareness of the Go for Broke Foundation, which does wonderful oral history work.  They hope to raise the funds to build a facility behind the monument, which would put it within a stone's throw of the Japanese American National Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art's outpost.  It would be a great addition to that area.  Alas, like all other fundraising efforts, they've been hit hard.

Luck of the Irish

Since St. Patrick's Day is this month, I should offer up at least a few Irish-themed posts, right? Well, here's one for you: a little-known, overlooked b&w film that uses "luck of the Irish" as a catchphrase.

It's called Go for Broke!, and it's a film about the 442nd, the all-Japanese American army regiment of World War II that was the most highly decorated unit of its size in U.S. military history -- multiple Purple Hearts per man, and so forth. This heroic regiment was made up of men from Hawaii and from the internment camps, and they were most famous for rescuing the "Lost Battalion" -- a somewhat controversial mission, in which a whole regiment was sent to rescue a hundred trapped men.

The film itself is surprisingly good, actually, with a lot of funny and heartwarming scenes and a message of tolerance and overcoming prejudice. It reminded me quite a bit of the more famous film Stalag 17, about a bunker of diverse POWs in Nazi Germany. Naturally, there are some un-PC elements as well, like the focus on joking about the struggles of the short Japanese Americans, while blithely ignoring the ones who are as tall as their commanding officer, played by Van Johnson, the versatile leading man who died this year. Many of the soldiers were played by real-life veterans of the 442, which just makes it even more satisfying.

"Go for broke!" is their motto, and apparently they were the ones who made it famous; they also use a number of Japanese phrases, and there's a truly hilarious scene when they start speaking Japanese on the communication lines at the front, throwing the Nazis into total confusion. As for "luck of the Irish"? Well, in what is practically a staple of Japanese American lit or film, there's a character named Ohara.