Beyond Heart Mountain: An offbeat Western reinventing Superman’s ‘American Way’ By Alan O’Hashi [email protected] 303-910-5782 Draft December 1, 2019 November 12, 2019 October 23, 2019 September 5, 2019 Where were you? (Ground Zero pix, anti-Japanese button) It was an unusually hot day in September. I must have been in a hurry because I didn’t bother to turn on the Today Show or the Morning Edition on Colorado Public Radio while getting ready for my commute to work in Denver. This particular morning I took the Regional Transportation District (RTD) route 205 bus from the stop near my Boulder condo to the RTD Walnut Street station in downtown Boulder. My bus stop was next to the convenience store where I stopped most days for a cup of coffee. “Looks like it’s going to be a good one out there,” I don’t think the dark-skinned clerk understood a word I said about the great weather predicted for the day. He grinned and handed over my change. I clunked a couple cents into the plastic leave-a-penny take-a-penny tray on the counter and cut through the gas pumps to the bus stand. Living near the corner of Valmont Road and 28th Street was convenient - walking distance to the liquor store, and the Asian market. The condo complex was a converted 1970s era apartment building. Across Goose Creek was a vintage plumbing store called Rayback that stocked ancient brass fittings for small maintenance jobs. From the downtown Boulder bus station, few passengers waited to catch the B Express bus to Denver. There’s no free parking. I was okay with transferring from a local bus downtown so as to get the seat of my choice, which was one with extra legroom toward the middle of the cabin a couple rows ahead of where a wheel chair would be parked – similar to the exit row seats on an airplane. By the time we reached the last Boulder stop at the Table Mesa Park ‘n Ride, the seats were filled with commuters rattling their morning papers, cramming for college classes at the Auraria campus, reading books, listening to music on iPods, catching up on sleep. This was well before laptops, internet hot spots, and smartphones. I had a cell phone. It was a Kyocera with a personal digital assistant (PDA) built in and the size of a small box of Velveeta cheese. I didn’t think to call anyone. “Did you hear what happened in New York,” the guy sitting to me asked. “No, I hadn’t heard anything.” “An airplane crashed into one of the Twin Towers,” he said. “No, I hadn’t heard. What kind of plane?” The guy shrugged. Other passengers murmured about the news and I overheard, “It was a small plane, like a Cessna.” Hmmm, small plane, nothing to see here, folks, and soon we all returned to being immersed in ourselves. The bus pulled up to a stall in Market Street Station. We disembarked and made our ways up the stairs and escalators to the 16th Street Mall. My connection on 17th Street was for the eastbound RTD 20 bus that dropped me off near my work in a converted single-family home in an older neighborhood. I walked up the steps and creaked open the wrought iron screen door before winding my way up the stair case towards my office. “You can go home if you want,” my boss greeted me at the top of the stairs. “Two planes hit the World Trade Center. There isn’t much more information but all the air traffic is grounded.” “There was talk on the bus about a plane hitting one of the towers,” I said. My colleagues had all gone. I had the longest commute to and from Boulder and the last to hear. I walked back to the bus station and noticed the eerily quiet streets - no car engines, no airplane noise, not many people out and about. When I stood waiting for the light at Broadway and the 16th Street Mall, I glanced up at the Denver World Trade Center that I later learned was a similar target as its namesake in Lower Manhattan. The bus back to Boulder was a-buzz with rumor, but I didn’t engage. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Remember Pearl Harbor button, Osama bin Laden button) There’s a movie called The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) that stars Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal. It’s about a flying saucer that comes to earth and warns the earthlings that unless humans quit fighting among themselves, the planet will be destroyed. As a demonstration of their cosmic abilities, the aliens neutralize electricity and offer an ultimatum that people better live in peace or face annihilation. Not much explanation is necessary about what happened on September 11, 2001, other than it was a day the earth stood still. You likely know where you were and what you were doing that day. My unremarkable commute to work that summer morning is one I’ll always remember. When the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were hit by three commercial passenger jets, and a fourth that crashed in a Pennsylvania field, those terrorist attacks would fan the flames of racial and ethnic xenophobia in America that was sparked similarly when the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 and drew the United States into World War II. After the attack, in May 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) signed Executive Order (E.O.) 9066 that ordered, among other things, Japanese - particularly those living on the West Coast - to uproot themselves from their homes and businesses. There was fear that there may be Japanese spies embedded within the general citizenry on the West Coast. Throughout Beyond Heart Mountain, I provide some insight into the huge government bureaucracy that was established as a result of that national paranoia. Parts of the federal government were reorganized, and new agencies established to manage somewhere between 112,000 to 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent who were sorted out in 15 assembly centers before being herded up and shipped by rail to one of 10 makeshift war relocation centers constructed in remote places within the interior of the United States. To say that E.O. 9066 dug a cultural trench between Asians and white America is an understatement. While researching this story, I learned the American quest for cultural and racial homogeneity dating back to George Washington in the 18th century and continuing through history to Donald Trump in the 21st century. It’s not like the U.S. government always propped up a xenophobic culture. After the United States left Vietnam in the capable hands of Communists in 1975, thousands of “boat people” travelled to the free world, including the United States. The military set up detention camps at several army bases to temporarily house Vietnamese refugees. The week before Saigon - now Ho Chi Minh City - fell, U.S. Navy ships and its air force evacuated 95,000 South Vietnamese. Later in 1975, another 125,000 refugees left South Vietnam and received at U.S. military bases in the Philippines and Guam before being transferred to other domestic installations where they were housed in preparation for permanent resettlement. At the beginning of the mass exodus, there wasn’t a strong consensus among Americans around whether South Vietnamese refugees resettlement in the United States was a good idea or not. Despite the split public opinion, the U.S. Congress approved the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act and signed into law by President Gerald Ford in May 1975. To prevent the refugees from forming ethnic ghettos and minimize their impact on local communities, they were distributed around the country, but over time, many coalesced in California and Texas. President Gerald Ford allowed Vietnamese refugees to enter the United States under a special status along with $405 million in resettlement aid and pardoned disgraced President M. Nixon, are two factors that contributed to his 1976 reelection defeat to Jimmy Carter. The earth is still standing still. Superman’s ‘American Way’ (Alan, Grandparents, Zorro sword pix, Superman Kellogg button) I called up my mom to talk about 9/11 sometime after news sources established that al-Qaeda, the extremist Islamic network founded by Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam, was responsible for the attacks. After exchanging a few pleasantries and condolences about what happened she said, “Thank God no Asians were involved.” Both my parents and their families had first hand experience and knowledge about racism toward Japanese and, by association, all other Asians following Pearl Harbor. “I feel for Muslims, but now they’ll be watching all of us,” my mom said referencing anyone with brown skin would be scrutinized by the dominant culture. “You be good. You’ll be noticed if you aren’t.” she always warned me. “That’s just the way it’s always been. Don’t draw attention to yourself.” There was a 1950s TV program that boys, including myself, watched religiously. The narrator at the beginning of the show set the story backdrop: “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look up in the sky – it’s a bird, it’s a plane! No, it’s Superman. Yes, it’s Superman. Strange visitor from another planet who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men; Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American Way.” The Adventures of Superman (1958) “Superman’s American Way” exemplifies a society that in theory is fair and provides opportunity for all, regardless of individual or group identity.