Scapegoat Cities: Recent Episodes
Eric Muller
Between 1942 and 1945, the US government locked up tens of thousands of Japanese American citizens not because of anything they’d done but because of who they were. Scapegoat Cities is a podcast that helps you know and feel what this episode of mass injustice was. Each episode tells one true and moving human story drawn from historian Eric Muller’s two decades of research, reminding us of the devastating harm that can arise when a frightened nation turns against its own people.
In the hot spring of 1943, a lonely old Japanese prisoner went missing from the Gila River Relocation Center in southern Arizona. This episode introduces Mr. Otomatsu Wada and tells the story of his disappearance and of the efforts to find him.
The story is true in every essential detail.
Episode 8
Episode 5
Moe Yonemura was a "big man on campus" at UCLA at a time when there were almost no Nisei on the UCLA campus. Cheerleader, elected student body official, fundraiser, spirit-builder -- Moe did it all. And he kept it up even after he and his family were forced behind barbed wire in the spring of his senior year. When the US Army made it possible for the Nisei to volunteer in 1943 -- to join a racially segregated batallion -- Moe was among the first to join up.
This is the remarkable story of an irrepressible young man.
The removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans in World War II was one of the country's most egregious injustices. This introductory episode of Scapegoat Cities gives a brief overview of the events and explains how the podcast will bring the history to life.