Full text of DOI:10.1111/j.1545-5300.2002.40102000009.x

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ering changing their names. This is not new. It happened before September 11th but I
could never understand the context before. I could not see the self-stripping of identity
as a survival mechanism, as a way to attain a feeling of safety. People coming to this
country fully aware of the stereotypes of Arabs as terrorist and Muslims as fanatics
needed to distance themselves from these images by changing their names. The irony
is that in these kinds of circumstances, no matter what your name is or how long you
have been in this country, or how much you have assimilated, your origins can be
traced and can be used against you. It is painful to know that many Arabs and Muslims
have been detained by the FBI. It is painful to know that civil rights are being violated
for the sake of national security.
“Which brings us to a question we all have to answer as therapists: Since it is our job
to provide a safe environment in which our clients can self-disclose their true and
innermost feelings, how can we achieve this? In the current climate, I am not sure I can
encourage a client with ties to Afghanistan, for example, to express his rage against
American foreign policy as his relatives are being bombed. As a responsible therapist
who is acutely aware that freedom of speech may not exist for all people equally, I am
also aware that the Afghan community may have no alternative right now to somati-
zation. Reports are being heard that the elderly are suffering from a wide range of
medical problems, including strokes, as they watch villages being bombed. The normal
channels for expression and protest may lead to arrest, detainment, or at the very
least, interrogation by the FBI.
“At this time, more than any other, I fear that Muslims and Arabs will not come
forward for treatment. We, as therapists, need to reach out to the community and show
our support and willingness to help. We need to communicate respect for this culture
as one of the many cultures that make up this world. I am reminded of a verse from the
Qur’an (49:13) in which God says He created us as many peoples and tribes so that we
may know one another.”
ق
As a Japanese American . . . *
NORMA AKAMATSU, MSW†
Fam Proc 41:9–11, 2002
S a Japanese-American, the events of September 11th generate distinct and
A
perhaps unique resonances. The many analogies to Pearl Harbor evoke not only
the universal American shock, horror, and outrage at that surprise military attack, but
*
The original version of this essay appeared as a “Letter” in Comment 6 (September 18):4–5, 2001,
Dulwich Centre Publications, Adelaide, South Australia.
Northampton MA; e-mail: AkaNaoko@aol.com.
†
Fam. Proc., Vol. 41, Spring, 2002

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FAMILY PROCESS
summon other associations for me as well. Pearl Harbor, the “first battle of the
American involvement in World War II,” was also the trigger for a definitive and
culminating expression of decades of anti-Japanese sentiment and anti-Asian racism
in the U.S. With the signing of Executive Order 9066, in the wake of Pearl Harbor,
approximately 120,000 Japanese American residents, including US citizens, in an
unprecedented abrogation of their civil rights, were ordered to leave their homes and
incarcerated, a mandatory “relocation” from the West Coast. This was justified by war
hysteria and, according to some analyses, importantly motivated by the economic
benefits of removing Japanese farm labor and farm owners from the marketplace.
Current reports of anti-Arab sentiment, verbal attacks, and vandalism of Muslim
mosques cannot but recall the Japanese American history. There are clear voices of
reason among local and federal government leaders, including New York Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani and President Bush who warned against the danger of “hate crimes.”
Yet, the inchoate grief, confusion, anxiety, and the shockwaves of loss and a sorrow of
unimaginable multiplication can find easy expression in an indiscriminate, angry
scapegoating.
My father, an issei or first-generation Japanese native living in New York, was
arrested by the FBI and “detained” on Ellis Island shortly after December 7, 1941 for
3
months. Because of his central position in the Japanese American community as the
Methodist minister of an ethnic church, he was deemed a “potentially dangerous
enemy alien.” As he was being released from custody, he was summoned to appear
before a federal Magistrate. He often told the story of taking this opportunity to protest
the denial of due process he had experienced and the paradox that he was not a citizen
because of exclusionary laws denying him that opportunity. “If we are fighting for
democracy abroad, don’t you think it’s high time we started to practice it at home?” he
asked. He feared “they might throw me back in jail and throw away the keys,” but
always ended the story with the Magistrate’s simple response, “Thank you, Reverend,”
as he was sent home. (My mother’s family, I should point out, did not so quickly return
home, but remained in relocation camps for the duration of the war.)
In the wake of the terrorist attack last week, I have been aware of the language of
having no language—“disbelief,” “incredible,” “surreal,” “incomprehensible.” I e-mailed
friends in Australia about my daughter’s feeling a new and “nameless” fear. I have
noted curious language usages, like “sleeper,” the reference to terrorists who spend
long periods of time in a foreign location, blending into local communities so that their
activity is less easy to detect. My anxiety increases as this is obviously a perfect set-up
for inflaming xenophobia and irrational suspicions about all Middle-Eastern and other
Muslim people. Like “hidden communists,” such enemies can’t be seen so you can also
never know if they’re NOT there. The “double-think” language of the Vietnam years
begins to echo again. Some seize upon traditional American values and admonish us
to garner our “will” and “resolve” and forsake the “useless exercise of exploding SCUD
missiles in empty buildings,” rallying Americans to get beyond their “squeamishness”
and pursue an “effective” retaliation. When linked to processes of scapegoating and
“otherization,” we run a great risk of a cataclysmic dehumanization of those who look
like our assailants and a retaliation that draws in other innocent civilians. In the
words of the Very Reverend Nathan Baxter, Dean of the National Cathedral, at
Friday’s national day of prayer: “In fighting evil, let us not become the evil we deplore.”
The New York Times acknowledged newscaster Tom Brokaw’s comparison of the
scene of the devastated World Trade Center to a “post-nuclear winter” as the defini-

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tively apt description. But no one makes explicit the obvious reference, no one speaks
the names—Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Approximately 140,000 people were killed as a
result of this “last battle of W.W.II,” the ultimate attack on a civilian population. The
circumstances were vastly different, but that bombing, like the terrorist conflagration
Americans experienced on September 11th, represented the terrible crossing of a new
boundary of destruction. I think one reason we cannot name “Hiroshima” is that in so
doing we must recognize all the ambiguity, complexity and human cost of such
victories, such “triumphs” of American “will.”
A final thought—the catastrophic assault on American citizens in New York City
my hometown) was also the occasion for countless acts of heroism, cooperation, and
(
selfless concern for strangers. These acts of instant regard and connectedness stand in
utter and bold contradistinction to the pressure toward otherization and dehumaniza-
tion that hangs in the air like the gray plume of ash, soot, asbestos, and bone above
New York. A pending question: how do we, as a society and nation-state, weigh the
dangers of dehumanization against these acts of connection; what standing and fur-
ther expression can we give these extraordinary and courageous acts of compassion
and empathy by ordinary people?
ق
Blinding and Deafening Moments, and Threatening
Futures: In the Wake of September 11, 2001*
TOM ANDERSEN, M.D.†
Fam Proc 41:11–14, 2002
HEN I landed in Murmansk, Russia on September 11th and heard what was
W
happening in New York and Washington, one inner voice was immediately
evoked. That voice said, “If a person cannot expect to have the right to live her or his
life anymore, everything seems hopeless.” That summoned a balancing voice that said,
“
We must go on, and we must insist that every person has the right to live her or his
life. But we have to go on differently now.”
th
Such crushing moments as those on September 11 easily stir fear, rage, and pain
of such magnitude that we get blinded, deafened, and muted. Those are moments when
we must fly upwards, like an eagle, to get an overview of which perspectives are now
possible. We must look for perspectives that might be activated to balance the present
ones, hopefully to make the future less threatening.
*
The original version of this article is in New Therapist, a South African journal, and is reprinted here
with permission of its editor, John Soderlund.
Professor of Social Psychiatry, University of Tromsø, Norway; e-mail: tom.andersen@ism.uit.no.
†
Fam. Proc., Vol. 41, Spring, 2002