Corita Kent, world's best-selling artist; Mary Jones, first trained librarian, ousted for a man: Charles Lummis; three women directors find their muse at the L.A. Film Festival.
Japanese-American WW2 vets gather in Little Tokyo
If you eat lunch outside the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo, look for the large granite arch, with a flagpole in front of it. It's the "Go For Broke" monument, commemorating Japanese-Americans who served in World War II despite being detained as suspected traitors in internment camps by President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066.
Saturday, June 6 marked the 71st anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy, and the Go For Broke National Education Foundation held a ceremony honoring the Veterans of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, its 100th Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service (MIS).
"Go For Broke" was the mantra of the 442nd during WWII. Veteran Yoshio Nakamura remembers breaking the Gothic Line. "We climbed up this tremendous mountain in the dark, and surprised the German outpost on the high ground, and that ended the war in Italy."
(Yoshio Nakamura, of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Courtesy of the Nakamura Family)
In 2000, President Clinton awarded the 442nd Regiment 20 Medals of Honor, a total of 21 for the unit. Tokuji "Toke" Yoshihashi, from the 442nd's 100th Battalion, recalled the regiment's first Medal of Honor recipient, Sadao Munemori. "He was in A Company, which I was, and I was there when he (posthumously) got his medal. He threw himself on a German grenade to save his two buddies, but he lost his life doing it," says Yoshihashi.
Munemori led his squad through German fire in Seravezza, Italy after his leader was injured. He took out two German machine guns and gained ground for his squad before sacrificing himself.
("Toke" Yoshihashi. Courtesy of the Yoshihashi Family)
The Military Intelligence Service was comprised of two branches: a Pacific branch of translators interrogating and dispersing propaganda in Japanese, Thai and other Southeast Asian languages, and a European branch that did so in German. Ken Akune and his brother Harry were approached in Colorado's Amache internment camp by military recruiters seeking Japanese speakers. The Akunes volunteered themselves, and 19-year-old Ken was placed into MIS as an interrogator. Twenty-one-year-old Harry was a paratrooper who served in the Philippines and New Guinea.
(Camp Amache, where Ken and Harry Akune were interned, in Granada, Colorado. Credit: J Curnow/Flickr Creative Commons)
Akune recalls mostly decent treatment in the military, except for one executive officer from the Office of War Information. The executive made sure Akune was without food or transportation when he was sent to interrogations. The tension between the two came to an impasse when Akune was told to give up his seat for a British guest at a military dinner, and when he wouldn't move, the executive ordered him to move. "The hell you will! I'm in the military, you're a civilian!" Akune responded. The chief of MIS didn't punish Akune, who was the first of many harassed interpreters to stand up to the War Information executive.
(Courtesy of the Akune Family)
Both Akune and Yoshihashi had family in the Japanese military. Akune had two younger brothers who lived with his grandmother in Japan and joined near the end of the war. One of Akune's brothers was drafted as a kamikaze (though he did not have to take a suicide mission). Yoshihashi had cousins and uncles fighting for Japan, one of whom was a four-star general. Yoshihashi, who was interned at Arizona's Gila-River camp, remarks that while his father's generation was "gung-ho for Japan," he was an American, and "couldn't see their point."
"We were told to report in Pasadena, and they could not tell us where we were gonna go. It turned out we were at the Tulare Racetrack, which was made into an camp. One of my friends who came to visit me was appalled by the prison-like situation there, and where we talked in the visitors room, we had to talk through bars, like in a jail, and it so affected him that he could not talk about it for 30 years." —Yoshio Nakamura recalling his internment
On the same block as the Go For Broke monument and the Japanese American National Museum, is the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. This was a deportation site for the internment camps, but during the war, monks kept internees' possessions safe in the basement of the temple. GFB President Don Nose says it will be the new Go For Broke Education Center to teach students about civil rights history and current events.
Song of the week: '40 oz on Repeat' by FIDLAR
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week is "40 oz on Repeat" by the Los Angeles band FIDLAR. The song is first single off the band's upcoming album, "Too," which comes out September 4.
Can't wait that long? Maybe the song's amazing video will tide you over:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJy8VgB83OQ
5 things you didn't know about the brown recluse spider
Richard Vetter, who has set listeners straight on black and brown widows, and who co-wrote "The PCT Field Guide for the Management of Urban Spiders," has written the first comprehensive book about possibly the most unfairly maligned spider of all: the brown recluse.
(Spider expert Richard Vetter. Image: UCR)
The retired UC Riverside researcher talked with Off-Ramp host John Rabe about his new book, "The Brown Recluse Spider."
From their interview, here are five things you probably didn't know about brown recluse spiders.
1. You weren't bitten by the brown recluse spider and neither was that guy you heard about.
If you live in Southern California, it wasn't a brown recluse that bit you (or that guy) — if you were even bitten — because they simply don't live here (see below).
[Doctors ] would say, "Well, of course there are brown recluses here, we diagnose the bites all the time." The problem is there are many things that can cause skin lesions that look like recluse bites, about 40 different conditions that we currently know.
Plus, Vetter says they avoid human beings.
People think that if they just have one recluse in their house that this thing is going to be running around like the shark from Jaws, running around chomping on them. I did a study with a woman in Kansas, and she collected, in six months, 2,055 brown recluse spiders in her house. Most of these were babies, and about 400 were of a size big enough to bite, yet it took 11 years before these people had one registered bite in their house.
2. They can slow down their metabolism and live up to 5 years.
They are sit-and-wait predators and can survive without feeding for quite awhile. They just lower their heart rate and they just sit there, if they're sitting away from predators, so they're not going to be running around to get out. They just wait there.
3. They didn't have a bad reputation until the Eisenhower years.
Actually, for years there had been conjecture that these little brown spiders were causing problems. Farmers knew very well that there were some problems in their barns, and they had a pretty good idea that it was a spider that was doing it, but it wasn't until 1957 that it was proven scientifically.
Whenever there is a new spider that is thought to be toxic, the media just jump on this all over the place and everyone gets really excited about things. So what happened after 1957, there was a rush to provide a lot of information to people, just like when the West Nile virus started or Lyme disease, 1977.
4. There aren't any brown recluse spiders in Southern California.
The brown recluse is one species of spider, which is found in the Midwest. There are no populations of the brown recluse spiders known in Southern California.
We do have the Chilean recluse in a few buildings in L.A. County. They are usually in the basements of municipal or commercial buildings. They are not biting people, and the Department of Health doesn't consider them a concern.
And we also have the desert recluse out in the deserts — Palmdale, Victorville, Blythe, China Lake, Indio — not in the L.A. Basin at all.
5. Richard Vetter's "The Brown Recluse Spider" is the first book about the brown recluse spider.
There really was no source for a lot of people who were not sure of what was going on. This is a book based on scientific information and I think it's going to convince a lot of folks.
But as Vetter admits, we do love our legends. Listen to the audio for much more on the much maligned brown recluse spider.
Three women directors in LA Film Festival's LA MUSE showcase
On a typical weekend at L.A. Live's Regal Multiplex, you get typical Hollywood. Digital dinosaurs. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Minions. That's Hollywood. But it’s not Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles Film Festival takes over L.A. Live, you'll get 10 tales from Venice Beach, Little Armenia, East L.A. and every other point of the L.A. compass.
"Last year, there were so many films that were uniquely Los Angeles," says LAFF director Stephanie Allain. "We wanted to create a showcase for them. " They called this city showcase LA MUSE, "because we felt it was about how the city inspires so many people around the world — to come here, to make movies, to be part of the magic, to re-invent themselves."
LA MUSE comes with its real-life muse: a self-described potty mouth named Zoe Cassevetes, who is John's daughter, Gena Rowland's kid. Indie royalty in every way. "If I'm going to be a filmmaker with this crazy job, then I want people to feel things," Zoe says. "When something hits you hard or personally, it changes your life. That's what art is about — I mean, that's what some art is about. And for me, that's what's kind of important and what I like about making things."
("Day out of Days")
At LAFF 2015, Zoe will be following up her 2007 Sundance breakout "Broken English" with a new drama. "Day Out of Days" is about an actress hitting 40 and the Hollywood meat market. ("Day Out of Days" is a chart filmmakers use to count cast members' paid days.) There are surface parallels to "Opening Night," one of her parents' late masterpieces. Zoe hadn't realized this, but she sees there's a link right away.
"In a way, yeah. I mean, 'Opening Night' is my favorite of his films at the moment. I didn't think of it like that. I just thought, maybe like he did, that it's horrible to see all this talent and beauty and everything just cut off. Like, 'Oh, you're forty? Bye!'"
Like Hollywood, South L.A. has been on screen a lot — or a sensationalistic version of it used to be, back when it was called "South Central." Documentarian Delila Vallot grew up with one foot in Hollywood and one in South L.A. When she returned to her father's neighborhood after years away, it was to tell a story of hope.
"I kind of wanted to go back and see if something as simple as planting a seed could really change lives," Vallot says.
Ron Finlay is the accidental activist who ran afoul of a city ordinance when he grew vegetables on the median in front of his South L.A. home. Finlay's a TED Talk superstar now, with millions of followers. In Vallot's "Can You Dig This," he's part of an ensemble. Ex-gang bangers garden with skills learned by raising marijuana. A loving dad's poor food choices nearly kill him, and his mantra becomes, "I got to see my ladies grown." Paroled murderers sit in halfway houses, raising vegetables as atonement.
"We used to have a quote in the movie that we've since taken out," Vallot says. "'The very act of planting a seed requires hope.' I don't think it's a solution for everything, but I would like for people to embrace (gardening) as a particular healing mechanism."
If resurrection is the heart of "Can You Dig This," sterility is the curse chronicled in "No Más Bebés," a shattering new documentary from director Rene Tajima-Pena that unfolds like a science fiction nightmare.
It's the early 1970s. Poor women all over America check into charity hospitals to give birth. They return to their families sterilized and baffled. In L.A., County-USC Medical Center is the epicenter. There are suggestions of racism in the court case that follows: Latinas accusing white male doctors of sterilizing them against their will.
But "No Más Bebés" resists using its real doctors as stock movie villains. The medical men are allowed their point of view. But it's also quite clear where "No Más Bebés" stands: with the women the filmmaker sees as real-world heroes.
"I always say that I like to make movies when something pisses me off, Tajimka-Pena says, "and this really pissed me off. Although it pisses you off, you make the movie, and then you start getting deeper into the story. And things are different shades of grey."
These are the stories your neighbors are telling about themselves and the city you share with them. And that just scratches the surface of LA MUSE's 10 films. In a summer where our screens are predictably crowded with explosions, disasters and cartoon supermen, empathy is still what the movies do best.
Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene directed and co-produced the documentary "The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy," which was just nominated for an Emmy.
Downtown's Bar 107 defies landlord, refuses to leave
UPDATE 9/14/2015: This just in.
Also, Bar 107 in the
is officially closed and locked up. Goodbye cheap bears, weird people and rockin' music.
— Eddie Kim (@eddiekimx)
Also, Bar 107 in the @HistoricCore is officially closed and locked up. Goodbye cheap bears, weird people and rockin' music.
— Eddie Kim (@eddiekimx) September 14, 2015
For almost ten years, Bar 107 has thrived in the growing downtown Los Angeles bar scene. It's one of the few places in America you can go for gong karaoke. It gives out free pizza during happy hour.
May 31 was supposed to be Bar 107's last day — its landlord stopped renewing the month-to-month lease. But the bar defied the order, and — as of this posting — is still open today.
On the evening of May 31, DJ Morgan Higby Night read from a prepared statement by the ownership, saying the bar would stay open until forced to leave. It complained of downtown changing and becoming less inclusive. "Bars with personality and reasonable drink prices have been replaced by sterile, safe s---holes with ridiculous prices and even more ridiculous ice cubes."
Bar 107 sits near the corner of 4th and Main Streets downtown. It's in the same building as the historic Hotel Barclay. When reached for comment on Monday, property manager Victor Vasquez said he was "very disappointed" to have seen the announcement.
Vasquez said he'd made numerous attempts to provide Bar 107 with a long-term, multi-year lease but the two sides couldn't come to an agreement. Management, he said, made the call to talk with prospective new tenants around March. He said the two sides are back at the negotiating table now and he hopes they'll reach an amicable agreement.
Eddie Kim, a senior writer for LA Downtown News, said stories like this aren't uncommon in downtown nowadays. "It's one instance out of many where there's changes happening," he said. When Bar 107 opened its doors nearly 10 years ago, it replaced Score, a well-liked gay bar.
"The people who love Bar 107 are losing a place to love," Kim added. "It's part of the identity of this neighborhood, right?"
Ownership from Bar 107 couldn't be reached for a response at the time of posting, we'll update if we hear back.
Oarfish: Fascinating, rare, mythical—but really bad eating
When it comes to fishes, we turn to Dr. Milton Love, UCSB marine biologist and author of "Certainly More Than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast," although when it comes to one fish in particular, we don't know much.
A 15-foot long oarfish washed ashore on Catalina Island Monday, which isn't too rare, but Love says, "there are only about six sightings in the entire world of a living oarfish underwater." Only six sightings in history.
"People just don't know much about them," Love says. "What we know is mainly from beached specimens. The animals have beached themselves all over the world, from the tropics to Scotland, Norway, and in Japan. And it's very hard to tell much about a fish when all you've got are dead ones."
(UCSB marine biologist Milton Love. Image courtesy Milton Love)
Love says we are pretty sure they normally live hundreds of feet beneath the surface, they eat jellyfish and crustaceans, and they taste awful. "Apparently, they're horrible. Almost no one has ever eaten one, but I read a report recently of someone in Norway who ate a chunk of one and said it was so bad even his dogs wouldn't eat it, which is pretty bad."
For much more on the oarfish, whether the recent beachings are evidence of global warming, and an update on Survive! Mola Mola, listen to our audio interview.
Judy Collins, Pete & Sheila E, Karla Bonoff, Poncho Sanchez at Levitt Pavilions this summer
“We bring diverse groups together on our lawn to celebrate music and culture together. What better place to do that than in Los Angeles? Music is a tremendous vehicle to reach and engage people. There is a wonderful synergy that can happen here.” -- Levitt Pavilions Executive Director Renee Bodie
Every summer, the Levitt Pavilions at Pasadena's Memorial Park and L.A.'s MacArthur Park bring in dozens of acts for free concerts, and the new schedule has just been announced.
I've seen some memorable performances at the Pavilions, including Jimmy Webb singing and playing his hits, including "MacArthur Park."
(Pete and Sheila E. Credit: Levitt Pavilions)
The concerts start this weekend (in L.A.) and run through September 20, and the acts include: the Pete Escovedo Orchestra featuring Sheila E., Barbara Morrison, Dustbowl Revival, Frankie Avalon, Mariachi Divas, Bob Baker Marionettes, Vieux Farka Toure, Karla Bonoff, Leftover Cuties, Poncho Sanchez, Judy Collins, Bruce Cockburn, Los Lobos, and Rita Coolidge.
The roster includes singers and bands you know, and ones you don't, but at the very worst, you'll be hanging out in a great public space with your fellow citizens. Not much of a risk.
The Wedge: Emmy-nominated documentary chronicles the perfect point break
UPDATE 6/4/2015: "The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy," was just nominated for an Emmy! Congratulations to Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene and the rest of the documentary crew. The doc is streaming for free now on the Emmy's website site.
In the 1920s, the Newport Harbor channel in Orange County was such an amazing surfing spot that Duke Kahanamoku — the original Big Kahuna — relocated from Hawaii so he could surf Newport daily.
But that perfect point break routinely wrecked ships and took lives. Off-Ramp contributor R.H. Greene has directed a new TV documentary called "The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy." It tells the story of the Rogers, one of Newport's founding families, and the Depression-era tragedy that changed their lives and the California coastline forever.
“The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy” is written, hosted and co-produced by filmmaker and family scion Bob Rogers, who joined Greene for an interview in Newport Beach.
"The Wedge: Dynasty, Tragedy, Legacy" premieres Friday, May 23, at 6:30 pm on PBS SoCal Plus.
Sister Corita Kent, creator of LOVE stamp, world's biggest selling artist
"Sister Corita, the rebel nun, the joyous revolutionary, as artist Ben Shahn called her, came of artistic age and into raised consciousness in the 1960s — a decade of war and of culture-bending forces." So opens April Dammann's new "Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography," from Angel City Press.
Kent's prints, made both during and after her time as an Immaculate Heart sister in the L.A. Catholic Archdiocese, made her one of the most prolific mid-century pop artists. She was on the cover of Newsweek and compared to Andy Warhol. Her work includes the LOVE stamp, which by 1985 had sold more than 700 million copies.
John Rabe spoke with Dammann about Kent's life and works:
When did she start making art?
She was discovered to have artistic talent as a kid in parochial Catholic schools in Hollywood, and it was encouraged by a couple of the young nuns, so she was making art from an early age. But really, the nuns in her order — the Immaculate Heart of Mary — they all became teachers, and so she began teaching in schools, even in Canada for a time. But her art developed in graduate school, studying art for an MFA. She discovered silkscreen process early on in her study and began making multiple prints of beautiful, original silkscreen, while teaching at Immaculate Heart College.
Tell us more about her serigraphs.
She would draw subject matter from the commercial world around her — advertisements, slogans — but also from the Bible. So she would turn messages that were to draw us toward, maybe, General Mills cereal into something like 'The big G stands for goodness,' and that could sell Cheerios, but to Corita the big G was God. And so she would try to infuse the spirituality into everything she did, but with fun and incredibly bright color.
And the Archdiocese was not in love with this.
This was a terrible time for the nuns of this order in Hollywood. They were a progressive order, they were liberal, and the Vatican II reforms came along; Sister Corita and her sisters, this was made for them. But it was Corita's luck to have the most conservative archbishop in the country. Cardinal McIntyre was their male authority in the hierarchy in the Los Angeles church, and he would have nothing of reform for these nuns. He became angry, he called them bad women and he threatened to make them suffer, and he did make them suffer.
(Cardinal McIntyre at 1961 ground-breaking ceremony at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica shaking hands with Patricia Kennedy, with Sister Mary David and Mother Mary Ancilla. LAPL/Herald-Examiner collection)
McIntyre eventually dismissed all of the Immaculate Heart teachers. Was this turmoil the reason she vacated her vows?
You know, she's been asked that question, and to the day she died she said "I can't tell you exactly why I left, but that kind of turmoil, seeing the suffering of my sisters — I really had to get out of there."
For much more, click on the audio to hear John's entire interview with April Dammann. And go see the Corita Kent exhibit at PMCA which opens June 14.
Love Locks: Who needs Paris? We've got Atwater.
You've probably heard by now that the city of Paris has removed the padlocks that you and 699,999 other people - as a symbol of your undying love - attached to the railing of the Pont Des Arts bridge across the Seine.
The reason for their removal? The locks weighed a reported 45 tons, and while your heart can bear any weight for love, the bridge couldn't.
But who needs Paris? We have our own Pont Des Arts ... the footbridge that crosses the L.A. River South of Los Feliz Blvd.
Last October, Off-Ramp celebrated the 70th birthday of Friends of the Los Angeles River founder Lewis MacAdams with a tour of his favorite spots on the river, and that bridge - the only footbridge across the river - is one of them.
(Image: John Rabe)
The Archivist Files: Why the woman who started LA's branch libraries was fired
Pop quiz!
Who is L.A.'s City Librarian? (Answer below.)
Don’t know? Don’t feel bad, most people don't know his name. But 100 years ago, the whole town knew the librarian’s name, and the reason is in the city archive.
Mary Jones was the librarian for the public library system from 1900 to 1905. She was fired mysteriously, and a special commission of city council members held hearings to find out why. The transcripts for those hearings are in the city archives.
Councilman Arthur Houghton: “I am merely asking questions, Mr. Mayor, and I will be fair and impartial. That is my attitude”
Mayor Owen McAleer: “Well, if you do, you ought to go to heaven”
Houghton: “I wouldn’t leave Los Angeles for any place so remote”
The story began in March 1905 when, without cause, Mary Jones was relieved of her position by the Board of Library Commissioners. Shortly after, Mayor Owen McAleer removed four of the five commissioners, also without an explanation.
(Owen McAleer, L.A. Mayor 1904-06. LAPL/Security Pacific National Bank Collection)
Jones took her case to the various women’s groups, which complained to the mayor’s office. The local press, including the L.A. Times, covered the story for months.
"Association at Portland Denounces the Removal of Miss Jones from Post - Wants Politics Barred"
Demand for Public Hearing in Jones Dismissal Case; Representatives from Every Woman's Club in the City Will Attend the Woman's Mass Meeting This Afternoon at Club House to Outline Plan of Action"
— Los Angeles newspaper headlines, c. 1906
(The L.A. Public Library was housed at City Hall from 1888 until 1928. LAPL/Herald-Examiner Collection)
Hearings began January 24, 1906, and moved to the city council chamber in the old city hall because of the crowds.
The first thing the city council members looked at was why the mayor fired the library commissioners. But Mayor McAleer was a hostile witness. He claimed the commissioners misled him about alleged mismanagement at the library, and so he’d removed them. He denied any involvement in Jones’ firing, then he walked out — never to return.
So now they turned to Mary Jones’ firing. She had been the first librarian trained by the New York State Library School. She began our branch library system, starting in Boyle Heights, and installed an African-American librarian in the Arroyo Seco branch. She questioned the board’s no-bid supply contracting, and supposedly raised her voice and threatened to quit if a funding or salary request was denied.
Those were the accusations, but at the hearing, several library commissioners described a secret lunch meeting at Al Levy’s restaurant between the library board and the mayor.
(Undated photo of Al Levy's Restaurant. LAPL/Security Pacific National Bank Collection)
Over lunch, the commissioners said they got the mayor’s support in removing Jones and replacing her with local historian and writer Charles Lummis. The transcripts reveal more chicanery: despite their alleged concerns about her, the board gave Jones glowing performance reviews year after year; they rejected a modest increase in Jones’ salary, but paid Lummis a greater salary without objection; and Jones was fired just before a change to the civil service rules took effect that would have made it harder to fire her without cause.
Not shockingly in 1906, several library commissioners said on the record that they preferred a man to be in charge of the library system.
Paper: Women Librarians and the Los Angeles Public Library, 1880–1905
For her part, Mary Jones was a quote machine, telling the L.A. Times, “Those directors seem as crazy after a man as though they were a board of old maids.”
The council’s final report concluded that they could prove no wrongdoing by the Library Commission, in part due to the mayor’s lack of cooperation. The council restored the fired commissioners to their posts, and Charles Lummis remained the city librarian for the next five years.
Mary Jones left L.A. to work in Berkeley and Bryn Mawr, returned to help set up the new L.A. County library system, retired in 1920, and died in 1946.
Pop Quiz Answer: John Szabo (below) is the current L.A. City Librarian.
(LAPL)
L.A. City Archivist Michael Holland contributes occasional looks into the city's archives for Off-Ramp, and writes for Alive!, the city employee newspaper.