The Pluralism Project at Harvard University

Dr. Duncan Williams

U-California, Irvine
Buddhism in America: Orange County, CA

 

Project Description

Project 1: Southern California Regional Researchers Network

Project 2: Orange County Mapping at U-California, Irvine

Students from the Buddhism course (EA20) and Japanese American Religious History Course (HU31) will be involved. More detailed and in-depth surveys will be conducted in the '04- '05 cycle when we hope to launch a university-wide initiative for the mapping project (joint project of the Departments of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Asian American Studies and the Religious Studies Program).

Project 3: Minority Religions in Wartime Project

In trying to understand the post-9/11 targeting and harassment of Muslim-Americans, Arab-Americans, and those who look like those who were responsible for the terrorist attacks (such as Sikhs and other South Asians), it is instructive to examine parallels with the experience of Japanese-American Buddhists after Pearl Harbor and during World War II. A recent study of FIB documents, declassified through the Freedom of Information Act by Duncan Williams (UC-Irvine), has shown that nearly 300 priests were picked up by the FBI after Pearl Harbor. They were targetted based on unfounded claims such as that Buddhists bells were going to be used to send Morse code messages to the Japanese Navy or that temples were the sites of spy meetings between German and Japanese "fifth column" units. The "Minority Religions in Wartime Project" is intended to examine the parallels and differences between government attitudes and treatments of Buddhists (during WW2) and Muslims (post 9/11) as the post 9/11 period has also seen its share of indiscriminate arrests of thousands of young Muslims "enemy aliens" and targeting of Muslim charitable organizations accused of terrorist links. It was in the crucible of war that many Japanese-Americans took on the conflicted identity of being Japanese-American-Buddhist. The project will examine if 9/11 will also turn out to be just as significant a turning point for Muslim-Americans as they struggle with Americanization and resistance to it in their ethnic and religious identity formation.

2004-2005

Project 1: Issei Buddhism Conference (UCI, Sept. 3-5, 2004)

This three-day conference will draw 30 of the most distinguished researchers from Japan, the U.S., Canada, and Brazil to explore the Japanese immigration experience in those countries and the role of Buddhist temples in those communities. The vast majority of the "Issei," or the first generation Japanese immigrants, were active in the establishment and growth of Buddhist temples in Hawaii, the West Coast of Canada and the U.S., and Latin and South America. The Buddhist temple served not only as a spiritual refuge for these pioneers, but as a cultural center where Japanese language and cultural traditions (tea ceremony, flower arrangement, martial arts, taiko drumming, among others) were transmitted from the first generation to their Nisei children born in the Americas.

In this groundbreaking conference, senior and younger scholars based on both sides of the Pacific Rim will present keynote addresses and papers in roundtable panels on seven sects of Japanese American Buddhism, the role of Buddhist women's auxiliaries, and Buddhist life on the plantations of Hawaii, Buddhism in the internment camps of World War II, among other topics. As a growing field of research, as evidenced by the explosion of new monographs by a number of the participants, this conference is the culmination of smaller-scale panels at national conferences in religion. Asian Studies, and Asian American Studies, but also the beginning of a new dialogue on an international level. With the problem of language barriers in the past, it has been especially difficult for Japanese scholars to communicate their high-level research to their counterparts in the Americas. This international conference will be the first to bridge this gap.

Project 2: Orange County Mapping at U-California, Irvine

Based on the basic profiling of 2003-2004, this year's project will be to engage in more detailed and in-depth surveys in conjunction with a UCI university-wide initiative for the mapping project (joint project of the Departments of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Asian American Studies and the Religious Studies Program). Again, a second year of funding from the Pluralism Project would help us leverage funds from other foundations.

Center Profiles

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA