text:
Amy and I went to the doctor on Monday afternoon to find out the sex of our baby. Unfortunately, it didn't happen as the best they could do was to order a sonogram. Luckily, Amy's check up went great and she's very healthy and all signs are normal. We listened to the baby's heart beat. It was 160 beats per minute, which is normal. Amy seemed to know then that it was a girl, as she has become quite the expert on babies, educating herself all day long while I'm at work.
Anyway, the next day we went to the doctor's at 8 AM to have the sonogram.
We watched on the screen as we saw our baby's head, nose, ears, mouth, chest, beating heart, legs, hands, feet. It was pretty amazing.
Amy noticed that the baby was sleeping the way I do, with its hand over its eyes. I developed the habit in college, shielding my eyes from the light of my roommates computer, as I need complete darkness to sleep. Usually, I just put a pillow over the top of my head, but anyhow. She said that the baby is taking after me already.
Amy also thought that the baby had my profile, and she said it definitely has my long legs.
Amy's brothers are both very tall – 6'4, and I'm 6'4″ and so is my brother, so this little girl of ours may not be so little. I'm seeing a star volleyball or basketball player in the future.
Here's one of the sonograms:
You can see her chest in the lower left, and her head is profiled in the center of the sonogram. The little line above her eyes and nose is her arm and hand across her forehead.
She weighs 1 pound 8 ounces right now. The baby is 24 weeks old, so 1 pound 2 ounces is the norm. She's six ounces heavy. She does have my genes. My brother was 10 pounds, and I was 9 pound 8 ounces or something like that.
And another that's pretty similar:
She's been pretty active, kicking a lot, ready to come out and meet her Daddy.
Amy says that she kicks a lot when I leave for work because she misses me. She also kicks a lot when she's hungry.
Anyway, I thought I'd share that with you all.
In ballhawking, I cancelled plans for road trips this weekend, as I could find no other ballhawks to come with me and split the cost of the trip. With gas prices raising and a little one on the way, I have to scale back a bit on the road trips unless I team up with someone to go.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the name….
We're favoring calling her Olivia.


text:
We paid $1000 for her in 1982. She had over 90,000 miles on her at the time. I learned to drive with Shokoladka in a cemetery (see "Learning to Drive in Oakwood Cemetery" at The Graveyard Rabbit of Northern Virginia).
For a few years Shokoladka was a reliable commuter car. My husband drove her the first couple of years; then I learned to drive and we bought another Civic - one of only two cars that we have ever bought new, the other one being a Stratos Blue 1986 Honda Civic Wagon (my baby for 20 years; we finally sold her for $500 in 2007).
We took a few trips in Shokoladka, mostly to New York to visit my husband's parents. I remember one winter trip when a snowstorm whipped up right after we had started back to Virginia. The heater was not working very well, and the windshield started to frost up. My husband had to drive with the side windows rolled down and both of us looking out the side windows until he could pull over and scrape the ice off. It was so cold in the car that we could see our breath.
It was when I started driving Shokoladka that she finally started to show her age. She had more than 120,000 miles on her and began to get a bit temperamental. In the cold weather she was still surprisingly reliable (with the exception of that heater), but she definitely balked at travel during the hot summer months, often stalling from "vapor lock" when we stopped at a crossroads.
We brought her to a trusted mechanic, who told us that we should probably be looking for a new car. We were reluctant to do so (whether from sentimentality or strained finances, I cannot remember now), so he said that we could try buying a rebuilt engine for her. That is the choice we made, though why we decided to spend almost as much on that rebuilt engine as we did purchasing the car is a mystery to me.
The first rebuilt engine was a bust; it died after less than 10,000 miles. After much wrangling back and forth, we persuaded the company that sold the engine to replace it. The second engine did better, but by 1987 we realized we needed to replace Shokoladka, and that was when we bought Little Blue. We sold Shokoladka to a neighbor family with a teenage daughter for $100, having warned them that Shokoladka did not like hot summer days very much. The girl did not mind; she was thrilled with her cute little car.
As I mentioned above, I drove Little Blue for many years afterward. Even when she was well into her dotage, mechanics at gas stations would spot her and offer us money.
Our one non-Honda was a gold 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan. It gave us more trouble than all of the other cars we have ever owned combined. I remember once when I was driving my daughters home from a school event, the power steering went out just as I was turning onto a major road - scary! I managed to get the car home, and we could see that the steering fluid was leaking.
We traded the "Gold Lemon" in for an Odyssey, a reliable car that has moved tons of stuff, including my younger daughter's harp to numerous events and my older daughter's possessions to and from college. At some point my in-laws gave us their old 1989 Honda Civic, a little red car that has seen a lot of action, though it is also showing its age now. After selling Little Blue in 2007 we bought a 2004 Honda CRV - my new baby. My husband likes to tease me that it actually belongs to my older daughter. It's true that I let her drive it during her senior year in high school while I drove Little Red Civic. She was one of the carpool drivers for her high school crew team, and they had a 50-mile round-trip commute to the boat house each day after school, so she needed a reliable car that could hold crew gear. We call the CRV "New Hotness" (points to anyone who can quote the movie this name comes from).
I plan on driving New Hotness forever.
(You can read about one of the cars my family had when I was growing up in "Memory Monday: Our Edsel.")
This is the prompt for Week 3 for Amy Coffin's series of prompts entitled 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Cars. What was your first car? Describe the make, model and color, but also any memories you have of the vehicle. You can also expand on this topic and describe the car(s) your parents drove and any childhood memories attached to it.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Japanese Americans
|Total population
763,325 alone, 0.2% of U.S. population
1,304,286 including partial ancestry, 0.4%
(2010 Census)[1]
|Regions with significant populations
|Hawaii, the West Coast, and the Northeast
|American English and Japanese
|32% Unaffiliated, 33% Protestantism, 25% Buddhism, 4% Catholicism, 4% Shinto (2012)[2][3]
Japanese Americans (日系アメリカ人 Nikkei Amerikajin) are Americans of Japanese descent. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades, it has become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,304,286, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity.[1] In the 2010 census, the largest Japanese American communities were found in California with 272,528, Hawaii with 185,502, New York with 37,780, Washington with 35,008, Illinois with 17,542, and Ohio with 16,995.[4] Southern California has the largest Japanese-American population in North America.
Cultural profile 1
- Immigration 1.1
- Generations 1.2
- Languages 1.3
- Education 1.4
- Intermarriage 1.5
- Religion 1.6
- Celebrations 1.7
- History 2
- Politics 3
Japanese-Americans by state 4
- California 4.1
- Connecticut 4.2
- Georgia 4.3
- Illinois 4.4
- Michigan 4.5
- New Jersey 4.6
- Virginia 4.7
Neighborhoods and communities 5
- The West Coast 5.1
- Outside the West Coast 5.2
Notable individuals 6
- Politics 6.1
- Science and technology 6.2
- Art and literature 6.3
- Music 6.4
- Sports 6.5
- Entertainment and media 6.6
- Works about Japanese Americans 7
- See also 8
- References 9
- Further reading 10
- External links 11
Cultural profile
People from Japan began migrating to the U.S. in significant numbers following the political, cultural, and social changes stemming from the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Large numbers went to Hawaii and to the West Coast. In 1907, the "Gentlemen's Agreement" between the governments of Japan and the U.S. ended immigration of Japanese unskilled workers, but permitted the immigration of businessmen, students and spouses of Japanese immigrants already in the U.S. The Immigration Act of 1924 banned the immigration of nearly all Japanese.
The ban on immigration produced unusually well-defined generational groups within the Japanese-American community. Original immigrants belonged to an immigrant generation, the Issei, and their U.S.-born children to the Nisei Japanese American generation. The Issei comprised exclusively those who had immigrated before 1924. Because no new immigrants were permitted, all Japanese Americans born after 1924 were—by definition—born in the U.S. This generation, the Nisei, became a distinct cohort from the Issei generation in terms of age, citizenship, and English-language ability, in addition to the usual generational differences. Institutional and interpersonal racism led many of the Nisei to marry other Nisei, resulting in a third distinct generation of Japanese Americans, the Sansei. Significant Japanese immigration did not occur again until the Immigration Act of 1965 ended 40 years of bans against immigration from Japan and other countries.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted naturalized U.S. citizenship to "free white persons", which excluded the Issei from citizenship. As a result, the Issei were unable to vote and faced additional restrictions such as the inability to own land under many state laws.
Japanese Americans were parties in several important Supreme Court decisions, including Ozawa v. United States (1922) and Korematsu v. United States (1943). The Korematsu case originated the "strict scrutiny" standard, which is applied, with great controversy, in government considerations of race since the 1989 Adarand Constructors v. Peña decision.
In recent years, immigration from Japan has been more like that from Western Europe. The numbers involve on average 5 to 10 thousand per year, and is similar to the amount of immigration to the U.S. from Germany. This is in stark contrast to the rest of Asia, where family reunification is the primary impetus for immigration. Japanese Americans also have the oldest demographic structure of any non-European ethnic group in the U.S.
The nomenclature for each of their generations who are citizens or long-term residents of countries other than Japan, used by Japanese Americans and other nationals of Japanese descent are explained here; they are formed by combining one of the Japanese numbers corresponding to the generation with the Japanese word for generation (sei 世). The Japanese American communities have themselves distinguished their members with terms like Issei, Nisei, and Sansei, which describe the first, second, and third generations of immigrants. The fourth generation is called Yonsei (四世), and the fifth is called Gosei (五世). The term Nikkei (日系) encompasses Japanese immigrants in all countries and of all generations.
|Issei (一世)
|The generation of people born in Japan who later immigrated to another country.
|Nisei (二世)
|The generation of people born in North America, Latin America, Hawaii, or any country outside of Japan either to at least one Issei or one non-immigrant Japanese parent.
|Sansei (三世)
|The generation of people born in North America, Latin America, Hawaii, or any country outside of Japan to at least one Nisei parent.
|Yonsei (四世)
|The generation of people born in North America, Latin America, Hawaii, or any country outside of Japan to at least one Sansei parent.
|Gosei (五世)
|The generation of people born in North America, Latin America, Hawaii, or any country outside of Japan to at least one Yonsei parent.
The kanreki (還暦), a pre-modern Japanese rite of passage to old age at 60, is now being celebrated by increasing numbers of Japanese-American Nisei. Rituals are enactments of shared meanings, norms, and values; and this traditional Japanese rite of passage highlights a collective response among the Nisei to the conventional dilemmas of growing older.[7]
Issei and many nisei speak Japanese in addition to English as a second language. In general, later generations of Japanese Americans speak English as their first language, though some do learn Japanese later as a second language. In Hawaii however, where Nikkei are about one-fifth of the whole population, Japanese is a major language, spoken and studied by many of the state's residents across ethnicities. It is taught in private Japanese language schools as early as the second grade. As a courtesy to the large number of Japanese tourists (from Japan), Japanese subtexts are provided on place signs, public transportation, and civic facilities. The Hawaii media market has a few locally produced Japanese language newspapers and magazines, although these are on the verge of dying out, due to a lack of interest on the part of the local (Hawaii-born) Japanese population. Stores that cater to the tourist industry often have Japanese-speaking personnel. To show their allegiance to the U.S., many nisei and sansei intentionally avoided learning Japanese. But as many of the later generations find their identities in both Japan and America or American society broadens its definition of cultural identity, studying Japanese is becoming more popular than it once was.
Japanese American culture places great value on education and culture. Across generations, children are often instilled with a strong desire to enter the rigors of higher education. Because of such widespread ambition among members of the Japanese-American community, math and reading scores on the SAT and ACT may often exceed the national averages. Japanese-Americans have the largest showing of any ethnic group in nationwide Advanced Placement testing each year.
A large majority of Japanese Americans obtain post-secondary degrees. Japanese Americans often face the "model minority" stereotype that they are dominant in math- and science-related fields in colleges and universities across the United States. In reality, however, there is an equal distribution of Japanese-Americans between the arts and humanities and the sciences. Although their numbers have declined slightly in recent years, Japanese Americans are still a prominent presence in Ivy League schools, the top University of California campuses including UC Berkeley and UCLA, and other elite universities. The 2000 census reported that 40.8% of Japanese Americans held a college degree.[8]
In the years prior to World War II, many second generation Japanese American attended the American school by day and the Japanese school in the evening to keep up their Japanese skill as well as English. Other first generation Japanese American parent were worried that their child might go through the same discrimination when going to school so they gave them choice on going back to Japan to be educated or to stay in America with their parent and study both.[9]
Before the 1960s, the trend of Japanese Americans marrying partners outside their racial or ethnic group was generally low, as well a great many traditional Issei parents encouraged Nisei to marry only within their ethnic/cultural group. Arrangements to purchase and invite picture brides from Japan to relocate and marry Issei or Nisei males was commonplace.
In California and other western states until the end of World War II, there were attempts to make it illegal for Japanese and other Asian Americans to marry European Americans, but those laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, like the anti-miscegenation laws which prevented European Americans from marrying African Americans in the 1960s.
According to a 1990 statistical survey by the Japan Society of America, the Sansei or third generations have an estimated 20 to 30 percent out-of-group marriage, while the 4th generation or Yonsei approaches nearly 50 percent.
During the World War II Internment era, the U.S. Executive Order 9066 had an inclusion of orphaned infants with "one drop of Japanese blood" (as explained in a letter by one official) or the order stated anyone at least one-sixteenth Japanese (descended from any intermarriage) lends credence to the argument that the measures were racially motivated, rather than a military necessity.
There were sizable numbers of Korean-Japanese, Chinese-Japanese, Filipino-Japanese, Mexican-Japanese, Native Hawaiian-Japanese and Cherokee-Japanese in California according to the 1940 U.S. Census who were eligible for internment as "Japanese" to indicate the first stage of widespread intermarriage of Japanese Americans, including those who passed as "white" or half-Asian/European.
Japanese Americans practice a wide range of religions, including Mahayana Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū, Jōdo-shū, Nichiren, Shingon, and Zen forms being most prominent) their majority faith, Shinto, and Christianity. In many ways, due to the longstanding nature of Buddhist and Shinto practices in Japanese society, many of the cultural values and traditions commonly associated with Japanese tradition have been strongly influenced by these religious forms.
A large number of the Japanese American community continue to practice Buddhism in some form, and a number of community traditions and festivals continue to center around Buddhist institutions. For example, one of the most popular community festivals is the annual Obon Festival, which occurs in the summer, and provides an opportunity to reconnect with their customs and traditions and to pass these traditions and customs to the young. These kinds of festivals are mostly popular in communities with large populations of Japanese Americans, such as Southern California and Hawaii. It should be noted however, that a reasonable number of Japanese people both in and out of Japan are secular, as Shinto and Buddhism are most often practiced by rituals such as marriages or funerals, and not through faithful worship, as defines religion for many Americans.
Many Japanese Americans practice Christianity. Among mainline denominations the Presbyterians have long been active. The First Japanese Presbyterian Church of San Francisco opened in 1885.[10] There is also the Japanese Evangelical Missionary Society (JEMS) formed in the 1950s. It operates Asian American Christian Fellowships (AACF) programs on university campuses, especially in California.[11] The Japanese language ministries are fondly known as "Nichigo" in Japanese American Christian communities. The newest trend includes Asian American members who do not have a Japanese heritage.[12]
Japanese American celebrations tend to be more sectarian in nature and focus on the community-sharing aspects. An important annual festival for Japanese Americans is the Obon Festival, which happens in July or August of each year. Across the country, Japanese Americans gather on fair grounds, churches and large civic parking lots and commemorate the memory of their ancestors and their families through folk dances and food. Carnival booths are usually set up so Japanese American children have the opportunity to play together.
|January 1
|Shōgatsu New Year's Celebration
|Japanese Heritage Fair
|Honolulu, HI
|February to March
|Cherry Blossom Festival
|Honolulu, HI
|March 3
|Hina Matsuri (Girls' Day)
|Honolulu Festival
|Honolulu, HI
|Hawaiʻi International Taiko Festival
|Honolulu, HI
|International Cherry Blossom Festival
|Macon, GA
|March to April
|National Cherry Blossom Festival
|Washington, DC
|Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival
|San Francisco, CA
|Pasadena Cherry Blossom Festival
|Pasadena, CA
|Seattle Cherry Blossom Festival
|Seattle, WA
|May 5
|Tango no Sekku (Boys' Day)
|Shinnyo-En Toro-Nagashi (Memorial Day Floating Lantern Ceremony)
|Honolulu, HI
|Pan-Pacific Festival Matsuri in Hawaiʻi
|Honolulu, HI
|July 7
|Tanabata Festival
|Obon Festival
|Nihonmachi Street Fair
|San Francisco, CA
|Nisei Week
|Los Angeles, CA
People from Japan began emigrating to the U.S. in significant numbers following the political, cultural, and social changes stemming from the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Japanese immigration to the Americas started with immigration to Hawaii in the first year of the Meiji period in 1868. Following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese immigrants were increasingly sought by industrialists to replace the Chinese immigrants. In 1907, the "Gentlemen's Agreement" between the governments of Japan and the U.S. ended immigration of Japanese workers (i.e., men), but permitted the immigration of spouses of Japanese immigrants already in the U.S. The Immigration Act of 1924 banned the immigration of all but a token few Japanese.
During World War II, an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals or citizens residing in the United States were forcibly interned in ten different camps across the US, mostly in the west. The internments were based on the race or ancestry rather than activities of the interned. Families, including children, were interned together. Decades later, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 officially acknowledged the "fundamental violations of the basic civil liberties and constitutional rights" of the internment.[13]
Japanese Americans have shown strong support for candidates in both political parties. Shortly prior to the
- Use mdy dates from April 2012
- Articles containing Japanese-language text
- All articles with unsourced statements
- Articles with unsourced statements from October 2011
- Articles with unsourced statements from October 2013
- Articles with unsourced statements from April 2011
- Articles needing additional references from February 2008
- All articles needing additional references
- Articles with unsourced statements from March 2008
- Articles to be expanded from June 2013
- All articles to be expanded
- Articles needing additional references from June 2011
- Articles with inconsistent citation formats
- American people of Japanese descent
- Japanese diaspora by country
- Asian American
- Japanese American
- Japanese American National Museum
- Embassy of Japan in Washington, DC
- Japanese American Citizens League
- Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii
- Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Northern California
- Japanese American Community and Cultural Center of Southern California
- Japanese American Historical Society
- Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
- Japanese American Museum of San Jose, California
- Japanese American Network
- Japanese-American's own companies in USA
- Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives
- Online Archive of the Japanese American Relocation during World War II
- Photo Exhibit of Japanese American community in Florida
- Nikkei Federation
- Discover Nikkei
- Summary of a panel discussion on changing Japanese American identities
- Interment and American samurai
- , a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan"The War Relocation Centers of World War II: When Fear Was Stronger than Justice"
- U.S. Government interned Japanese from Latin America
- Short radio episode Baseball from "Lil' Yokohama" by Toshio Mori, 1941. California Legacy Project.
External links
- "Japanese Americans." (Archive) State of California.
- "Present-Day Immigration with Special Reference to the Japanese," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Jan 1921), pp. 1–232 online 24 articles by experts, mostly about California
- Azuma, Eiichiro. ", 1880-1952IsseiA History of Oregon's ." Oregon Historical Quarterly. Oregon Historical Society. Vol. 94, No. 4, Winter, 1993/1994., pp. 315–367. Available on JStor.
- DeWan, George. "Learning How To Stay Japanese In America." Newsday. January 6, 1990. PART 11, Start page NOPGCIT.
- Inouye, Karen M., "Changing History: Competing Notions of Japanese American Experience, 1942–2006" (PhD dissertation Brown University, 2008). Dissertation Abstracts International No. DA3318331.
- Jacobson, Matthew Frye. (2000). Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917. Hill and Wang, ISBN 978-0-8090-1628-0
- Lai, Eric, and Dennis Arguelles, eds. "The New Face of Asian Pacific America: Numbers, Diversity, and Change in the 21st century." San Francisco, CA: Asian Week, 2003.
- Kikumura-Yano, Akemi, ed. "Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas." Walnut Creek, CA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002.
- Moulin, Pierre. (1993). U.S. Samurais in Bruyeres – People of France and Japanese Americans: Incredible story Hawaii CPL Editions. ISBN 2-9599984-0-5
- Moulin, Pierre. (2007). Dachau, Holocaust and US Samurais – Nisei Soldiers first in Dachau Authorhouse Editions. ISBN 978-1-4259-3801-7
- Tsuchiya, Tomoko, "Interracial Marriages between American Soldiers and Japanese Women at the Beginning of the Cold War," Journal of American and Canadian Studies (Tokyo) (no. 29, 2011), 59–84
Further reading
- ^ a b "Race Reporting for the Asian Population by Selected Categories: 2010". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved January 17, 2012.
- ^ Pew Forum - Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths
- ^ Pew Forum - Japanese Americans' Religions
- ^ http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_QTP8&prodType=table
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ Doi, Mary L. "A Transformation of Ritual: The Nisei 60th Birthday." Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology. Vol. 6, No. 2 (April, 1991).
- ^ Le, Cuong. "Socioeconomic Statistics & Semographics". Retrieved 2012-04-17.
- ^ Ronald T, Takaki (1994). Issei and Nisei: The Settling of Japanese America. New York: Chelsea House.
- ^ Brian Niiya (1993). Japanese American History: An A-To-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present. VNR AG. p. 28.
- ^ Hans Joachim Hillerbrand (2004). The Encyclopedia of Protestantism. Taylor & Francis. p. 197.
- ^ Robert A. Orsi (1999). Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape. Indiana UP. p. 299.
- ^ "Civil Liberties Act of 1988".
- ^ Lobe, Jim (September 16, 2004). "Asian-Americans lean toward Kerry". AsiaTimes
- ^ Wong, Junn, Lee, Ramakrishnan, Janelle, Jane, Taeku, S. Karthick. "Race-Based Considerations and the Obama Vote". 2008 National Asian American Survey.
- ^ Blackmore, Willy. "Top 10: Japanese Noodles Shops in Torrance." L.A. Weekly. Retrieved on May 10, 2013.
- ^ a b Selvam, Ashok. "Asian population booming in suburbs." Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Illinois). March 6, 2011. Retrieved on June 19, 2013.
- ^ Stone, Cal (April 11, 2013). "State's Japanese employees increasing".
- ^ Stirling, Stephen. "Japanese-Americans in Fort Lee, Edgewater describe frantic calls to loved ones in quake's wake." The Star-Ledger. Friday, March 11, 2011. Updated Saturday, March 12, 2011. Retrieved on June 19, 2013.
- ^ June Casagrande (December 2004). "Holiday Heritage".
- ^ http://www.sfjapantown.org/About/
- ^ "D.C. region's Asian population is up 60 percent since 2000, census data show".
- ^ Niiya, Brian (1993). Japanese American History. Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, Calif.): VNR AG. p. 307.
- ^ "'"Northern California Premiere of '99 Years of Love.
- Asian American
- Asian Canadian
- Hyphenated American
- Japanese American Citizens League
- Japanese American internment
- Japanese American National Library
- Japanese American National Museum
- Japanese Filipino
- Japanese Canadian
- Japanese Brazilian
- Japanese Peruvian
- Japanese British
- Japanese Mexican
- Japanese people
- List of Japanese Americans
- Military Intelligence Service (United States)
- Model minority
- Nisei Baseball Research Project
- Pacific Movement of the Eastern World
- Chicago Shimpo
- 442nd Infantry Regiment (United States)
- 100th Infantry Battalion (United States)
See also
- Japanese Americans. In 2010 TBS produced a 5 part, 10hr fictional Japanese language miniseries featuring many of the major events and themes of the Issei and Nisei experience, including emigration, racism, picture brides, farming, pressure due to the China and Pacific wars, internment, a key character who serves in the 442nd and the ongoing redefinition in identity of what it means to be Japanese and American.[24]
Works about Japanese Americans
Japanese Americans now anchor TV newscasts in markets all over the country. Notable anchors include Tritia Toyota, Adele Arakawa, David Ono, Kent Ninomiya, and Lori Matsukawa.
Today, Shin Koyamada launched a leading role in the Warner Bros. epic movie The Last Samurai and Disney Channel movie franchise Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior and TV series Disney Channel Games. Masi Oka plays a prominent role in the NBC series Heroes, Grant Imahara appears on the Discovery Channel series MythBusters and Derek Mio appears in the NBC series Day One.
Star Trek fame) and Pat Morita (Happy Days and The Karate Kid) helped pioneer acting roles for Asian Americans while playing secondary roles on the small screen during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1976, Morita also starred in Mr. T and Tina, which was the first American sitcom centered on a person of Asian descent. Keiko Yoshida was cast in the past TV show ZOOM in PBS Kids. Gregg Araki (film director of independent films) is also Japanese American.
Miyoshi Umeki won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1957. Actors Sessue Hayakawa, Mako Iwamatsu, and Pat Morita were nominated for Academy Awards in 1957, 1966, and 1984 respectively. Chris Tashima won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1997.
Entertainment and media
Hikaru Nakamura became the youngest American ever to earn the titles of National Master (age 10) and International Grandmaster (age 15) in chess. In 2004, at the age of 16, he won the U.S. Chess Championship for the first time. He later won two other times.
More recently, Rex Walters, whose mother was Japanese, played in the NBA from 1993 to 2000. Lindsey Yamasaki was the first Asian American to play in the WNBA and finished off her NCAA career with the third-most career 3-pointers at Stanford University.
In professional sports, Wataru Misaka broke the NBA color barrier in the 1947–48 season, when he played for the New York Knicks. Misaka also played a key role in Utah's NCAA and NIT basketball championships in 1944 and 1947. Wally Kaname Yonamine was a professional running back for the San Francisco 49ers in 1947.
In distance running, Miki (Michiko) Gorman won the Boston and New York City marathons twice in the 1970s. A former American record holder at the distance, she is the only woman to win both races twice, and is the only woman to win both marathons in the same year.
In figure skating, Kristi Yamaguchi, a fourth-generation Japanese American, won three national championship titles (one in singles, two in pairs), two world titles, and the 1992 Olympic Gold medal. Rena Inoue, a Japanese immigrant to America who later became a U.S. citizen, competed at the 2006 Olympics in pair skating for the United States. Kyoko Ina, who was born in Japan, but raised in the United States, competed for the United States in singles and pairs, and was a multiple national champion and an Olympian with two different partners. Mirai Nagasu won the 2008 U.S. Figure Skating Championships at the age of 14 and became the second youngest woman to ever win that title.
More recently, Eric Sato won gold (1988) and bronze (1992) medals in volleyball, while his sister Liane Sato won bronze in the same sport in 1992. Hapa Bryan Clay won the decathlon gold medal in the 2008 Olympics, the silver medal in the 2004 Olympics, and was the sport's 2005 world champion. Hapa Apolo Anton Ohno won eight Olympic medals in short-track speed skating (two gold) in 2002, 2006, and 2010, as well as a world cup championship.
Japanese Americans first made an impact in Olympic sports in the late 1940s and in the 1950s. Harold Sakata won a weightlifting silver medal in the 1948 Olympics, while Japanese Americans Tommy Kono (weightlifting), Yoshinobu Oyakawa (100-meter backstroke), and Ford Konno (1500-meter freestyle) each won gold and set Olympic records in the 1952 Olympics. Konno won another gold and silver swimming medal at the same Olympics and added a silver medal in 1956, while Kono set another Olympic weightlifting record in 1956. Also at the 1952 Olympics, Evelyn Kawamoto won two bronze medals in swimming.
Classical violinist Midori Gotō is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, while world-renowned violinist Anne Akiko Meyers received an Avery Fisher career grant in 1993, and Juno Award-nominated classical violinist Hidetaro Suzuki was the concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 2005. Other notable Japanese American musicians include singer, actress and Broadway star Pat Suzuki; rapper Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and Fort Minor; rapper Kikuo Nishi aka "KeyKool" of The Visionaries; Hiro Yamamoto, original bassist of Soundgarden; ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro; guitarist James Iha of The Smashing Pumpkins fame; singer-songwriter Rachael Yamagata; and Trivium lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Matt Heafy. Singer-songwriter and composer Mari Iijima is a Japanese expat currently living in the United States. J-Pop singers Hikaru Utada and Joe Inoue were both born in the United States but gained their fame in Japan.
Tomie Arai's work is part of permanent collection of Museum of Modern Art, Library of Congress, and the Museum of Chinese in the Americas.
Michi Weglyn and Ronald Takaki received Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in 1977 and 1994 respectively.
Poet laureate of San Francisco Janice Mirikitani has published three volumes of poems. Lawson Fusao Inada was named poet laureate of the state of Oregon.
Cynthia Kadohata won the Newbery Medal in 2005.
Japanese American recipients of the American Book Award include Milton Murayama, Ronald Phillip Tanaka, Miné Okubo, Keiho Soga, Taisanboku Mori, Sojin Takei, Muin Ozaki, Toshio Mori, William Minoru Hohri, Karen Tei Yamashita, Sheila Hamanaka, Lawson Fusao Inada, Ronald Takaki, Kimiko Hahn, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Ruth Ozeki, Hiroshi Kashiwagi, and Yuko Taniguchi. Hisaye Yamamoto received an American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1986.
In the arts, George Nakashima.
Art and literature
Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist specializing in string field theory, and a well-known science popularizer. Ellison Onizuka became the first Asian American astronaut and was the mission specialist aboard Challenger at the time of its explosion.
Charles J. Pedersen won the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his methods of synthesizing crown ethers. Yoichiro Nambu won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum chromodynamics and spontaneous symmetry breaking. Shuji Nakamura won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes.
Many Japanese Americans have also gained prominence in science and technology. In 1979, biochemist Harvey Itano became the first Japanese American elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences.
Science and technology
George Ariyoshi served as the Governor of Hawaiʻi from 1974 to 1986. He was the first American of Asian descent to be elected governor of a state of the United States.
Japanese American members of the United States House of Representatives have included Daniel K. Inouye, Spark Matsunaga, Patsy Mink, Norman Mineta, Bob Matsui, Pat Saiki, Mike Honda, Doris Matsui, and Mazie Hirono. Japanese American members of the United States Senate have included Daniel K. Inouye, Samuel I. Hayakawa, and Spark Matsunaga. In 2010, Inouye was sworn in as President Pro Tempore making him the highest-ranking Asian-American politician in American history.
After the Territory of Hawaiʻi's statehood in 1959, Japanese American political empowerment took a step forward with the election of Daniel K. Inouye to Congress. Spark Matsunaga was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1963, and in 1965 Patsy Mink became the first Asian American woman elected to the United States Congress. Inouye, Matsunaga, and Mink's success led to the gradual acceptance of Japanese American leadership on the national stage, culminating in the appointments of Eric Shinseki and Norman Y. Mineta, the first Japanese American military chief of staff and federal cabinet secretary, respectively.
Notable individuals
- Arlington, Virginia and Alexandria, Virginia (the Northern Virginia region).
- Bergen County, New Jersey.
- Boise, Idaho.
- Boone County, Kentucky
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Cambridge, Massachusetts
Chicago, Illinois and suburbs:
- Arlington Heights, Illinois.
- Buffalo Grove, Illinois.
- Evanston, Illinois.
- Elk Grove Heights, Illinois and nearby Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
- Kane County, Illinois.
- Naperville, Illinois.
- Schaumburg, Illinois.
- Skokie, Illinois
- Wilmette, Illinois
- Denver, Colorado, note Sakura Square
- Gallup, New Mexico, in World War II the city fought to prevent the internment of its 800 Japanese residents.
- Grand Prairie, Texas (the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area)
- Greeley, Colorado
- New York City, New York – According to the Japanese Embassy of the USA, over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry live in the NYC metro area, including South Shore (Long Island) and Hudson Valley; Fairfield County, Connecticut and Northern New Jersey.
- Columbus, Ohio
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with the suburbs of Chester County, Pennsylvania.
- Pueblo, Colorado
- Salem, New Jersey and Cherry Hill, New Jersey (see Delaware Valley).
- Seabrook Farms, New Jersey[23]
- Salt Lake City, Utah.
- Washington, DC.
On the East Coast of the United States, the New York metropolitan area has the highest number of Japanese Americans, followed by the Washington metropolitan area.[22]
Outside the West Coast
Southern California:
- Los Angeles, includes the Little Tokyo section.
- Anaheim and Orange County[20]
- Fontana in the Inland Empire.
- Gardena in Los Angeles' South Bay area.
- Long Beach, California – historic Japanese fisheries presence in Terminal Island.
- Pasadena in the Los Angeles' San Gabriel Valley.
- Palm Desert, also the Japanese developed the year-round agricultural industries in the Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley.
- Sawtelle, California, in West Los Angeles.
- Torrance in Los Angeles' South Bay area.
- Ventura County.
Central Valley, California region:
- Bakersfield/ Kern County, California.
- Fresno – 5% of the county have Japanese ancestry.
- Merced.
- Stockton.
- Butte County.
- Sutter County.
San Francisco Bay Area, the main concentration of Nisei and Sansei in the 20th century:
- Alameda County – concentrated and historic populations in the cities of Alameda, Berkeley, Fremont, Oakland, and Hayward.
- Contra Costa County – concentrated in Walnut Creek
- San Mateo County esp. Daly City and Pacifica.
- San Jose, has one of the three remaining officially recognized Japantowns in North America.
- Santa Clara County – concentrated in Cupertino, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale
- San Francisco, notably in the Japantown district, the largest Japanese community in North America.[21]
- Santa Cruz County
- Monterey County, especially Salinas, California.
- Sacramento and the neighborhoods of Florin and Walnut Grove.
San Diego area:
- La Jolla, San Diego.
- Bonsall east of Oceanside.
- Japanese community center in Vista in North County one of two of its kind in Southern California.
- San Luis Obispo.
- Santa Barbara.
- Southern California:
Washington State:
- Seattle area.
- Bellevue.
- Redmond.
- Tacoma.
- Puget Sound region (San Juan Islands) have Japanese fisheries for over a century.
- Skagit Valley of Washington.
- Yakima Valley, Washington.
- Chehalis Valley of Washington.
- Oregon:
- Portland, Oregon and surrounding area.
- Willamette Valley, Oregon.
- Boise Area
- Boise
- Meridian
- Nampa
- Caldwell
- Phoenix Area notably a section of Grand Avenue in Northwest Phoenix, and Maryvale (Phoenix).
- Las Vegas Area with a reference of Japanese farmers on Bonzai Slough, Arizona near Needles, California.
- Southern Arizona, part of the "exclusion area" for Japanese internment during World War II along with the Pacific coast states.
- Yuma County, Arizona.
The West Coast
Neighborhoods and communities
There are about 5,500 Japanese Americans in Northern Virginia, representing the majority of Japanese Americans in the state of Virginia and the multi-state Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. A small, but relatively high number of Japanese Americans can be found areas surrounding the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech.
As of March 2011 about 2,500 Japanese-Americans combined live in Edgewater and Fort Lee; this is the largest concentration of Japanese-Americans in New Jersey.[19] The New Jersey Japanese School is located in Oakland, New Jersey.
New Jersey
As of April 2013, the largest Japanese national population in Michigan is in Novi, with 2,666 Japanese residents, and the next largest populations are respectively in Ann Arbor, West Bloomfield Township, Farmington Hills, and Battle Creek. The state has 481 Japanese employment facilities providing 35,554 local jobs. 391 of them are in Southeast Michigan, providing 20,816 jobs, and the 90 in other regions in the state provide 14,738 jobs. The Japanese Direct Investment Survey of the Consulate-General of Japan, Detroit stated that over 2,208 additional Japanese residents were employed in the State of Michigan as of October 1, 2012 than in 2011.[18]
As of 2011 there is a Japanese community in O'Hare airport."[17] The Chicago Futabakai Japanese School is located in Arlington Heights. The Mitsuwa Marketplace, a shopping center owned by Japanese, opened around 1981. Many Japanese companies have their U.S. headquarters in nearby Hoffman Estates and Schaumburg.[17]
The Greater Atlanta.
The Japanese School of New York is located in Greenwich, Connecticut in Greater New York City; it had formerly been located in New York City.
The city of Torrance, California in Greater Los Angeles has headquarters of Japanese automakers and offices of other Japanese companies. Because of this many Japanese restaurants and other Japanese cultural offerings are in the city, and Willy Blackmore of L.A. Weekly wrote that Torrance was "essentially Japan's 48th prefecture".[16]
Japanese-Americans by state
[15], while 22% were still undecided.John McCain Republican by a 62% to 16% margin over Barack Obama Democrat found that Japanese American favored National Asian American Survey, the 2008 U.S. presidential election In the [14]


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Robin Crib On Sale
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The Robin Crib by Oeuf is one of those white whales of the furniture world – hunting down a discount is about as difficult as hunting Moby Dick. However, there is a rare opportunity happening right now; this fabulously modern, sustainable crib is on sale for $499 in the birch/white and espresso/white options. If you've been hemming and hawing over which crib to buy, stop it and start clicking "add to cart" right now!
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This article appears in the Spring 2017 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
In the wake of the 2016 elections, many progressives have sought solace in the prospect of resisting Trump administration initiatives and advancing progressive goals in blue states. In his State of the State address last January, California Governor Jerry Brown proclaimed: "California is not turning back. Not now, not ever." Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom suggested that California might use its stringent environmental protection laws to impede the Trump administration's efforts to build a wall along its southern border. Washington Governor Jay Inslee proudly announced that "our state will remain undeterred and we will not be slowed one iota by the foolishness that we're hearing out of the White House."
Conversations about how progressive states should resist regressive Trump administration policies and sidestep Republican control of Congress often ignore the elephant in the room—the power of the federal government to preempt state regulations and even the ability of victims of corporate abuse to seek relief in state courts.
Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, federal statutes and regulations are the "supreme law of the Land," state laws "to the contrary notwithstanding." This means that when Congress makes law or a federal agency regulates, state laws that conflict with the federal law, or even address the same subject matter, are null and void, unless Congress has provided otherwise. Congress does frequently allow states to enact laws and regulations that go beyond a federal floor, as in minimum-wage rules and clean air standards. But what Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away.
Sometimes Congress addresses preemption in the laws that empower federal agencies to regulate business practices. Lawyers then argue over the meaning of these "express preemption" clauses when companies and their trade associations attack more stringent state laws. Even when federal statutes are silent about preemption, the Supreme Court has held that federal regulations can "impliedly" preempt state laws where Congress would have preempted them, had it thought about the matter. The law of federal preemption is not a model of clarity, but it is not easily ignored, because powerful interests use it to shield themselves from stringent state regulation.
We can understand federal preemption as a neutral tool that can be invoked for good or ill. It is good that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 preempts state laws that restrict the rights of minority citizens to vote. It is bad when a regulated industry persuades Congress to create a weak regulatory program to preempt states with strong programs. For example, the chemical industry has long pressed Congress to preempt strict state toxic substances control laws that make it harder for them to market their products in states like California. It finally prevailed last year when Congress passed the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, which enhanced the EPA's ability to regulate toxic chemicals—but also preempted future state regulations. Californians will have to live with the Trump administration's regulation of future toxic chemical risks.
Recognizing that preemption can cut both ways, Congress has sometimes written preemption clauses that preempt only weaker state regulations. Thus, states like California and Connecticut have written more stringent air quality standards than the EPA's standards without fear of preemption. But Congress can always rewrite such laws to take away states' rights to be more protective than federal agencies.
Preempting the Right to Sue
One aspect of the law of preemption that comes as a surprise to most people is the power of Congress and federal agencies to preempt the ability of private individuals to sue irresponsible corporations in state courts for harms caused by badly designed products or overly risky activities. Congress can, of course, replace state common law liability regimes with federal regimes, such as the federal statutes governing claims by injured railroad workers for compensation from employers, or laws outlining liability for damaging side effects of vaccines. Or Congress can act to undercut such rights.
If the EPA reverses its 2011 agreement with California over its more stringent emission rules, the state should be on solid legal ground.
The Supreme Court in 1992 concluded that federal regulatory requirements can preempt state common law claims without providing an alternative compensation mechanism, leaving the victim with no remedy at all against companies whose products or activities comply with the federal requirements, even if those requirements are feeble. In Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., the Court held that a statute specifying warnings for cigarette packages preempted the claim of Rose Cipollone, a 57-year-old woman from Little Ferry, New Jersey, who said the packages of the cigarettes that she smoked did not adequately warn her of the hazards of smoking. The fact that Congress had decided after she had originally filed her case that the package warning was wholly inadequate did not resurrect her claim for damages.
After the Cipollone decision, you could practically hear the wheels turning in the heads of lawyers for manufacturers of dangerous products: If federal regulations can preempt state legal claims, then all we need to do to rid ourselves of pesky lawsuits is persuade federal agencies to promulgate weak regulations.
In sum, federal preemption can both obliterate state statutes and regulations that are inconsistent with federal law and rob injured citizens of their right to seek redress from irresponsible corporations that comply with weak federal regulations. As we shall see, this means that progressives cannot simply ignore what goes on in Congress and federal agencies during the next four years and just focus on state legislatures and courts in their efforts to improve public welfare. They will have to fight at both levels of government.
The Law and Policy of Federal Preemption
In the battles in Congress, agencies, and the courts over health, safety, environmental, and consumer protection legislation, regulated companies and trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce argue that preemption is necessary to provide the uniformity required to ensure smoothly functioning national markets. Environmental groups, consumer activists, and plaintiffs respond that federal agencies are subject to capture by regulated interests and, in any event, cannot be trusted to get it right every time.
In the political realm, politicians often employ preemption opportunistically to achieve desirable outcomes, with little regard to broad principles of federalism. Conservative politicians are vocal proponents of states' rights when it comes to stringent federal voting-rights laws, but they pay little heed to state prerogatives when Congress is considering whether to preempt stringent consumer protection laws. Progressive politicians can also vary in their support for preemptive federal laws, but they consistently support federal laws that preempt less-stringent state protections and preserve tougher standards.
Decades ago, the Supreme Court established a "presumption against preemption" when Congress legislates in a field traditionally regulated by the states, such as setting local electric utility rates or writing local building codes, and it frequently alludes to that presumption in modern opinions. But the power of that presumption appears to wax and wane, depending on whether the majority of the Court thinks preemption is appropriate in particular cases. And that may depend on whether the Court trusts the preempting agency, or whether presumption leads to an outcome the justices prefer.
Express Preemption
So long as it is exercising its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, Congress can decide that the regulatory regime that it imposes also preempts state regulatory regimes and state common law. It does this by adding a separate provision to the statute specifying the extent to which the federal regime preempts state law. Hundreds of federal statutes contain such express preemption clauses.
A good example of express preemption is the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, under which Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations preempt all state laws dealing with the construction and operation of nuclear power plants and other facilities handling high-level nuclear materials. Similarly, the Medical Device Amendments Act of 1976, which prohibits manufacturers of Class III medical devices from marketing them without Food and Drug Administration approval, expressly preempts common law claims that devices approved by the FDA are nonetheless defective. When it comes to highly complex and potentially dangerous technologies like nuclear power plants and medical devices, Congress has decided to place responsibility for ensuring that they are designed, constructed, and operated safely in a single highly expert federal agency, without interference from state agencies or courts.
Since Congress rarely speaks with perfect clarity, courts must still interpret express preemption clauses in regulatory statutes. And sometimes they do a very poor job. For example, the express preemption clause in the Consumer Product Safety Act preempts only state "standards or regulations," and it has a "savings clause" stating that compliance with standards issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) "shall not relieve" manufacturers from "liability at common law." Despite the clarity of the savings clause, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that 17-year-old Brian Moe could not receive a jury trial on his claim that a defectively manufactured lawnmower cost him all the fingers on his right hand, because the product's design complied with CPSC standards.
Implied Preemption
The Supreme Court has also held that "[i]f Congress has not entirely displaced state regulation over the matter in question, state law is … pre-empted to the extent it actually conflicts with federal law." This form of "conflict" preemption comes in two varieties. "Impossibility" preemption occurs when compliance with both the state law and the federal law is impossible because conduct that complies with state law will violate federal law and vice versa. This species of preemption makes a great deal of sense. A company should not be put in a position where it is subject to federal prosecution for complying with state law and subject to state prosecution for complying with federal law. It turns out, however, that such situations are exceedingly rare.
The most frequently encountered (and most controversial) variety of conflict preemption, known as "obstacle preemption," occurs when "the state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment of the full purposes and objectives of Congress." Obstacle preemption gives courts fairly broad discretion to throw out state regulatory laws and common law claims. And that gives federal agencies an opportunity to promulgate weak regulations that preempt more protective state regulations or lawsuits claiming that companies should have done more to protect victims than the federal regulations require.
Trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce argue that preemption is necessary to provide the uniformity required to ensure smoothly functioning national markets.
A good example is Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Association, in which the Supreme Court held that the minimal training requirements that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandated for workers at hazardous waste disposal facilities during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations preempted Illinois's attempt to protect those workers (and the general public) by requiring them to have special licenses. The Court found that the licensing regime, which had its own arguably more stringent training requirements, presented an obstacle to achieving the federal training requirements.
Obstacle preemption is especially worrisome when companies seek to avoid liability by claiming that compensating victims presents an obstacle to attaining the purposes and objectives of a federal regulation. During the George W. Bush administration, some federal agencies aggressively insisted that federal regulatory requirements impliedly preempted state common law claims. The newly appointed chief counsel at the FDA made it his mission in life to change that agency's position on whether FDA approval of labels for prescription drugs preempted common law claims that the labels contained inadequate warnings of their side effects. The agency had for 40 years taken the position that its approval of drug labels ensured that they met a threshold standard for warning, but common law juries could hold companies to a higher standard. Taking the opposite position, the chief counsel's office wrote several amicus briefs in pending state litigation asserting that the plaintiffs' claims were preempted.
After a great deal of litigation, the Supreme Court in 2009 held that FDA approval of drug labels did not provide an obstacle to compliance with the FDA's labeling requirements, because FDA regulations allowed drug manufacturers to amend their labels at any time to contain more stringent warnings. The Court in a later case, however, held that claims against manufacturers of generic drugs were preempted, because a generic manufacturer had to use the original manufacturer's label and lacked the power to insist that the FDA amend that label. Purchasers of generic drugs probably don't know that the lower price comes with a prohibition on suing generic manufacturers.
Obstacle preemption can void state common law claims even when Congress has provided a savings clause allowing such claims. The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 empowers the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to promulgate safety standards for automobiles. Concluding that varying state regulatory standards would destroy the national market in cars, Congress included an express preemption clause prohibiting states from establishing safety standards for autos that are not identical to the federal standards. But it also added a crystal-clear savings clause providing that compliance with an NHTSA-promulgated standard does "not exempt a person from any liability at common law."
California may be able to invoke its environmental regulations to restrict the Trump administration's efforts to build a wall along its border with Mexico. Here, a small fence separates San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
When 17-year-old Alexis Geier's car slammed into a tree in Washington, D.C., she suffered serious injury despite the fact that she was wearing a shoulder harness and lap belt. Her attorney claimed that her 1987 Honda Accord was defectively designed because it lacked an airbag, a technology that had at the time been effective and available for years. Honda responded that the NHTSA's passive restraint standard did not require airbags. Although the agency had required airbags during the Carter administration, it reversed itself at the outset of the Reagan administration to give auto manufacturers a choice between airbags and shoulder harness–lap belt combinations. Disregarding the savings clause, the Supreme Court found that a jury conclusion that Honda should have installed airbags would present an obstacle to attaining NHTSA's goal of giving auto manufacturers a choice. Congress later required newly manufactured cars to come equipped with life-saving airbags, but that did nothing to ameliorate Alexis Geier's injuries.
Field Preemption
The Supreme Court has also held that "[i]f Congress evidences an intent to occupy a given field, any state law falling within that field is pre-empted." A court, in other words, may conclude that Congress meant for a regulatory program to co-opt an entire field of regulation of private conduct. Thus, for example, the federal immigration laws preempt all state laws addressing immigration into the United States of persons from other countries. And the National Labor Relations Act preempts state law in the field of collective bargaining between employers and employees.
Field preemption can also deprive victims of corporate misconduct of their day in court. In a recent case, Jill Sikkelee claimed that her husband, David, was killed because the engine of the Cessna aircraft he was piloting was defectively designed. The manufacturer of the engine, Precision Airmotive Corporation, claimed that regulations promulgated by the Federal Aviation Administration establishing minimum standards for airplanes and airplane parts preempted Sikkelee's claim because the FAA's airplane safety program preempted the entire "field of air safety." In one of the increasingly rare cases that rigorously apply the presumption against preemption, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that the FAA's minimum standards did not go that far. The court went on to hold, however, that Sikkelee's claim might be preempted as an obstacle to the FAA's implementation of its aircraft certification program, despite the fact that the agency delegates 90 percent of its certification activities to private entities, including the manufacturers themselves. The case is now pending before the lower court.
Floor Preemption: A Double-Edged Protection
The extent to which federal law preempts state law is entirely a matter for Congress to decide. Congress has wisely decided to employ federal preemption as a one-way ratchet in some statutes by prescribing a hybrid form of preemption called "floor" preemption. These express preemption clauses preempt state laws that are less stringent than the federal regulations, but not those that are more stringent. The Fair Labor Standards Act, for example, contains a floor preemption provision that allows states to prescribe higher minimum wages and shorter workweek hours than the federal requirements.
Fortunately, most of the federal pollution control statutes contain floor preemption clauses. Thus, California may be able to invoke its environmental regulations to restrict the Trump administration's efforts to build a wall along its border with Mexico. Of course, the current Republican-controlled Congress could respond by enacting a border wall statute that preempts all California environmental laws. The bad news is that nearly all of the federal statutes protecting the public from fraud and risks to health and safety, not to mention systemic risks to the economy, do not employ floor preemption. And the current Congress could revise other floor preemption clauses as well.
When Federal Preemption Is a Bad Thing
Federal preemption is a bad thing when it prevents states from protecting their citizens more effectively than federal agencies that sometimes fail to fulfill their statutory responsibilities. Regulatory failure is clearly a problem when federal agencies are run by political appointees who are ideologically opposed to their agencies' statutory missions. But even under the leadership of non-ideological technocrats, agencies can become captured by regulated interests. The experts who review new drug applications at the FDA, for example, bear the "dual" responsibilities of advising drug companies on how to get their drugs approved and reviewing those drugs to determine whether their benefits outweigh the risks of adverse side effects. During the hundreds of closed-door meetings they have with drug company representatives, they can lose some of their objectivity, especially when there is the possibility of a higher-paying job in the pharmaceutical industry sometime in the future.
Even federal agencies that are trying to do the right thing cannot do an adequate job if they lack sufficient resources. For example, company documents and depositions produced in state court litigation have revealed many successful attempts by devious drug companies to manipulate overworked FDA drug reviewers by submitting misleading data and withholding information that sheds a bad light on their products. Despite this ongoing risk of fraud, it looks like the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress will be cutting agencies' budgets right through the bone and into the marrow, thereby reducing their ability to protect the public.
While the technical experts that inhabit federal agencies undoubtedly have more expertise than judges and juries and many state agencies, federal agencies are notoriously bad at anticipating and responding to technological change. The NHTSA's recent publication on self-driving cars, for example, explained that it was providing guidelines, rather than writing enforceable regulations, for those vehicles because it did not have the capacity to keep up with the rapidly evolving technology.
Even when a federal agency does have a good understanding of the risks posed by a newly emerging product or technology, it takes a long time to move from initial hazard recognition to a final regulation because of the current highly ossified rulemaking environment that requires lengthy cost-benefit analyses and review by small-business panels, the Office of Management and Budget, and other federal agencies. And the House of Representatives, challenging existing regulations, has just passed the Regulatory Accountability Act, which adds even more analytical and review requirements that cling like barnacles to the federal regulatory process. As slow as they are, jury trials and some state agencies can get issues resolved far more expeditiously than federal agencies.
Once an agency has undertaken the Herculean task of promulgating a major regulation, it is generally reluctant to revisit that regulation in the light of new information or changes in technology. Consequently, federal regulations can become obsolete and fail to provide the protections they were designed to yield. For example, the CPSC amended the original flammability standard for mattresses after numerous tragic fires had clearly demonstrated that it was woefully out of date. When the agency finally brought the 50-year-old standard up to date during the George W. Bush administration, it also declared that the new standard would preempt state standards and common law litigation. At the agency's current pace, we might expect an updated standard again in another 50 years, even though fire prevention technologies may improve considerably in the interim. In the meantime, victims of mattress fires will lose their right to persuade juries that manufacturers should have adopted those more effective protections.
Finally, because it is so difficult to promulgate major regulations and defend them in reviewing courts, federal agencies tend to set standards at the minimum level necessary to protect the public, rather than the optimum level or a level that provides a margin of safety. A former head of the NHTSA observed that agencies often set standards at the level of a "20-yard field goal" because they are "easier to make than miss." In fact, the Regulatory Accountability Act that the House just passed would require all federal agencies to adopt the "least costly" of the available regulatory alternatives, even if a more stringent alternative could achieve a great deal more safety at little additional cost. State agencies and common law juries might legitimately conclude that companies should be kicking 45-yard field goals when it comes to protecting the public from dangerous products and activities. But that won't matter, because any more protective state standards will be preempted.
Upcoming Battles
As the Trump administration begins to promulgate weak regulations and roll back existing standards, preemption battles are likely to flare up over attempts by state legislatures and courts to protect their citizens from risks posed by poorly regulated products and activities.
While EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has argued that states should be allowed to craft their own environmental requirements in the past, it remains to be seen whether he will adhere to that principle when California, rather than his home state of Oklahoma, is doing the regulating.
One battle that is already brewing concerns the EPA's standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from automobiles. One exception to the Clean Air Act's floor preemption clause is a provision that prohibits states from promulgating automobile emissions standards that are more stringent than those prescribed by the EPA. An exception to that exception, however, allows California (and states following California's lead) to enforce more stringent emissions standards if California first obtains a waiver from the EPA to do so. With one exception, which it later overturned, the EPA has never disapproved such a waiver request.
In 2011, the EPA and California entered into an agreement in which the EPA approved the state's request to regulate GHG emissions more stringently, and California agreed to link its overall GHG reduction targets to the EPA's national targets from 2017 through 2025. At the industry's insistence, however, the EPA agreed to conduct a "midterm evaluation" of the federal standards for model years 2022 through 2025 with an eye toward reducing their stringency. On January 12, 2017, the EPA rushed out a final determination that "automakers are well positioned to meet the standards at lower costs than previously estimated." Since this is an adjudication, and not a regulation, it is not technically subject to the memorandum that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus wrote on January 20 freezing all non-final federal regulatory actions. But the auto industry is pressing the administration to withdraw the final determination anyway. If the EPA reverses itself, California should be on solid legal ground in insisting that its standards nevertheless remain in effect, because of the 2011 agreement. Since California is such a large market, that should ensure that auto manufacturers comply with the California standards nationwide through model year 2025.
A different fate may await the ambitious climate action plan that California launched on Trump's inauguration day. It calls for reducing petroleum use in the transportation sector by 50 percent by 2030. To the extent that achieving that goal will require even tougher standards for automobiles sold in California after the 2025 model year, the state will have to seek another waiver from the EPA. If the agency disapproves, any more stringent state standards will be preempted by weaker EPA standards. When Senator Kamala Harris raised the issue at prospective EPA administrator Scott Pruitt's confirmation hearings in January, he ducked the question. In briefs challenging several EPA regulations, Pruitt has argued that states should be allowed to craft their own environmental requirements. It remains to be seen whether he will adhere to that principle when California, rather than his home state of Oklahoma, is doing the regulating.
A number of other preemption battles may loom just over the horizon. The Federal Hazardous Substances Act, for example, authorizes the CPSC to require consumer products containing hazardous substances to have one of three specified warnings (DANGER, WARNING, or CAUTION) on their labels, depending on the degree of hazard. An express preemption clause preempts any other warning on the label, but it allows a state to petition the CPSC to waive the preemptive effect of the federal requirement upon a showing that a more stringent warning would not burden interstate commerce. When the next child-poisoning tragedy prompts states to file waiver petitions, don't expect a CPSC dominated by Trump-appointed commissioners to bend over backward to grant them.
The possibility of preemption should intensify the fights in the federal agencies over the stringency of new regulations. For example, we can expect a battle royal over the Department of Agriculture's implementation of the recently passed GMO labeling law, because that statute provides that once the department's regulations are in place, all existing and any future state GMO labeling requirements will be preempted. The residents of Vermont, which already has a stringent labeling law on the books, may find themselves stuck with vaguer warnings on foods that contain larger "adventitious" (unavoidable) amounts of GMOs.
We could see an even bigger fight if the NHTSA decides to regulate self-driving cars. If a proactive state attempts to promulgate standards relating to design and manufacture because it finds NHTSA guidelines insufficiently protective, you can bet that the automobile industry will beat a hasty path to NHTSA headquarters to insist that it promulgate "flexible" regulations that, under the express preemption clause discussed above, would preempt the fledgling state efforts.
Avoiding Preemption
Policymakers in progressive states should be thinking about creative ways to avoid federal preemption in the upcoming preemption wars. For example, state governments can exercise their power to spend to insist that manufacturers of the products they purchase meet stricter standards than applicable federal requirements. In addition, Congress usually leaves to the states power over siting requirements for federally regulated activities like nuclear power plants, and states can creatively use that power to make it difficult or impossible for companies to undertake such activities within their borders. And states might creatively use their taxing power to incentivize companies to exceed the minimal expectations of federal agencies, though the federal courts may view brute force exercises of tax policy with a jaundiced eye.
In a passage often quoted by conservative opponents of a strong federal government, Justice Louis Brandeis called the states "laboratories" of democracy, where governments can experiment with different approaches to solving social problems. And many of President Trump's recent appointees to powerful positions in his new administration profess to be strong proponents of federalism. Yet it is safe to predict that the Trump administration will attempt to reduce the role of states in exploring progressive alternatives to regulatory rollbacks and to social problems that arise in the future.
The Trump administration will also aggressively urge courts to dismiss claims by victims of irresponsible companies whose products and activities comply with weak federal regulations. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has written that allowing federal regulations to preempt state common law claims has "the perverse effect of granting complete immunity from … liability to an entire industry that, in the judgment of Congress, needed more stringent regulation." Preemption of state common law claims will also grant immunity when regulatory agencies in the Trump administration weaken stringent federal regulations.
It will therefore not be enough for advocates of progressive change to retreat to progressive states and ignore what the Trump administration is doing in Washington, D.C., to reduce regulatory protections. Efforts at the state level are essential to keep the ball moving forward, but progressives must also be prepared to engage in upcoming federal preemption wars.


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Students should contact the Barnard Student Health Service at (212) 854-2091 to schedule a pre-travel visit 4-6 weeks in advance of your departure. You may need to update routine vaccines or you may need recommended or required vaccines based on travel destination (the CDC is our resource for recommendations: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/). A pre-travel visit consists of any needed vaccination and travel health counseling. Travel health counseling covers topics such as water and food precautions and personal protective measures against mosquitoes and insects that carry disease. Depending on where your study abroad program takes you, you may need prescriptions for malaria, traveler's diarrhea, altitude sickness prevention and more.
Health Insurance and Emergency Evacuation and Repatriation Insurance
It is crucial that you are covered by a health insurance policy wherever you are in the world. Many health insurance policies only cover you in the United States, so be sure to read the details of your insurance policy. Additionally, it is essential that all students who study abroad purchase emergency evacuation and repatriation insurance. This is different from your general health insurance. You need to ensure that you will be covered in all cases of extreme emergency where you may need to leave the country where you are studying - either due to a natural disaster, political unrest, acts of terrorism, illness or an accident.
If you are enrolled in Barnard's Aetna Student Health Insurance, you are covered under this insurance anywhere in the world for up to $1.25 million for each illness/injury. However, Barnard's Aetna Student Health insurance will not reimburse for wellness care e.g. physicals. For more information, go to their web site at www.aetnastudenthealth.com or ask Elliot Wasserman, Department Manager at the Barnard College Student Health Service, phone 212 854-8305.
If you are currently enrolled in Barnard's Aetna Student Health insurance please note that you CANNOT opt out of it for one semester, you must be enrolled for the entire academic year.
If you have waived out of Barnard's Aetna Student Health Insurance you should be in contact with your insurance provider prior to going abroad to determine the parameters of your coverage. If your current insurance will not cover you for health care overseas there are a number of companies that offer medical expense insurance coverage specifically for people studying or traveling abroad. In addition, you should check to see if your insurance offers medical evacuation, repatriation and travel assistance coverage. Should your insurance not have the extra evacuation and repatriation coverage, you may purchase this coverage separately from Aetna Student Health or another provider. More information about On Call International, the extra evacuation and repatriation coverage from Aetna Student Health, can be found here: www.oncallinternational.com.
You may be asked to pay for additional health insurance (over and above your family's and/or Barnard's Student Health insurance) through your program. In some cases the medical insurance offered by your program can be waived because you have insurance through your parents or Barnard. In other cases you must purchase the program's required insurance, regardless. This is usually due to requirements in the country in which you will be studying. Check with your program about their requirements and the services that will be provided in country.
Please note that the services of a doctor or hospital treatments abroad usually require a cash payment up front. You will then need to request receipts and ask for reimbursement once you've returned to the US.
Any student who is a member of the Aetna Student Health insurance is automatically enrolled in On-Call International which is an emergency evacuation/repatriation plan. It is also a helpful guide to everything healthcare in the country where you will be studying. Barnard students who are not covered by Aetna Student Health may also purchase emergency insurance through them. Please see their website atwww.oncallinternational.com for more information. Many study abroad programs require that you purchase their emergency evacuation coverage so that all of their students are on the same plan.