Volume 2 - Issue 2 - February 2026

Greetings !

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, a single-page document that unraveled the lives of more than 125,000 Japanese Americans, most of them living on the West Coast. Two-thirds were U.S. citizens. None were ever charged with a crime.

I recently learned that Grandfather Ohashi and my Uncle George, both of Cheyenne, Wyoming, were sourcing vegetables in Ventura, California, for their business, Western Growers Exchange, at the wrong time.

Their incarceration happened in two stages. The Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) confiscated their truck and sent them to the Tulare and Puyallup assembly centers, respectively. Under the authority of the Western Defense Command, 125,000 Japanese people were rounded up and sent first to 15 temporary assembly centers.

It took my Auntie Elsie a year to negotiate with federal, state, and local law enforcement officials to secure their parole back to Wyoming. The two avoided transfer to one of the 10 permanent internment camps run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA).

Homes were abandoned.

Businesses were sold for pennies.

Communities were erased overnight.

Pundits and historians view EO 9066 through the fog of war, casting it as a mistake born of a wartime storm. The uncomfortable truth is, we repeat the same tragic lesson because we refuse to name the real cause.

Multiple intelligence reports at the time confirmed the Japanese posed no credible threat. Compare that to the heavily fortified Eastern Seaboard, where German U-Boats torpedoed 397 Allied ships during the War.

What existed then was a long-standing, deeply rooted xenophobia, especially toward Asian immigrants, that had been codified for decades through exclusion laws and land sale bans.

Executive Order 9066 gave racialized fear federal teeth.

When fear outranks evidence and ethnicity becomes shorthand for suspicion, then national security becomes a blank check. History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but the clouds gather in the same way, creating a storm that is all too recognizable.

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Vengeance! at Stone Creek: The Executive Order That Never Ended

Some novels entertain. Some educate. A rare few refuse to let the reader off the hook.

Vengeance! at Stone Creek is one of those books.

Set in the long shadow of World War II–era Japanese incarceration, the novel explores what happens after injustice has been legalized and filed away.

Rather than retelling history, it integrates unanswered questions and the uncomfortable truth, deferring accountability indefinitely.

Alan O’Hashi writes with restraint and precision. The tension comes from moral pressure and the question history prefers not to ask: What is owed when the harm was sanctioned by law?

When a soldier fires his rifle from a guard tower inside Camp Arroyo, a Japanese American incarceration camp near Stone Creek, Colorado, the sound echoes far beyond the barbed wire. Buy a signed copy

Click and read a review of 'Vengeance! at Stone Creek' and how history is repeating itself...

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How Acronyms Shape Xenophobia in America

The Alphabet of Exclusion: The bureaucratic lexicon included “acronyms” to save time. In the history of American xenophobia, acronyms save face. Three-letter shorthand compresses the jagged edges of state power into something smooth, portable, and easy to swallow.

Today, we see ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) dominating the headlines. These acronyms are the latest entries in a century-long glossary of exclusion.

Our Long Memory of Othering: Linguistic distancing is an ingrained feature of American domestic and foreign policy.

The names change, but the grammar of “the outsider” remains consistent.

• The Precedent – The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): Before the era of modern acronyms, this was the first significant law that restricted immigration based on a specific race.

The Act codified the idea that certain people wouldn’t assimilate, establishing a legal basis for the federal government to exclude anyone deemed a threat to the nation’s homogeneity.

Click to read how acronyms sterilize injustice...

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Why I’m Starting Marginalia on Substack

The Marginalia is changing in 2026. Please click and subscribe! Since I read my first byline in the Carey Junior High School Tumbleweed newspaper, I’ve been more interested in the notes in the margins than the polished text in the middle.

The crossed-out sentences. The questions scribbled in pencil that say, “Wait, what about this? That’s where the thinking happens. That’s where the truth sneaks in.

That’s why I’m launching Marginalia on Substack.

The Marginalia is a home for the in-between thoughts, the ideas that don’t arrive fully formed, the stories that reveal themselves while you’re working them out, and the observations you make when you’re paying attention instead of chasing certainty. It’s less about having the final answer and more about asking better questions.

If you’ve been a subscriber to my newsletter, this is a natural extension of what I’ve already been sharing with you, just more focused, more regular, and more conversational. On Substack, Marginalia will be a place where I publish ongoing stories and essays about writing, publishing, creativity, and the strange business of trying to make something worthwhile in a very noisy world.

My disclaimer: You’re receiving this newsletter because at some point over the past 25 or 30 years, we’ve met or corresponded by email. You can unsubscribe if your inbox is already too cluttered. You’re safe here. I’ll never ask you to send me $1,000 in Bitcoin, or I’ll hijack your computer.

Drop me a line if you run out of things to do. Thank you for sticking around. Until next time...

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February marks the 84th anniversary of Japanese incarceration