Shameful Times
Thank you for leading with the story of Joe Okimoto ’60, Med’61 [“Life, Interrupted,” March/April]. Okimoto’s account of Poston Internment Camp is heartbreaking and infuriating on so many levels.

We know so much more now about how chronic stress affects the brain and the body, most acutely in children and including the unrelenting stress of hardship and racism. The photos you included speak volumes about what these children endured, along with their families and communities.

Thank you for reminding us of this shameful chapter of U.S. history and the need to revisit it often so we never forget or, God forbid, repeat such cruel injustice.

SARAH JACKSON-HAN ’88
Bethesda, Maryland

I note with interest your piece on Dr. Okimoto and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. I take issue, however, with your comparison of their plight to the current prospect of renewed and enhanced enforcement of immigration laws. Unlike the unfortunates currently fearing deportation or removal, the vast majority of Japanese Americans confined during World War II were not immigrants but native-born citizens. Nonetheless, they were relocated and locked away. 

The Japanese American internees were given 72 hours to report for relocation. Homes, businesses…most lost everything. Yet thousands of the young men behind the barbed wire volunteered, along with their brethren from Hawaii, to serve in the infantry.

Immigrants currently in fear of deportation have assuredly made signal contributions, and the months ahead will be replete with heart-rending scenes. Seeking to repair a broken system, whatever one’s view of the method, however, bears no comparison to locking up an entire population of citizens based solely on their heritage.

JOHN C. KIYONAGA, P’21
Chevy Chase, Maryland

I am grateful to DAM for highlighting Joe Okimoto’s story, and particularly to Joe for his part in telling it—and for making it relevant to today’s United States. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Dartmouth were to turn its back on that part of its record of laudable support for the basic tenets of this country’s organization? What if the College hired a new top lawyer who was a vocal critic of birthright citizenship? Wouldn’t it be crazy if a remarkably capable kid such as Joe Okimoto had never had the chance to matriculate at the College? Oh, the what-ifs and what happens next possibilities. We shall all, I expect, watch developments in the College’s approach with interest.

Thanks again for a most meaningful and personal story.

ROB BAST ’73
Hinesburg, Vermont

Speak Up
I was disturbed to read [“The Neutral Zone” March/April], describing President Beilock’s new policy of “institutional neutrality and restraint.”

This policy—combined with her recent decision to hire Matt Raymer ’03, a vocal supporter of ending birthright citizenship, to serve as general counsel—undermines the College’s commitments to independent thought, diversity, and open debate and aids in the capitulation of the United States’ elite institutions to authoritarian overreach from the White House. 

It is all the more ironic that this policy is discussed in the same issue featuring a cover story about Joe Okimoto, a Japanese American born in California who spent years of his childhood incarcerated by the federal government simply because of his heritage. As professor Peter Golder’s dissent from the Committee on Institutional Statements pointed out, the institutional neutrality policy would have precluded Dartmouth from speaking out about the internment of Okimoto, along with hundreds of thousands of other innocent Japanese Americans.

Now is the time to speak up against unchecked power, not hitch our wagon to it.

SYLVIA CHI ’05
Oakland, California

The Brady Bunch
Congratulations on another fine issue of DAM, especially the article on Joe Okimoto, of my class of 1960. But what most caught my eye was the article on the photography of Mathew Brady [“Brave Faces,” March/April]. The colorization by Sanna Dullaway turned Brady’s stylized, period pieces into fine portraiture: appropriate highlights, skin tones, and hair tones; perfectly rendered shading of features and clothing; and colors all appropriate to the subject and time. Amazing! These could almost be 21st-century oil paintings of contemporary actors.

ART LAFRANCE ’60
Green Valley, Arizona

So glad to see Salmon Chase, class of 1826, featured in “Brave Faces.” Often overlooked, this alum was a major fighter for emancipation, did creative work to defeat the hideous practice of fugitive slave enforcement in Ohio, and provided crucial support to Lincoln’s war efforts by creative funds development as U.S. treasury secretary. Also, per Walter Stahr’s excellent biography, Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival, Dartmouth alumni and other events provided key platforms to promote Chase’s concerns for decency and freedom, long before his later dynamic service as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

GEORGE McILRATH ’67
Saint Lucie West, Florida

Bipartisanship?
Given our current administration’s embrace of autocracy, lawlessness, and corruption, aided and abetted by her Republican colleagues, the upbeat assessment from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ’88 of bipartisanship and her time in the U.S. Senate [“Continuing Ed,” March/April] was dismally timed for this historic moment. Could DAM please give the senator a second chance—sooner rather than later—to offer a clear-eyed assessment of the state of our nation and what she, her Democratic colleagues, and we the people can do at this critical time to overcome these attacks on democracy, on truth and science, and on our allies and win back our country?

PAUL GROSS ’74
New Rochelle, New York

Unexpected Discoveries
The eureka moment of Jonathan Schroeder ’03 when he discovered the memoir of a formerly enslaved North Carolinian [“Six Hundred Thousand Despots,” January/February] echoes my own astonishment when I stumbled across long-forgotten reports on the slave trade, also written by a former slave, published in London in 1812. This led to my writing The African American Odyssey of John Kizell, published in 2011.

While doing research at the University of Michigan, I was stunned to find letters and reports Kizell had written to the British governor in Sierra Leone. Kizell had become literate while enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina, during the American Revolution. Few formerly enslaved Africans returned to their homeland. He is the only one known to have written about the Middle Passage and the lasting impact of the slave trade on African societies, in this case his own.

I was a history major, but Dartmouth offered no African history courses. Joining the Peace Corps and teaching at a Sierra Leone secondary school led to a lifelong engagement with Africa and its history. It also led to my own eureka moment—discovering a remarkable human being who survived enslavement.

KEVIN G. LOWTHER ’63
Springfield, Virginia 

Basement Behavior
Maybe I am getting old, but I found the article [“Paddle Tales,” March/April] on the pong Masters tournament to be most inappropriate for the alumni magazine. As a former member of Alpha Chi Alpha, I well remember many competitive beer pong games and, while I would probably not play today, have no problem with continuing the tradition in fraternity basements. What I object to is glorifying an activity that seems to violate the College’s behavior and alcohol standards and reports on drinking by students who are most likely under 21. There must be many other Sophomore Summer traditions that would have been a better choice for DAM to highlight.

ANDREW MEYERS ’69
Salisbury, Vermont

These letters did not appear in the print edition.

Ritual Drunkathon

Reading “Paddle Tales” [March/April] by Kira Parrish-Penny ’24 confirmed why I felt prouder graduating from Minneapolis’ Fairview outpatient treatment program in 2006 than from Dartmouth in 1966. Notwithstanding, I am proud I graduated from a college that offered me a liberal education, exposure to the out-of-doors, and a route to a career in medicine.

The scatological childishness implied by Parrish-Penny’s pong fest story describing current undergraduates’ ritual drunkathon was not so much a trigger but more a memory of my satyric freshman year of incorrect alcohol-fueled dysfunctional behavior. Now, also included are undergraduate female cheerleaders (not imported ones as in my day) hawking one or another “Greek” frat.

This piece of distorted and unsavory New Journalism in no discernible way supports the late President James O. Freedman’s passion to “establish Dartmouth as a national leader in both undergraduate teaching and scholarship” and that the College’s reputation could evolve from that of a party school into “a haven for intellectuals.” My takeaway from reading such sad reportage is not as one holier than thou but rather one of sadness that the expressed value of a bacchanalia-infused culture should preempt what our College can and should be. 

PETER DORSEN ’66
Eagan, Minnesota

Baseball Behind Barbed Wire

The piece featuring Joe Okimoto ’60 [“Life, Interrupted” [March/April] and his poignant recall of life in a U.S. internment camp for Japanese during World War II brought to mind an excellent little book, Baseball Saved Us, by Ken Mochizuki. Though classed as fiction, it detailed the hot, dusty camp life and freezing nights, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. His father decided to create a baseball diamond (“If I build it, will they come?”). Boys did come, leagues formed, and now they all played with purpose and gained dignity. It is an interesting and useful counterpoint to the featured true story of this difficult experience in American history. 

KENNETH W. LUNDSTROM ’55
Wilmington, Delaware

Flip Flop

Regarding “Continuing Ed” [March/April], in a televised campaign debate on October 25, 2018, Kirsten Gillibrand pledged that if she was re-elected to the U.S. Senate the following month, she would serve her entire six-year term. Her opponent scoffed at her response.

Less than two weeks later—in fact, two days after the election—she acknowledged she was considering a presidential run, which she announced the following January. It wasn’t successful. She crashed and burned and bowed out in August after receiving negligible public support. That followed her flip-flop on gun ownership rights and gun control in 2009 when she moved from the U.S. House to Representatives to the Senate.

DAM, stop being such a fanboy for Ms. Gillibrand. Her hypocrisy is a bit too much. But then, she’s a professional politician at home with her peers.

E. ROBERT QUASMAN ’65
Woodstock, Vermont

Quotas

I lived in the period discussed by other Dartmouth graduates in recent issues [“Your Turn,” March/April and January/February]. I applied to Dartmouth in fall 1944. Because of World War II and Dartmouth’s deal with the U.S. Navy to train officer candidates and educate them scholastically, a three-semester academic year was in effect and semesters began in March, July, and November. I sought admission in March 1945 because I was graduating in January 1945. I was rejected and went to work in a defense plant, applying again for admission in July 1945. This time I was successful and enrolled in July.

That fall The New York Times exposed Dartmouth’s quota system for Jewish applicants, and John Sloan Dickey, class of 1929, replaced Ernest Martin Hopkins, class of 1901, as president. The Jewish quota ended and my nephew entered and graduated in 1984 and my elder son did so in 1986. I don’t know if they were treated as “legacies,” but I’m glad they attended the College on the Hill as I did.

QUENTIN L. KOPP ’49
San Francisco

I read the letter by Matthew Skrod ’24 [“Your Turn,” January/February] regarding legacy admissions and a Jewish quota with interest. My father, Jesse Joseph Michaelson ’33, was admitted to Dartmouth in 1929 at age 15. He was Jewish and had attended a public high school in New York City. After my mother’s death I found his original acceptance letter in the attic of my childhood home. In the letter the dean urged him to consider taking a year off before starting Dartmouth because of his age, which he chose not to do.

Although my father did not tell me much about his college days, there were two anecdotes he related, one of which appears to confirm Mr. Skrod’s statement regarding “college officials’ antisemitic animus.” My dad said he was surprised when one of his chemistry professors took him aside and told him that he supported his admission to Dartmouth’s Medical School, but “those damned antisemites” refused, since they had already accepted one Jew that year and he was a basketball player. Also, dad recalled that while attending a home basketball game whose opposing team had a Jewish player, some of his classmates shouted, “Get that Christ killer.”     

Despite these experiences my father maintained a lifelong connection with Dartmouth and was proud of the education he received there. He did well, majoring in zoology and chemistry and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. He attended NYU Medical School, served as a physician in the U.S. Army in World War II in Europe, and had a successful career as an ophthalmologist.

CLIFFORD MICHAELSON
Newton, Massachusetts