Japantown June
| 🎓 | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 20-24 |
| Home | San Francisco, CA |
| Demographic | student, Japanese-American, movement left |
| Lean | Strong Democrat |
| Race | asian |
June is a San Francisco State student in her early twenties whose parents were interned during the Second World War. She was radicalised by the 1968 campus strike, and she is the cast's Asian American voter, whose influence is concentrated almost entirely in Hawaii.
Who they stand for
June stands for the Sansei student left and the Asian American movement it produced. The San Francisco State strike ran from November 1968 to March 1969. It was led by the Third World Liberation Front, was the longest student strike in American history, and won the creation of the first College of Ethnic Studies. The fight to save the International Hotel in Manilatown ran from 1968 to the tenants' eviction in 1977. The Emergency Detention Act was repealed in 1971. The Japanese American Citizens League passed its first redress resolution in 1970, beginning a campaign that reached a federal commission in 1980. Asian Americans made up well under two per cent of the population in the 1970 census, and neither major party paid attention to them. Hawaii is the only state where Asian Americans are a plurality, and it is the only state where June carries real electoral weight. Her share of the vote elsewhere is small. Berkeley Bruce is inheriting an existing political party. June stands outside both parties.
Playing to them
June supports ending the war in Vietnam and the military draft, funding for ethnic studies and public universities, protection for tenants, and public acknowledgement of the wartime internment of Japanese Americans. She also supports civil liberties enforced against the FBI. She does not forgive expanded powers of detention, surveillance of political activists, or an escalation of the war in Asia. She also does not forgive a president who praises Asian Americans as a 'model minority', since she does not experience this as a compliment. Winning her support costs the support of Southie Sean, Concordia Hilda and Sun City Dot. It also costs some support from Macomb Bev, who hears campus politics in everything June asks for. Berkeley Bruce and Upper West Side Ruth are won over by the same policies, so she is cheap to win for a president who is already courting the left. Her electoral weight sits almost entirely in Hawaii, so losing her rarely costs a mainland state and winning her rarely wins one.
Where they live
The five states where Japantown June makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- Hawaii
- California
- Washington
- Nevada
- Oregon