From George Takei's graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy.
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Given
the disgraceful circumstances of our concentration
camps for immigrants, asylum seekers,
and whatever brown skinned legal
residents and citizens get swept
up with the not to mention the mass
raids last week at Mississippi poultry
plants, perhaps it is good to remember this tidbit of American
History. What will our heirs and progeny be mortified by
us and how will they have to atone for
our crimes?
On
August 10, 1988, more than 45 years after the start of internment, the United
States government authorized reparations
payments to Japanese-Americans
detained during World War II.
President Ronald Reagan signing the bill apologizing for World War II internment of Japanese-Americans and authorizing alargely symbolic reparations.
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Ten
weeks after the December 1941 Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering 120,000
people of Japanese descent—including 75,000 American citizens—into internment camps. The announced purpose was to protect the West Coast from sabotage and collusion with
the enemy, but the perceived threat was based more in racial prejudice than military strategy, as the great majority German-American and Italian-American
residents were allowed to remain in their homes undisturbed. And despite the large pre-war German-American Bund
with its openly pro-Nazi rallies and
proven networks of spies and saboteurs.
For
the length of the war, Americans of
Japanese descent and Japanese nationals—many of denied American citizenship based on racially discriminatory quotas—were imprisoned in makeshift internment camps throughout the West
Coast and as far east as Arkansas.
Interned people were forced to abandon
their homes, farms, and businesses,
or sell them at rock bottom prices,
losing economic stability and generational wealth. The 1944 U.S. Supreme Court decision Korematsu
v. U.S., upheld Roosevelt’s executive order.
Despite
the trauma the great majority of the
detainees remained loyal to America
and thousands of their young men volunteered
for service in the Armed forces. That included members of the 442nd Infantry Regiment made up of Nisei—second generation American
citizens—that became the most decorated
unit of it size during the war for its hard-fighting
service in Italy and France.
A member of the Nesei 442nd Regiment on guard in France in 1945.
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After
the war, Japanese-Americans returned home to distrust and resentment.
Wartime internment traumatized an entire generation of people and
continues to impact their descendants.
After the war the detainies were often unwanted back in their home communities.
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Inspired
by the Civil Rights Movement,
survivors of internment organized to
demand that the United States
government address this history.
In
1980, Congress established a commission to investigate the
internment camps and their legacy. The report decried Japanese internment as a
“grave injustice” and acknowledged
that the internment was fueled by “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”
The
decade-long efforts of Japanese American civil rights advocates were realized
when President Ronald Reagan signed
the Civil Liberties Act of 1988,
which provided an apology and compensation of $20,000 to living survivors of Japanese internment. An estimated
50,000 people interned during the war died
before the reparation act’s passage.
Although
Japanese Americans were gratified by the acknowledgement of the grave injustice done to them and for
the formal apology, the cash settlements were a drop in the bucket compared to actual losses.
A one day evacuation sale at a Japanese-American owned business. Many did not even have the timer or opportunity to even attempting to get some value for their abandoned property.
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Hard working and industrious Japanese had some of the
finest farms on the West Coast, prosperous
businesses in towns and cities as well as high-rates of home ownership. All of that caused resentment and envy by
their neighbors, many of whom swooped in to claim their property legally
or by winked-at outright theft. A mere $20,000 came nowhere near making up
those losses, especially considering inflation.
And by denying recompense to the
tens of thousands who had already died, their heirs were effectively cheated
as well.
In
the decades after the apology and reparations, a public consensus grew that the internment was one of the blackest episodes in American
history. But now with new camps—and proposals
to actually use former Japanese internment camps—springing up like mushrooms, a
spate of Trump apologists, right-wing
ideologues, and outright White
nationalists—not only defend the camps but exult in them. And they
assail the birthright citizenship of
the Nisei generations. The Japanese like
the millions of Latino American citizens
are derided as alien stains on White
America.
There
is every evidence that Donald Trump shares that view—he has threatened to try
to end birthright citizenship by fiat—executive order—and many of his Make America Great Again devotees cheer
it on. An unthinkable cancer is spreading.
All
because we are already forgetting the lessons of Manzanar.
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