Posted on 02/18/2002 4:05:49 PM PST by RCW2001
Japanese-Americans recall the pain of World War II internment 60 years later
Monday, February 18, 2002
©2002 Associated Press
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/02/18/state1949EST0101.DTL
(02-18) 16:49 PST SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) --
It's been 60 years, but the pain of destroying her mother's kimonos and anything else of Japanese origin still stings Betty Haruko Nishi. She remembers all too well how the federal government forced thousands of Japanese to give up their homes and businesses to live in internment camps during World War II.
"Everything happened so fast. My dad's new tractor, we had to leave behind. We couldn't take anything Japanese," Nishi, 72, told the San Jose Mercury News. "It was horrible."
President Roosevelt signed an Executive Order on Feb. 19, 1942, forcing about 120,000 Japanese-Americans -- many of them U.S. citizens living on the West Coast -- away from their homes, jobs and farms and into 10 internment camps.
The U.S. government did not formally apologize or make reparations to internment survivors until 1989.
Former internees say they hope a lesson was learned from their pain and that others aren't treated the same during America's war on terrorism.
"I hope the same thing doesn't happen to the Middle Easterners," said Dave Tatsuno, whose family was forced to sell their store's merchandise and move to Topaz in the Utah desert. "Most of them are innocent like we were. The country has to be careful to never again fall into the trap of condemning a people due to ancestry."
Nishi had just celebrated her 12th birthday with her family in Turlock when she was sent to a filthy assembly center in Merced with her parents, five brothers and sister. Nishi's mother went temporarily blind with stress, and her siblings got pneumonia and ulcers.
Four months later, they shared two stark rooms in Amanche, Colo., and watched many young men leaving the camps to fight for the United States overseas. Ultimately, the all-Japanese 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team suffered the highest casualty rate and became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service.
"Looking back I remember the deep well of pain the experience caused my parents," Nishi said. "It is something that will always be in my heart."
Katie Hironaka, 82, also can't forget, even though she admits the camps -- in a strange way -- may have saved lives.
"What was done to us was wrong," said Hironaka, who was a new mother sent to Heart Mountain, Wyo., with her parents and brothers.
"And yet, there was so much prejudice and ignorance, who knows how many Japanese homes would have been burned, how many citizens would have been hurt or even killed if we had been around?" she said. "In that way it was good, and yet it was so terrible as well."
For one thing, the use of the word "interned" is about as factual as Bill Klintoon's language use. It's out of the same liberal/socialist playbook and only morons swallow like that.
I'm no moron. These people were INCARCERATED in a prison camp for no reason. They were American citizens and NOT foreign agents.
Why are you acting like a weak liberal and asking for a free handout from other Americans? Are you part of the same tax-and-spend package that CREATED the camps?
I made the statement based on their original statements and I stand by it. If you don't see it, take another look.
I see it is your point that the idiot is a conservative and the person who points it out is liberal. Interesting twist. Liberal indeed!
Bones. Let me start off by confirming that I believe this whole affair was WRONG and ILLEGAL. However, I think that is a subject much overblown and publicized for an agenda beyond the love of civil rights.
Isn't it true that Americans of Japanese descent were compensated not once, but THREE times for the wrongs commited against them? And isn't it also true that these were in fact relocation camps, which the people could move from as long as they did not live in the six (I think) states which were off limits? I'm sure this was in practice almost impossible, but some did leave- one who did was later a prominent politician, maybe Inoye or Hawakawa, who left to attend college in Chicago?
I once heard there have been seven seperate pieces of legislation condemning the camps and/or making restitution to detention camp survivors of Japanese origin.
I say of Japanese origin because to my knowledge not one of the 90K FDR detention camp survivors of Italian and German origin have been compensated for their ordeals.
I do not deliberately intend to offend, but I do most certainly have problem with lectures on 'racism' when our nation's very survival is the REAL issue. I find your attitude condescending, needlessly antagonistic & just nasty. Try looking at my #16 & know it was a SYMPATHETIC reply-if you are capable of objective thought.
I also find the words of our founding fathers were usually intended to apply to CITIZENS &/or not to persons who might be regarded by reasonable people as HOSTILE FORIEGN AGENTS or potential hostile agents. Good grief, man this was a WAR. Pearl Harbor, Wake, et al were regarded as the opening moves for what may have been, at any time, a full scale invasion! Sure the usual political suspects were very devious-they always are!
Some of my ancesters were in fact, by anyone's definition, Founding Fathers-so I find such questions to be of more than passing interest. I do wonder why anyone, who was not either actually in this 'round-up' or who is not directly descended from these folks, is soo worried about the affair. Yes, we may see some of the same again, but not without serious questions being raised & previous mistakes fully examined. I think the original story, & many of that ilk, are placed in the media by people with bad motives &/or too much free time.
Thanks for that acknowledgement. I share that appraisal of the "civil rights" situation. I think the way to address (or shall we say..."redress"?) civil rights problems is enforcement of the due process amendment of the US Constitution. In the case of the INCARCERATION of Americans of Japanese descent, it clearly was UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Isn't it true that Americans of Japanese descent were compensated not once, but THREE times for the wrongs commited against them?
No it is not true. In fact, most of the injured were not compensated because most had died prior to enactment of the reparations/apology bill in 1988 by Ronald Reagan. What are the three compensations that you are referring to?
And isn't it also true that these were in fact relocation camps, which the people could move from as long as they did not live in the six (I think) states which were off limits? Absolutely FALSE. These were not CAMPS. They were Prisons. Inmates were not capable of leaving without specific orders cleared by Dewitt. Those orders were only in existence because Quakers attempted to get the Japanese American children out of the camps. EVERY one of the major Japanese American prominent professionals who was incarcerated was denied their job, home, and family during the term of the sentence/incarceration. Most families were pennyless due to the loss of their home and businesses. So, even without the sentencing which was occurring, it was virtually impossible for them to move (because there was no job opportunity for the male breadwinners. They had no job opportunity because the liberal Hollywood media and New York radio outfits were too busy creating a race war in the Pacific! These liberals converted 120,000 people from private property owning conservatives to a bunch of welfare/state-dependent stooges for the next 60 years!
I'm sure this was in practice almost impossible, but some did leave- one who did was later a prominent politician, maybe Inoye or Hawakawa, who left to attend college in Chicago?
Inoye? Hawakawa? Laugh!
For one thing, it's Senator Daniel K. Inouye. He lost his arm in battle and received a late Congressional Medal of Honor for it (60 years after the fact). He was from Hawaii, never incarcerated, and was serving the war in the European/Italian campaigns under Patton's leadership. Where have you been? Watching more that "Saving Private Ryan" history? \smirk\
Regarding "Hawakawa"...it's S.I. Hayakawa, a naturalized American citizen who was NEVER incarcerated and was a Republican Senator from California.
A soldier and his mother at a strawberry field. The soldier, age 23, volunteered July 10, 1941, and is stationed at Camp Leonard Wood, Missouri. He was furloughed to help his mother and family prepare for their incarceration. He is the youngest of six children, two of them volunteers in the U.S. Army. The mother, age 53, came from Japan 37 years ago. Her husband died 21 years ago, leaving her to raise six children. She worked in a strawberry basket factory until last year when her children leased three acres of strawberries so she wouldn't have to work for somebody else. The family is Buddhist. This is her youngest son. Her second son is in the army stationed at Ft. Bliss. 453 families are to be incarcerated from this area. Photographer: Lange, Dorothea Florin, California. 5/11/42
However, nothing you can tell me will make me think I should judge the incarcerations as without merit.
I do grow weary of trying to be polite in the face of what I see as an absence of logic on your part. Maybe you might spend some of your great time & energy on the survivors of OUR military-say those from the South Pacific, WWII who are still psychologically harmed by what the Japanese military did?
2. You are a racist in equating the actions of the imperial Japanese army in Asia to the totally different lifestyle and loyalties of Americans of Japanese descent.
While you spout about reparations, you totally ignore the FACT that the US Constitution is in clear effect during a time of war.
War conflicts do NOT negate the Bill of Rights. Only weak-minded liberal stooges agree with your position. You have not given one iota of justification for the forced and mass incarceration of people on the basis of race alone. Furhermore, you have utterly defended the social policy of FDR. One wonders what kind of "Conservative" you really are!
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