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."
Debate it all you will, but FDR and the Gov't he headed stepped FAR over the line on that count at least.
And I'll throw in on the "Is it okay to round up Americans if they look like they might be trouble?" question. NEVER will it be okay to round up a bunch of citizens of this country based on what they look like or who they know.
Based on this hatred of Japanese-Americans because of what the Japanese military did means the rest of the world probably has plenty of reason to round up Americans in their nation just because of some of Bill Clinton's actions. Shoot, we hate the guy enough.
I lived in Japan for a time in the 1990s and I met several old men that were still sore about losing the war (like many Americans are even though they eventually "won" big), but I met far more old folks who were terrified of their own government at the time and were VERY relieved when Japan surrendered and their leaders were taken. Several of them told of how their entire family sat around the radio and wept with joy when Hirohito announced the surrender.
An old blind woman recalled taking all her younger brothers and sisters out in the fields and running for cover when the Allied planes would come on strafing runs through her farming village. Why were they a target? Was it just?
War is never good. The Japanese paid for the war their evil leaders put on them, just like the Germans did. Several on this thread seem to fall right in line with the mentality that allowed Hitler to take power over his people. Hitler's rise to power included the hold the "subversive non-loyal element" propaganda had on his countrymen.
But even though liberals and others are hacking at that foundation, I will never support the denial of rights to those who work within the processes guaranteed by the Constitution. It's my duty to work within that framework to uphold the foundation.
See ya!
The conservative answer should be to have government enforce existing law (instead of violating the US Constitution). The conservative answer should have been to keep the middle class Japanese-Americans in their homes, businesses, and farms! Instead the liberals stuck those families in a prison camp to rot for 2-4 years. The families NEVER recovered and ended up welfare dependent people for the next 3 generations!
That's great if you're a DNC power broker, but pretty lousy for the younger folks who get parasitized for their entire lives. FDR's regime was like an alien attached to the faces of the unsuspecting host humans...sucking the life and creativity out of their host and turning them into lifeless shells.
Well, the liberals got what they wanted. They got life long allegiance of the welfare-dependent, mind-numbed, spirit-killed people who emerged from the prison camps.
See "Stockholm Syndrome" for more info.
You post much misinformation. Are you a liberal or a socialist?
1. Regarding the ability to leave the camps (yes with permission of the authoritites):
"In May, 1942 farmers began to petition the White House for help in recruiting seasonal farm labor for their crops due to the labor shortage. The seasonal leave program began on May 21, 1942 from the Portland Assembly center to help thin beets in eastern Oregon. The local officials had to pledge that the seasonal labor was needed and insure the safety of the internees working on the farms. In September, 1942 the demand for seasonal labor had increased dramatically. By mid-October, 10,000 evacuees were on seasonal leave, and the demand well exceeded the supply. Although there were some incidents of local hostility, the program was judged a relative success."
"In Ex Parte Endo, Ms. Endo, an American citizen being held in a Relocation Camp, filed for leave clearance. It was granted, but she failed to file for indefinite leave. Instead, she filed for writ of habeas corpus, demanding that she be restored to liberty and that the regulations holding her were invalid.
The Endo Court granted her petition, but explicitly declined to rule on constitutional grounds. The Court merely found that, pursuant to the War Relocation Authority statute and Executive Order 9066, the WRA had no power to subject admittedly loyal citizens to its leave procedure, i.e., no power to detain, where the citizen was admittedly loyal.
The Court explicitly left open the possibility that the Order allowed for detention of citizens whose loyalty was not known. The Court stated "[d]etention which furthered the campaign against espionage and sabotage would be one thing. But detention which has no relationshipto that campaign is of a distinct character…" Ex Parte Endo, 323U.S. 283, 302 (1944). Thus, although the camps were generally opened in the wake of Endo, the case never addressed the constitutionality of the measure. "
From an interview with KEN MASUGI:
"Let's reflect on the relocation centers or "camps" before we use terms like this. These were self-governing towns, with barracks-like quarters. In Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian history museum there is a replica of such a barracks. My mother affirms its authenticity. What is not known is that people could leave the camps for work (as did my parents, who returned when the seasons changed) or for college. The government actually offered jobs in other parts of the country. Other relatives of mine moved outside the camps to take jobs. Now, would anyone have chosen them as places to live? Highly unlikely. The mistake we may be making today is trying to rectify the past injustice and not see the problems created by our utterly different attitudes toward immigration and race today. Racial segregation was routine back then, hardly anyone questioned the legitimacy of discrimination based on race. Obviously there were basic rights and many fought to assure greater liberties for all. What we have today is a multicultural, group-rights mentality that keeps us from acting prudently just as an analogous racial mentality encouraged some rashness after WWII".
When I mentioned Hayakawa, I was remembering incorrectly. He was an Associate Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1939 to 1947, and example of an alien Japanese (Canadian citizen) who could freely live outside the exclusion zone.
2. On compensation.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act allowing reimbursements. Some 23,689 claims were filed asking for $131,949,176. By the time these claims outlasted federal procedures which required itemized claims and receipts, the Federal Government recompensed Japanese Americans $38,000,000 or about 29 cents for every dollar claimed.
Let me say again the relocation of Americans of Japanese descent and resident aliens from Japan was stupid, cruel, and counter productive to American war efforts, and with undoubtedly racist motivations. I still protest, however, the invalid comparisons to Nazi concentration camps that is made today for political purposes.
What an absurd accusation!
I suggest that your numbers are odd. Your interpretation flawed (based on incorrect generalizations).
As we posted in previous messages, what part of the history do you NOT understand?
People were NOT free to leave the camps... no matter what your quote says. Was he in the camps???
Absolutely incorrect. I seek to correct your myopic interpretation of a blatantly unconstitutional act. Furthermore, I question your "conservatism" because of your ridiculous commitment to this social policy by FDR (the most socialist President in our national history). Again, we ask the most important question, "Why do you choose to defend a racist policy by a socialist President?"
You seek to lecture me ( in your first reply to me ) on racism-& I view such charges as the first refuge of scoundrels & fools.
Surely you do not deny the racial character of Executive Order 9066! Your attempt to attack me as prejudicial is silly. We are defending the constitutional preservation of law, even in times of national threat. You appear to defend racist policy because of your own concept of personal weakness. I suppose you also feel that segregrated military forces were good?
I can only view what was done as a reaction to military attacks & a WAR of survival. I am sure that many harmless people were treated harshly, & as I have previously agreed, many of these people showed quite normal human traits & rose far above their predicament.
Is there a reason these people would not show "quite normal human traits"? Are you implying that Japanese people are inhuman? Because if you are making such an implicit accusation, it shows the degree of your misshapen views (and your weakminded inability to divorce your thinking from liberal-socialist propaganda spewed from New York media networks over the last sixty years).
Most simply got on with their lives & don't cry for public sympathy. Endless complaints only hurt the cause
Do you consider it "complaining" when Jews appropriately memorialize and institutionalize a collective world memory of the horrors of racism and murder? Our nation should welcome the memorialization of the very sites of the camps, but instead chooses to participate in the liberals denial of events. How sad that you choose to make yourself a slave of such rhetoric!
-as I said, I would be happy to see a complete & CORRECT accounting of property loss & allowance for reperations already paid vs. any remaining balance in inflation adjusted dollars...
After sixty years, there is no methodology which can appropriately compensate for lost lives and lost opportunity. There is no way to put a monetary value on the unfair and unjust imprisonment of any man. Yet, you appear to feel that such a monetary compensation can be calculated. I think not.
For many, the acknowledgement from President Ford and the apology proclamation by President Reagan were more important than the token check from Presidents Bush-41 or Clinton.
However, nothing you can tell me will make me think I should judge the incarcerations as without merit.
That having been said. If a military officer decided that you and your family and your entire ethnic group are a national security threat, would you feel it was appropriate?
Apparently, you have no concept of the need for focusing justice on the criminal, not the innocent.
You're a socialist aren't you????
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?
What makes you think that I haven't spent time caring for our veterans?
It is disturbing that you will not acknowledge the psychological, economic, and political harm created by FDR's New Deal Democrats. They are the American Taliban. As long as weak-minded Republicans/Conservatives continue to support the lionized view of FDR, they will only perpetuate the veils held over our eyes.
If you want to wear your burqua, that's your choice. But as for me, I would prefer to discuss public policy through cogent discussion of judicial opinion.
Please see Korematsu v. United States
The more relevant issue for this primary voting season is that the Republican Party of California was unable to effectively nominate a conservative man to lead California in 1938. This lead to Culbert Olson being governor in 1942 and to Attorney General Earl Warren's use of the 100000+ Japanese Americans in California as a target of hate.
Right now, we have politicians attempting to discuss response to the "arab" issue. One hopes that these "politicians" READ history and LEARN from it.
However, luckily 3 others made it home safely.
Those camps saved lives alright!</sarcasm off>
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Open letter to President Bush:
Dear Mr. President, I write that with such pride! I don't believe there's a day goes by that I don't thank God for you, for your integrity, and for the strength you have shown that has rubbed off on every one of us Americans, regardless of party affiliation. As a survivor of a Japanese prison camp, I find there is one sad note that never seems to be addressed, though - one that has dogged every president since World War II. You, like them, have inherited a two-headed dragon. I'm speaking, of course, of the 1951 Peace Treaty that ended the war in the Pacific. They all seemed to believe that by perpetuating a wrong it would turn out right in the end. But history has shown it never happens. This dragon has to be slain, even if it, requires abrogating a treaty, something several of our brave allies of that time have already done. It was a treaty fraught with half-truths and outright lies, and a tragic travesty of justice. The only thing it had going for it was that it was expedient at the time. A time of fear, spawned by the threat of world Communism that reared its ugly head after the horrors and heartbreak of World War II. Enemies quickly became allies, especially In the case of Japan, sitting off the eastern flank of Communist Russia. She had to be restored, placated, and wooed so that she could be relied upon to be our westernmost early warning system in the event Russia had belligerent designs on the free world. How could this be done? This 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty offered a perfect solution. We made it magnanimous and generous, stressed that Japan was destitute and reeling under her war debt, and forgave her many debts to humanity. There was an additional plus to this magnanimity, it bolstered our image of being non- racist, another horror that had been magnified in WWII. And the biggest plus of all - it reopened trade with Japan, something we desperately needed to fill the void that came when the war effort was no longer our prime source of employment. That the treaty generated more lies than truths through the years soon became evident. We cannot blame Japan for exploiting them by rewriting history to show us as the belligerents; by denying the atrocities she perpetrated on her Asian neighbors, and American and allied prisoners of war; and by building upon it until she became, in this eyes of the uninformed, the hapless victim of a war she never started. It has taken over 50 years for Washington to allow the Japanese war files to be opened under the Freedom of Information Act. Possibly, because we knew what a hornets' nest it would set off. But with the opening of the files the fact came out that, far from being destitute, Japan had raped and robbed not only the people in the countries she overran, but their coffers as well, to the tune of over $100 billion (1945) dollars, as estimated by a member of the Japanese imperial family. We found that loot after the war, hidden in underground tunnels, mostly in the Philippines, where POW slave-laborers and natives were used to dig and stash it. Those tunnels then secured by blasting the entrances and burying the POWs and native laborers alive. I feel now is the time to abrogate that treaty, right the many wrongs it spawned, make Japan face the consequences of her atrocities and aggression, and apologize and pay reparations to those countries and individuals she victimized. I believe that, faced with the growing fascination of the world at the newly discovered files on Japan's war of aggression, she will bow to the inevitable, and apologize and pay her debt to humanity, so that she can once more take her place, with integrity, among the nations of the free world, something the tragic specter of her past has never let her do. The expediency that forced us to write the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 no longer exists. What does still exist is a fear of the future. A fear you have stood up to and are fighting with every ounce of your being. I know you don't need another thing on your plate right now Mr. President, but if we don't take a stand and bravely face the past head-on, we will not be able to face the future with any certainty. If we don't want to rock the ship of state at this time, there is still one thing that can be done: We can follow in the footsteps of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many of our other-allies, and pay the American victims of Japan's aggression, as we paid the Japanese we interned during WWII. Our ex-POWs could not be proud of such a solution, but I believe the handful who are still alive would accept the reward for their courage, patriotism and suffering in the spirit in which it was given. PAMELA MASTERS - Camino ; |
Better safe than sorry, whether it's 1000, 5000, or 100,000. As we saw on Sept. 11, it only took twenty to do real damage. Just thinkof what 1000, or 100,000 could do. And don't forget, those twenty were living life as Americans for years before all of a sudden they decided to try to kill 50,000 Americans at once.
Your interpretation flawed (based on incorrect generalizations).
So answer the question: Do you believe that there would be a number of Islamic-Americans that would support Islamic invaders if they were to invade? Look at their community. Are they really trying to be a part of America? Or do they watch Islamic TV channels, etc.? Maybe in a few generations, their descendants will, but right now it doesn't look to me like they're trying real hard to speak Roman in Rome, so to speak.
People were NOT free to leave the camps... no matter what your quote says. Was he in the camps???
Who he? What are you talking about? You have your posts mixed up.
Believe it or not, a large number of first, second, and third generation Americans aren't here because they love America and freedom, they're here to make money and send it to their families in their native lands. They don't give a rats behind about the founding fathers, or the survival of our country. Do you really believe that all of these Japanese-Americans would have joined with their new American neighbors and killed Japanese invaders if it would have come to that? Sure some would, but some wouldn't. Enough wouldn't. Notice those Japanese-American soldiers earned their medals fighting Italians, not Japanese. Whether or not they would have fought on Iwo-Jima as hard as they fought in Italy we'll never know for sure. What do you think?
The real question is why you choose to defend a socialist policy.
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