Slippery Slurs: Words that hurt perpetuate negative stereotypes, says one linguist (in National News) Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Center for victims of torture opens in San Jose (in Bay Area News) (Look): tom & john ask what the Mission is (in A&E) Emil Amok: Using the 'N' Word (in Opinion)

Moments in Time with Bill Ong Hing

Related:
• Bay Area Day of Remembrance
• Blast from the Past: Executive Order 9066

The Day of Remembrance

February 19 marked the 59th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the key governmental document that paved the way for the massive eviction and subsequent imprisonment of 120,000 West Coast Japanese Americans in ten permanent sites throughout the country. The shameful internment was an experience unparalleled in the history of the United States. A group of American citizens and their alien parents became the victims of a racist policy that ignored all the protections of individual rights that are intrinsic and essential to the very principles of a constitutional government.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the internment was how easily most Americans accepted it. Nativists made Japanese Americans feel unwanted and insecure about whether they would be able to stay; many other Americans challenged their loyalty and commitment. That the internment had little to do with the actual threat Japanese Americans supposedly presented seems clear because, in Hawaii, the most vulnerable part of the United States and site of the Pearl Harbor bombing, they were not subject to it. Instead, internment represented the culmination of many decades of harsh treatment of Asians on the West Coast, where they had never been accepted as equals or even as trustworthy. Even in the 1930s, the Japanese in particular had always aroused resentment for their upward mobility.

Even the Supreme Court, which had justified earlier restrictions on the grounds that those affected were not citizens, uncritically accepted the premises behind internment. In its infamous 1944 decision, Korematsu vs. United States, the Court purported to apply “strict scrutiny” to the government’s order. In reality, the Court’s majority accepted at face value the military’s fears and accusations that Japanese American citizens were all potential saboteurs. Just as little scrutiny was given to racially based exclusionary laws and the denial of naturalization rights to Asian immigrants, so little inquiry was made of the pretexts by which the military supported its deportation order.

The observations of two courageous dissenters are noteworthy. Justice Frank Murphy argued that the internment was based on “an accumulation of much of the misinformation, half-truths and insinuations that for years have been directed against Japanese Americans by people with racial and economic prejudices.” Justice Robert Jackson called the majority’s opinion a “blow to liberty” that “for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure.”

In 1984 — exactly 40 years after the Supreme Court decision — a group of lawyers led by the likes of Dale Minami, Ed Chen, and Eric Yamamoto persuaded federal district court Judge Marilyn Patel to set aside Fred Korematsu’s conviction. Bolstered by research of Professor Peter Irons and the findings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, established in 1980 by an act of Congress, Judge Patel found that the fears and accusations in 1942 were concocted and, in fact, were contradicted by official government reports. In short, the allegations aimed at Japanese Americans proved to be baseless. Critical contradictory evidence known to the government had been knowingly concealed from the courts 40 years earlier — evidence that supported a finding that the government itself had engaged in misconduct.

In 1987, redress legislation introduced by Congressmen Norman Mineta and Robert Matsui was enacted, awarding $20,000 to $60,000 to former internees. The success of the redress movement is a remarkable story of true grassroots organizing on an issue that many thought never stood a chance. Part of the legislation included a formal apology offered by the Attorney General of the United States. However, that was little consolation for being ordered from one’s home by soldiers bearing rifles and bayonets, and being placed into military detention.