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JLA Redress: An Open Letter to the Hispanic Community

Dear Congressman Becerra, Members of the Hispanic Caucus, Members of the Hispanic Press, and Leaders and Members of the Hispanic Community:

During World War II, the United States created a hostage barter reserve by incarcerating 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry behind barbed wire, in so-called “relocation centers” in the West and Midwest. As noted in Michi Weglyn’s Years of Infamy and other authoritative books, our country’s highest military and civilian leaders saw Americans of Japanese ancestry as equivalent to Japanese nationals, despite the fact that two-thirds were Americans by birth, and were willing to trade them for European-derived Americans in POW exchanges.

A lesser-known but equally unconscionable part of this same scheme was a plan to kidnap Peruvians, Bolivians, and other Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry to use them in the hostage barter reserve plan. Over two thousand Japanese Peruvians and others were forcibly taken from their homes by local law enforcement officers, transported to coastal cities, and shipped by American authorities to the same barbed wire-enclosed “relocation centers” as Japanese Americans. Unable to speak English, these kidnapped Latinos endured a worse nightmare than that faced by Japanese Americans, most of whom understood English. In addition, Spanish-speaking American immigration officers confiscated the passports of those transported under guard from their homes in Lima or Quito, so these unfortunate Japanese Latin Americans (JLAs) became people without a country.

After enduring an average of two and one-half years behind barbed wire, JLAs faced further indignities when the war ended. Their former home countries in Latin America refused to allow them to return, and many were forcibly sent to a war-ravaged Japan, where they had little or no family or community support. The Japanese American community, itself facing financial and social pressures, could not help those JLAs who stayed here. Many JLAs were forced into exploitative economic situations, such as working for long hours at low pay in the newly-emerging frozen food industry.

When the movement for redress of our country’s wrongs against Japanese Americans started, JLAs participated actively and fully. After decades in this country, raising children, and participating in Japanese American and broader community activities, they rightly saw themselves as deserving of redress compensation. However, in an unfortunate compromise that some redress leaders saw as necessary to pass the redress bill in 1988, a provision was included that explicitly excluded from redress anyone who was not an American citizen, legal permanent resident, or otherwise staying here “under color of law.” That final phrase excluded JLAs, whose status as kidnap victims meant that they were here illegally — even though their entry had been completely against their free will. The upshot of that exclusion meant that JLAs did not receive the $20,000 and apology that other Japanese Americans received between 1988 and 1998.

After meetings, lawsuits, lobbying, and other activities, JLAs have received a partial measure of compensation for their pain and suffering. Some received $5,000 and an apology as a result of a special deal worked out with well-meaning Justice Department officials. But most remain uncompensated or unfairly under-compensated for an injustice that arguably was worse than that suffered by Japanese Americans.

Despite these indignities and sorrows, the JLA community has endured. Most interned JLAs have passed on, but their loved ones continue to live here in the United States, in Japan, and throughout Latin America.

As we begin this new century and millennium, where Americans of Latin American ancestry constitute the largest American minority group, it is important that we celebrate their many accomplishments. At the same time, it is vital that we and our children never forget the mistreatment suffered by our brothers and sisters of Japanese Latin American ancestry, and the further indignity they suffered when their just claims for redress were given second-class status and dismissed on a legal technicality.

There are many pressing issues facing the Hispanic community at this historic juncture. Nevertheless, I would humbly suggest that helping Japanese Latin Americans receive the redress they deserve for injustices committed by our own wartime government should be among those issues championed by leaders of our American Hispanic community.