Topaz. Heart Mountain. Gila River. Poston. Amache. Jerome. Tule Lake. Rohwer. Minidoka. Manzanar.
Many of the Japanese American internment camps have been forgotten, neglected like dusty tomes on the shelf of United States history. Today, in honor of the National Day of Remembrance of Japanese American Internment, perhaps we should revisit their histories and realize how they relate to our contemporary lives.
Tufts graduate Amy Lee-Tai will be speaking in the Sophia Gordon multipurpose room tonight. She will read and discuss her children's book, "A Place Where Sunflowers Grow," which draws upon the experiences of her mother and grandmother at the Topaz Relocation Center. I encourage Tufts students and faculty to stop by this event and show their support for her courageous effort.
Sixty-six years ago today, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, exercising his presidential power in a time of war hysteria to send approximately 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans - the majority of whom were U.S. citizens - to the so-called "war relocation centers," or internment camps. Barbed wire fences and armed soldiers caged in men, women and children like animals.
The camps were located in desolate desert areas, hastily constructed on land that the government had previously seized from tribal nations. This is a sobering reminder that in the racial hierarchy of the United States, the dominant white culture wields its political force over disenfranchised populations of color again and again.
Both prior to and after internment, there was not a single case of World War II sabotage or espionage by individuals of Japanese ancestry. If anything, the young men were among the most patriotic groups in America. In the camps, young second-generation Japanese Americans, or "Nisei," rallied for the right to enlist in the military and fight on behalf of the nation that had imprisoned them as aliens. They formed the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; 600 of them would die in Europe. Scholars have noted that the 442nd was the most decorated military battalion of its size in the nation's history. In total, over 30,000 Japanese American soldiers patriotically defended the country that had incarcerated them.
According to Asian American scholar Helen Zia, these men are MIH: Missing in History. She writes in "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People" that "[N]ear the end of the war in Europe, the Japanese American GIs of the 442nd broke through the German defensive 'Gothic Line' in northern Italy, and were among the first to liberate the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. However, the U.S. military commanders decided it would be bad public relations if Jewish prisoners were freed by Japanese American soldiers whose own families were imprisoned in American concentration camps."
While great literary emphasis has been rightly placed upon the Holocaust and the horrors of Jewish concentration camps, the United States has been reluctant to admit its own wrongdoing in creating what some have deemed "concentration camps" for Japanese Americans. Since the federal government issued an official apology in 1988 and offered reparations to the former internees, some intrepid individuals have begun to break the silence about this egregious era in U.S. history.
Even in the 21st century, violent acts are annually committed against Japanese Americans on Dec. 7, the anniversary of the Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor. Just as the Roosevelt administration hurriedly issued Executive Order 9066 in the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, so too the current administration cobbled together the Patriot Act in the weeks following the attack on the World Trade Center. Post-Sept. 11, innocent Arab Americans nationwide fear that they too might become victims of mass incarceration. If our civil liberties are not secured for all citizens, regardless of race or ethnicity, how can we claim to live in a democracy?
Historian Roger Daniels notes that life in the United States today may not be all that different from six decades prior. In an article entitled "Incarceration of the Japanese Americans: A Sixty-Year Perspective," he writes that "Despite the amelioration of American race relations, there are still huge inequities between whites and persons of color, and potentially explosive emotions exist in both the oppressing and the oppressed populations. While optimists claim that American concentration camps are a thing of the past - and I certainly hope that they are - many Japanese Americans, the only group of citizens ever incarcerated en masse because of their race, would argue that what has happened in the past could happen again."
History is not dead. It is a living, breathing reality, and the ways in which it is framed, represented and analyzed can have enormous impact on the present and future. It is imperative that we remember and learn from the Japanese American internment experience. Prejudice is a learned behavior; it passes from one generation to the next and, unless addressed, it will continue to reproduce in various forms.
So, on this date, let us not only remember the grievances of the past but also bear witness to them by attending Tufts' National Day of Remembrance program. Let us resolve to work toward a more inclusive future.
Katie Winter is a senior majoring in English and American studies.
