September 1989

              The   Elderly   Are   Waiting   Patiently,   But...
continued from p.I
No one has been paid.   The promised funds, victims of a tight
Federal budget this year, have yet
to be appropriated, and the $20
million being proposed falls far
short of the $1.25 billion that is
needed.
"We trust America, but we
doubt," Mrs. Hokoda said.    "We
expect  the  American Government
to give to us, but too long over the
years now.   We doubt.   We doubt.
We are not sure now."
Each month, the Justice Department's  Office of Redress  Administration in  Washington  said,  more
than  200 of the elderly survivors
of the camps are dying unrecom-
pensed.
"Yes, a lot of people died," said
Mrs. Hokoda, who is 87 years old
and whose husband,  Masaru
George Hokoda, a former gardener
in Hollywood, is 90.    "They all
experienced  the  cruel  time,  the
war time.    They tried to forget
that miserable time,  tried to forget.    But lately they have been
reminded   again."
Under the Civil Liberties Act of
1988,   Congress   pledged  restitution to the 60,000 Americans of
Japanese  descent who  were  incarcerated in the war in "relocation
camps" and were still alive when
the bill was passed.    The bulk of
those  interned  where held from
1942  through  early   1946.
The payments are to go to the
survivors  of any internees  who
die after the passage of the legislation.
The number who die before they
are paid could be large. President
Bush has asked Congress for only
$20  million  in  this  year's  budget,
enough to pay just 1,000 of the
former detainees.     Congress has
not yet acted.
The funds, when appropriated,
would be paid first to the oldest
of the  internees.     Representative
Robert T. Matsui, a California
Democrat who was himself con
fined to a camp, said that under
this  structure  the  proposed  sum
would be enough to pay only those
older than  87.
"We don't quite understand
that," Mrs. Hokoda said.     "President Reagan promised, but the
Government does not do it."
Mr. and Mrs. Hokoda are among
more  than 250 former detainees
who make up the majority of the
residents  of the Japanese  Retirement Home and its related building in downtown Los Angeles.
The home's administrator, Edwin Hiroto, who was detained at
the age of 15 with his parents,
said he sees the roundups of Japanese  Americans  after  the  attack
on Pearl Harbor on December 7,
1941, as a symptom of wartime
hysteria that brought out a
shameful  side  of American  society.
He said he is seeing it again in
the delay of payments,  "a repetition of the same kind of treatment
that was accorded to my parents
as they tried to be good citizens."
"I guess any group because of
race can be picked out, for whatever reason, to be treated as different from the rest of citizens,"
he said.
People like his parents, and
like many of the older residents
of the retirement home,    he said,
reacted  passively  to  their  detention because  "if you're accustomed to being not quite  100 percent accepted in the first place, it
sort of becomes normal."
Mr. Hiroto said he observes a
similar passivity now among the
old people at the home as they
wait for their payments, a sense
of "shikata ga nai," an acceptance
of one's fate,  an understanding
that there is nothing to be done.
"It's kind of late, but I'm waiting patiently,"  said  Midori  Shi-
mozo, who is 72 years old and who
retired four years ago from her
work at a florist shop.
"My mother passed away last
March, so she died without get
ting anything."    Mrs. Shimozo
said.     "That's something you can't
help.    But she did feel badly.    She
thought we were mistreated.    She
had nothing to do with the war."
In the camps, surrounded by
barbed wire, Mr. Hiroto said,
many  internees   were   "traumatized by that idea that we were
really   so   different."
And yet, like others at the retirement home, he said he feels
"totally  American,"  even to the
point of sharing a national resentment  at  Japan's  current  economic   aggressiveness.
Henry Ikemoto, a 66-year old
volunteer  at the retirement home,
saw his father lose everything —
home, farm, car, clothing, bed —
and never regain his job or belongings after the war.
Yet Mr. Ikemoto, like a number
of other detainees, said he had
agreed with the view that the
roundup was "a necessity of war"
and had volunteered as soon as he
could to fight with the American
forces  in Europe.
"Uncle Sam has been real good
to me personally," said Mr. Ikemoto,  a retired probation officer,
looking back across the years.
Representative Norman Y. Mineta, a California Democrat who was
also in a camp in the war, said,
"In  1942 the Government put this
cloak of disloyalty on the backs
of Americans  of Japanese ancestry,    yet they collectively said,
Look, in the long run we're going
to prove that we are good
citizens.'"
In the recreation hall of the
retirement home Mr. Hokoda
smiled as he rose stiffly from his
chair and headed for his room.
"Getting old," he said.    His wife,
bent over her cane,  slipped her
arm quietly through his    and
shuffled back with him.
Mr. Hokoda is growing deaf with
age, and leaves most of the talking
to his wife. But in their small and
continued on back page
The Redress Monitor, September 1989