Letter to Fresno Bee

              If..
To pay an old debt f^\n\$
Forty years after the U.S. government
rounded up and interned 120,000 persons of
Japanese ancestry — including some 77,000
who were American citizens — it is still
trying to determine what compensation, if
any, those still surviving are entitled to for
that shameful act born of wartime hysteria.
Thus it is good to note that the California
Legislature has taken at least one small step
by adopting a measure that could pay up to
$5,000 each to 314 Japanese-Americans who
lost their jobs in state government shortly
after the outbreak of war. Many of those
affected doubtless are no longer around to
claim this redress, but at least the
Legislature has ended years of hesitation by
making the gesture. Congress would do well
to take a cue from the California action.
It probably is not possible to place a
monetary value on the damage — in lost jobs
and property, in family breakup, in mental
anguish — done to those thousands of people
whose only offense was being of Japanese
origin. (It is worth noting that no German-
Americans or Italian-Americans were
interned during the war.) And in more
practical terms, it may not be possible, after
the passage of so much time, to obtain the
large monetary reparations sought by some
Japanese-American groups. Many politicians
object that the present generation of
American taxpayers should not be forced to
pay for the sins of an earlier generation.
Indeed, there are still apologists for what
can best be described as an act of official
racism. They include as prominent an
American as John J. McCloy — Wall Street
lawyer, adviser to presidents and a
distinguished former ambassador — who has
said that "it sends me up the wall when
someone suggests we ought to apologize" for
what was done to the Japanese.
McCloy and others point to the feeling of
hysteria that prevailed, particularly in
Western states, shortly after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, and the fears of an
imminent invasion of the American
mainland. They have a point, "but it breaks
down in the face of the fact that fully half
those interned were still behind barbed-wire
fences at the end of the war, long after fears
of invasion and sabotage had disappeared.
The federal Commission oh Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians, set
up in 1980 to investigate the full extent of the
impact of detention on Japanese-Americans,
is still studying the question and is asking
Congress to extend its life beyond the end of
this year. Apart from making that small
gesture, costing only $500,000, Congress
should at long last do something — whether
it be symbolic or tangible — to establish for
all time that a great injustice was done to a
large number of citizens and alien residents
of this country, that this country deeply
regrets and abhors what happened, and that
we as a nation rededicate ourselves to the
living principle of equal treatment before the
law.
Such atonement could take the form of a
suitable memorial, probably in California
where most of the victims lived, and a
number of scholarships to enable young
Americans who remember nothing of the
camps to learn what every generation should
learn — that freedom and justice do not
happen automatically even in a democratic
society, and that their preservation is always
in peril, especially at times of great stress.
Financial reparations, although
problematic, also have their place. But what
is most important is to bury the notion that
what was done is still excusable and, in the
words of columnist Garry Wills, "that the
Bill of Rights is an on-again, off-again thing
... (and) that a country at war can do
anything to its citizenry."
There are many current and pressing
issues before Congress and the nation, but
some kinds of unfinished business need to be
attended- to, no matter how inconvenient.
This is one of them.
•■ji3r-';
August 17, X89 1982.
Dear Harry;  The above editorial in the Fresno See this morning
brought back many memories.  All during the war, 1 kept up my
subscription  to the Fresno Bee and kept clippings pertaining, to
the Japanese Americans and evacuation.  I am enclosing a copy of
a Fresno Bee Editorial from a June 8, 1943 SXNMM issue.
The two editorials show the tremendous change in the Fresno
Bee.  The Bee was actively anti-Japanese during the war and
opposed the return of the Japanese to the San Joaquin valley area
after the war.
Fred y. Hirasuna