Wall honors Bainbridge Japanese Americans sent to internment camps

[NNN0LHI]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015841172_bainbridge07m.html

Wall honors Bainbridge Japanese Americans sent to internment camps

Originally published August 6, 2011 at 7:19 PM | Page modified August 6, 2011 at 8:07 PM

The Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Wall was dedicated Saturday, honoring the 276 Japanese Americans from the island who were the first to be relocated to internment camps during World War II.

By Christine Clarridge

Seattle Times staff reporter

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND —

Everywhere she went, Kayo Natalie Hayashida Ong, now 70, was greeted over and again with delight and recognition as "the baby!"

An iconic photograph of her at age 1, asleep in her mother's arms as her family was forcibly removed from their Bainbridge Island home during World War II, became one of the best-known symbols of a dark period in American history.

They were among the first of 120,000 people of Japanese descent who were exiled from the West Coast or forced into internment camps by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Exclusion Order after Pearl Harbor was bombed and the U.S. declared war on Japan.

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

:thumbsup:

[indurancevile]

2. but did they get their land back?

[melm00se]

3. only about 1/3 of the claims

filed by interned Japanese were paid out under the American Japanese claims act. This was due to the fact that most of the tax records from just before to the war thru 1942ish were destroyed.

Additionally, in California, there were laws that specifically prevented "aliens" from owning real property so many of the Japanese farmers were not land owners but tenant farmers.

Where the Japanese got really hit was in their personal possessions that had to be liquidated as what they could (or could not) take to the internment/concentration camps were severely limited.

The Japanese internment was just an extension of the myriad of laws and regulations passed from the late 1800's up to the mid 1900's driven by anti-Oriental racism that was rampant up and down the west coast.

One of Reagan's better moves was the signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988...altho it was 40 years too late and $20K didn't seem like much compensation for those who had their lives completely turned upside down due to a perceived threat against national security and completely arbitrary lines drawn on a map.

BTW did you now that:
- more that 70% of the interned population were nisei or sansei (IOW US Citizens) and many of them had never been to Japan?
- the decision to intern Japanese Americans was not universal in FDR's administration and, amazingly, J. Edgar Hoover (and most of the DOJ) were opposed to Executive Order 9066?
- of the 10 people convicted of spying for Japan during WWI, all 10 were Caucasian?