Guest Column
Will Bush's War on Terror Bring Back Detention Camps?
- By Ronald Takaki
- New America Media,
- Feb 06, 2006
The Halliburton subsidiary KBR announced that it had been awarded by the Department of Homeland Security a $385 million contract to build detention centers in the United States. The purpose was to prepare for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of emergencies. What lessons can we learn from the history of detention centers of an earlier war?
- Like the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers, Japan's
military attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was a shattering
experience for Americans. Parallels between these two "days of infamy"
have already been widely discussed by politicians and pundits as well as
by everyday people. However, most of us today do not know what actually
happened to Japanese Americans on the West Coast as well as in Hawaii in
the wake of the devastating bombing.
Shortly after he inspected the still smoking ruins at Pearl Harbor, Navy Secretary Frank Knox issued a statement to the press: "I think the most effective fifth column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii, with the possible exception of Norway." At a cabinet meeting, Knox recommended the internment of all Japanese aliens in the islands.
Meanwhile, in California, Attorney General Earl Warren pressed federal authorities to remove Japanese from sensitive areas on the West Coast. The Japanese, he declared, "may well be the Achilles heel of the entire civilian defense effort. Unless something is done it may bring about a repetition of Pearl Harbor." Congressman Leland Ford of Los Angeles wrote to the Secretaries of War and the Navy and the FBI Director insisting that "all Japanese, whether citizens or not, be placed in concentration camps."
Leading the campaign to do exactly that was Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command. In February, DeWitt sent Washington a recommendation for the mass evacuation of all Japanese: "In the war in which we are now engaged racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second- and third-generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become 'Americanized,' the racial strains are undiluted... It, therefore, follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies, of Japanese extraction, are at large today."
On Feb. 19, in Executive Order 9066, President Roosevelt granted General De Witt authorization for the evacuation and internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were citizens by birth.
Unlike their counterparts in California, Hawaii's public officials urged restraint and reason. Congressional delegate Sam King advised the military that nothing should be done beyond apprehending known spies. Unlike General DeWitt, General Delos Emmons as the military governor of Hawaii opposed Washington's efforts to evacuate and intern Japanese Americans in Hawaii. Emmons believed that the Constitution guaranteed the right of due process of law to every person, and was determined to base his policies and actions on this principle.
In a radio address broadcast shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, General Emmons assured Japanese Americans: "There is no intention or desire on the part of the federal authorities to operate mass concentration camps. No person, be he citizen or alien, need worry, provided he is not connected with subversive elements.... While we have been subjected to a serious attack by a ruthless and treacherous enemy, we must remember that this is America and we must do things the American Way. We must distinguish between loyalty and disloyalty among our people."
Many years after the war, in 1982, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians reported that "not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast." Six years later, the U.S. Congress passed legislation giving an apology and reparations of $20,000 to each of the survivors of the internment camps. Signing the bill into law, President Ronald Reagan admitted that the United States government had committed "a grave wrong."
Will history repeat itself today as Americans find themselves swept into the hurricane of post-9/11 fears? Engaging in racial/religious profiling, will our government continue to detain and incarcerate Muslims in the U.S. without due process of law? Will it unconstitutionally force them into detention camps to be built by Halliburton? Will our government later regret it had violated their constitutional rights and have to offer them redress and reparations? Or, like General Emmons, will federal officials remember that "this is America" and do things "the American Way"?
PNS contributor Ronald Takaki, professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of "Strangers From Another Shore: A History of Asian Americans." - http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=de9dd9fbbbbd59388d802c3f4e0e1288
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