Compensation to Internees
Rep. Norman D. Shumway’s article, (Op-Ed Page, Sept. 16), refers to the pending legislation to compensate Japanese Americans interned in World War II internment camps as a “bad bill.”
He writes that it will “spawn a new and deplorable wave of anti-Japanese bias, particularly among veteran’s groups who fought in the Pacific theater and American civilians here and abroad who suffered grievous losses. Those people are not being offered $20,000 for their privations.”
Does not the congressman realize that ours was a very unique situation where our own government incarcerated us behind barbed wires--notwithstanding the fact that a goodly majority of us were American citizens? He may be surprised to know that many Japanese-American GIs served in the Pacific theater also (I had brothers who did). And it is for “American civilians here . . . who suffered grievous losses”--especially our personal freedoms, that this legislation was approved in Congress.
ARTHUR M. TSUNEISHI
San Gabriel
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