Bittersweet Justice : Reparations Vote Pleases Japanese-Americans but Scars Remain

Leaders in the South Bay’s large Japanese-American community welcomed last week’s U.S. Senate vote to pay $20,000 to those imprisoned in World War II relocation camps, but their satisfaction was muted by bitter memories that they said money cannot erase.

The reaction followed Wednesday’s vote for payments totaling about $1.3 billion and apologies to about 60,000 people who were forcibly evacuated from their homes along the West Coast. The House is expected to pass the measure next week, but President Reagan has not said whether he will sign it into law.

“I’ll be candid with you; I think I deserve the money,” said Wimpy Hiroto, director of the Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute. “But whether that really compensates for any number of real and imagined ills, that is up to the individual.”

Sister’s Nervous Breakdown

Hiroto, 59, was 13 when he was imprisoned at Poston, Ariz., with his parents, two brothers and sister. His sister Martha, then 17, suffered a nervous breakdown there, Hiroto said, and later died at a state mental hospital.

“We lost a sister,” Hiroto said. “How can you measure that?”

One evening last week, while a younger generation practiced judo in the Cultural Institute’s basement, a group of Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans) talked about the camps, reparations and justice.

Said one grandfather: “How would you like to see your mother taken away to prison?”

Another man said the proposed law would not benefit all who suffered because of the wartime hysteria. His family fled the relocation, moving hurriedly to Utah outside of the evacuation area, and had to sell most of its possessions and abandon the land that it farmed in Los Angeles. “What about those people, like my parents?” he asked.

George Nishinaka, 64, said some people could not understand why he went on to serve in the U.S. Army after being interned with his family at Heart Mountain, Wyo.

“The apology (will be) a vindication,” Nishinaka said. “Up until now some people could say ‘You were fools. You had your constitutional rights taken away from you and you still fought for the Constitution.’ ”

Nishinaka returned from the war to college and a successful career as a health and social service administrator. He has appeared for the last two years in Torrance’s Armed Forces Day Parade with other veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Army unit made up almost entirely of Japanese-Americans that was the most highly decorated of World War II.

But he will never forget that he was an ambitious 19-year-old who had his youth interrupted by the imprisonment. “How do you describe an experience like that?” he said. “You have plans when you are a teen-ager. You are ready to go to college and get a job. All of a sudden--Wham!--that is pulled out from under your feet.”

Despite their reservations, South Bay residents were among the leading supporters of the reparations bill.

George Ogawa of Torrance was chairman of the redress committee for the Pacific Southwest District of the Japanese-American Citizens League. He personally contacted dozens of legislators and organized a letter-writing campaign on behalf of the reparations bill.

Ogawa said he watched the full 11 hours of Senate debate on cable television.

Victory Party on Hold

But Ogawa said he will wait before organizing a victory party.

He thinks Reagan may not sign the bill, pointing to the Justice Department’s recommendation against it.

Torrance City Councilman George S. Nakano, who was 6 when his family was bused to the first of three relocation camps, also worked for the bill. He organized forums on the relocation.

Nakano, who is assistant principal at Worthington Elementary School in Inglewood, said he still recalls the sirens as police escorted buses to the Santa Anita Assembly Center. Some early arrivals were forced to live in stables at the Arcadia race track. His family later was moved to camps in Jerome, Ark., and Tule Lake, Calif.

His father renounced his U.S. citizenship and planned to return to Japan, but decided it would be easier to support his family in California than in his war-ravaged homeland. His citizenship was later restored.

Nakano said Wednesday’s vote was a symbolic victory.

“I think that it adds significance to the fact that a wrong was done,” Nakano said. “It’s a feeling of relief that after all those years, the elected officials have come to recognize that.”

“We have a system that when a wrong is done you don’t just settle it with mere apologies,” he said. “There is a monetary compensation. I look at it as a deterrent.”

But some feelings will never be forgotten.

Said Hiroto: “It’s impossible to convey what it is like to be uprooted.”