Reagan Signs Measure to Pay WWII Internees

With a family of six Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II looking on, President Reagan today signed a $1.2-billion reparations bill and said, “We admit a wrong.”

Susumu and Sumi Emori of Loma Linda, Calif., and their four children watched as the President, in an afternoon ceremony in the Old Executive Office Building, put his signature on legislation that would authorize $20,000 tax-free payments to each person entitled.

The family members were living on a potato farm south of Stockton, in 1942 when they were taken to a camp in Rohr, Ark.

About 120,000 Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II. About 60,000 people, half of those interned, are still living and eligible for the payments.

Reagan said the action was taken by the U.S. government “without trial and without jury. It was based solely on race.”

“Yes, the nation then was at war,” he said, “and it’s not for us to pass judgment today on those who may have made mistakes. . . . But we must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that--a mistake.”

‘Right a Grave Wrong’

Reagan said the time is long overdue to “right a grave wrong.”

He said that “scores of Japanese-Americans volunteered for our armed forces” and that the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of Japanese-Americans, served with immense distinction.

“The legislation provides for a restitution payment to each of the 60,000 survivors,” Reagan said. “Yet no payment can make up for those lost years, so what’s most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here, we admit a wrong.”

Many Japanese-Americans lobbied Congress for the legislation for years. It finally cleared Congress by a vote in the House of 257 to 156 on Aug. 4.

Reagan originally objected to some features of the bill, saying it would be too costly, but he backed the final version. It calls for a trust fund of $1.2 billion, with appropriations in any one year limited to $500 million. Legislation providing the actual money must still be enacted.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the President always endorsed the purpose of the bill.

Asked whether the large number of Japanese-American voters in California, a crucial state in the forthcoming presidential election, was a factor in Reagan’s decision to support the measure, Fitzwater said: “No. That was not a factor in any way.”