Full Payment for WWII Internees Urged

Japanese-American activists and civil liberties officials Wednesday urged Congress to provide maximum funding for the program to compensate some 60,000 U.S. citizens who were interned in camps during World War II.

The Japanese-American internees, many of whom were uprooted by the government from homes in California and taken to wilderness camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, are entitled to $20,000 each under a law passed last year. But critics charged the Bush Administration is dragging its feet on funding, and that many internees may die before receiving any payments.

In particular, witnesses testifying before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee urged, the panel should appropriate the full $500 million earmarked for the first year of payments, instead of the $20 million recommended by the Bush Administration. The committee is expected to recommend a level of funding for the program later this year.

“This debate is not about $20,000 and it’s not about $500 million,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), appearing before the appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, state and the judiciary. “It’s about that wonderful, living document we call the Constitution of the United States.”

Calling the Administration’s funding recommendation “a tragedy,” Matsui said “time is running out on our commitment. Approximately 200 survivors of these camps will die every month. At the rate of the Administration’s proposal, it would take 60 years to make all payments.”

Matsui was followed by a parade of witnesses, some of whom recounted painful memories of the internment camps. Chizu Iiyama, from El Cerrito, said his 99-year-old mother “has lost some of her memory, but she can recall the days spent in detention.

“She does not comprehend the details of the (reparations) law, but some of our other . . . friends, frail, ailing, most in their 80s and 90s, ask us tremulously if we think they will receive payments before they die.”

However, several critics of the reparation laws also appeared before the committee, suggesting that the payments were unconstitutional. Many of these individuals contend that the U.S. government had valid reasons for interning Japanese-American citizens and should not have to apologize for the internment or pay them money.

‘Fraught With . . . Defects’

John P. Coale, an attorney representing the American War Veterans and Relief Assn. Inc., told the panel that the reparations law “is fraught with constitutional, moral, historical and economic defects.”

He said the payments were “morally offensive” for American taxpayers, alleging that many of the recipients were “American Japanese who adamantly, even violently, supported Japan’s wartime aggressions. . . . “

Supporters of the law have challenged those characterizations, saying a U.S. commission investigating the program found no evidence that internees had committed treason against the United States. Moreover, they said, the commission determined that the government had been guilty of wartime hysteria and racism in carrying out the internment policy.

“If Congress now fails to appropriate the necessary funds, it would be a cruel miscarriage of justice,” said Ruth Lansner, speaking for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. “It was clearly the intent of the last Congress that monetary allocations should be made . . . to ensure that the actual internees see justice during their lifetimes.”