Wartime Internees Have Yet to Receive a Dollar : Congress Is Slow to Fund the Reparations Program for Japanese-Americans

Bert Nakano, who spent three years in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, thought his search for justice had ended last year when President Ronald Reagan signed a law authorizing payments of $20,000 to each former internee.

Today, the Gardena, Calif., resident said he realizes the fight is far from over.

Nakano noted that his parents died soon after they were released from the internment camp and received no form of reparations for their experience. “I’m 61, and I may not even be around to see it myself,” he said.

Although the Justice Department approved final rules Friday detailing distribution of redress payments, it has no money to turn over to former internees, who have yet to receive a single dollar.

Passage of the law on Aug. 10, 1988, touched off what promises to be a protracted struggle in Congress to secure funding for reparations payments.

Although the law allows Congress to spend up to $500 million a year on reparations, the House last week approved $50 million in payments to be made during the 1990 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That’s enough money to pay 2,500 of the estimated 60,000 former internees.

Reparation experts said the Senate is likely to appropriate a lesser amount closer to the Bush Administration’s request of $20 million when it returns from recess in September. The $20 million would be enough to make payments to only 1,000 Japanese-Americans.

Since reparations funding is included in the same appropriations measure as the 1990 budgets for the Justice, Commerce, and State departments, it must compete for funding with such programs as the war on drugs and the 1990 census. Those programs may cut deeply into the reparations budget, congressional aides said.

For former internees, 73% of whom live in California, “there’s a real sense of a broken promise,” said JoAnne Kagiwada, executive director of the Washington-based Japanese-American Citizen League, a civil rights organization with a membership of 25,000.

Under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the estimated 60,000 former internees who were alive on the date the act was signed into law are entitled to $1.25 billion in reparations as a symbolic acknowledgment that internment and relocation violated their constitutional rights.

Those 60,000 were the remaining survivors from a wartime internee population estimated at 120,000. And as many as 2,400 former internees have died in the year since the bill was signed into law, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Redress Administration. No payments will be made to the beneficiaries of internees who died before the law was passed.

“The population is very old,” said Kagiwada, noting that a fourth of all surviving internees are 70 or older.

“If the intent of the legislation was that an apology and a symbolic payment should go to those who were directly harmed, then Congress is not accomplishing that,” she said.

In the final rules adopted Friday, the Justice Department outlined procedures for administering redress payments, including seniority. “We’d like to put the first checks in the hands of the oldest individuals interned,” said redress administrator Bob Blatt.

Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who was interned during World War II, said: “It’s unfortunate that the ($50 million) would only be able to pay those survivors who are 87 and over. But we will continue to fight. I’m optimistic we can get more.”

Others, however, are not so optimistic. They said they expect rough sledding in the Senate, especially since the committee that will consider reparations funding is headed by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), who opposed passage of the original law.

“It’s too early to say what the level of funding will be in the Senate. It won’t be easy,” said Greg Takayama, spokesman for Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), an ardent supporter of reparations.

An aide to Hollings said even though the senator initially opposed the law, he has not made a decision on funding.

“A lot of attention will be focused on what happens in the Senate,” said Kagiwada of the Japanese-American Citizen League, which will be working with civil rights and church groups to organize letter-writing campaigns.

Last Sunday, more than 500 people gathered in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles to protest delays in reparations funding. The event was organized by the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations.

As soon as the House and Senate approve a first-year reparations budget, the federal Office of Redress Administration will turn its efforts away from identifying and locating former internees and begin to administer payments.

In the 11 months since its creation, the office--working from Social Security records, driver licenses and federal documents--has identified nearly 99% of the internees eligible for payments and located about 90% of them, Blatt said.

Despite the office’s extensive efforts, Japanese-American activists said the delay in payments is bitterly ironic.

“There is a dark stain on the history of and reputation of this country,” said Kagiwada. “Almost 50 years (after relocating Japanese-Americans to camps), Congress could break the faith again.”

WAITING FOR REDRESS--Japanese-American internees wonder if they will live to see reparations. Metro, Page 1.