For Redress at Last

Will the redress that has for so long been denied those Japanese Americans who were locked up by the government during World War II at last be granted? The chances of that seem better now, after the Senate’s vote to guarantee a three-year program of compensation to the surviving internees. The Senate’s plan to provide the first $500 million late next year of an earlier-authorized $1.2 billion still has to be reconciled with a House bill that provides only $50 million for the fiscal year that began this week.

House conferees are likely to plead revenue shortages to justify their tight-fisted approach. But as Sen. Warren Rudman (R.-N.H.) reminded his colleagues the other day, there are times when what is fiscally desirable is less compelling than what is morally right. This is one of those times.

About 117,000 Japanese Americans--two-thirds of them U.S. citizens--were taken from their homes in the western states in early 1942, forced to dispose of their property at below-market prices and put behind barbed wire in remote and inhospitable areas. This gross violation of an entire community’s civil liberties arose from war-in- duced hysteria fanned by decades of regional racism. It was and remains significant that in Hawaii, home to tens of thousands of ethnic Japanese, no internments took place and no incidents occurred. It is no less significant that 17,600 young men, 10% of the interned population, volunteered for military duty. Most served with the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought bravely, suffered high casualties, and emerged as the most decorated American unit of World War II.

Last year Congress authorized paying each surviving internee an admittedly symbolic $20,000. Only now with the Senate’s action, however, is Congress moving to appropriate the necessary funds. That process won’t be completed until the House agrees with the Senate’s guarantee of scheduled compensation payments. Meanwhile, the ranks of those entitled to redress are being inexorably thinned.

The House measure directs the first payments to the oldest among the survivors. That should be done. But the most urgent need is for Congress finally to appropriate all the money required so that an enduring and shameful wrong may be at least partially set right.