Assembly Blasts Ferguson’s View on Internments

Nearly 50 years after the fact, the Assembly halted its law-making business Tuesday and debated an issue that still tears at the fabric of California--how to explain the mass roundup and detention of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II.

After more than an hour of reminiscences and public repentance, legislators voted overwhelmingly to reject a resolution by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) describing the detentions as militarily justified.

Instead, the Assembly spent its time in what one participant described as “sorrowful” debate reaffirming a resolution passed last year that blamed the internment on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”

The lockup at inland encampments of 113,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry and Japanese nationals as a security measure has been widely condemned in recent years. Three years ago, Congress authorized paying $20,000 in reparations to each of 60,000 still-living former internees.

In the Assembly on Tuesday, the frustration over what remains one of California’s darker episodes was perhaps best expressed by Assemblyman Chris Chandler (R-Yuba City). “Why are we here 48 years after the fact trying to justify the unjustifiable?” he said in denouncing Ferguson’s measure.

Ferguson agreed that racism played a part in the roundup of Japanese from California and throughout the West, but he maintained that the relocation was justified in the wake of Pearl Harbor and reports of thousands of “subversives” present in California.

“I agree with you . . . that it was wrong, it was disgraceful, it was sad,” he said before the 60-4 vote repudiating his resolution. “But there were a lot of sad things going on at the time.

“Are you and I going to sit here today and make decisions about how wrong our parents were, and they were a bunch of racists and had no military cause (and that) the war played no role in this thing, in the decision?” he asked.

Voting with Ferguson were Assembly members Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), Phillip Wyman (R-Tehachapi) and Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge).

Under normal circumstances, Ferguson’s resolution would have been swept under the rug, killed quietly in committee during the last, frenetic week of the 1990 session. However, Democratic leaders decided to bring the resolution to the full floor for a high-profile debate that had all the makings of a political flogging of Ferguson, whose outspoken conservative views have rankled many.

Last year, Ferguson made headlines when he opposed a resolution asking California schools to teach that the Japanese internment resulted from racism, hysteria and political failure--and not for military reasons. He called it part of the “liberal trashing” of America, although the resolution’s conclusions were taken from a presidential commission convened by President Ronald Reagan.

On Aug. 15, Ferguson introduced a rival resolution urging schools to adopt a more “balanced” presentation--one that included the idea of “subversives” and a new interpretation of relocation. “It is simply untrue that Japanese-Americans were interned in concentration camps during World War II,” it said.

The language prompted an outcry. At first, Ferguson pleaded semantics, claiming the “relocation” centers were not “concentration camps” in the spirit of Nazi Germany. On Tuesday, he tried to amend the phrase out of his resolution altogether.

His attempts were blocked and Ferguson was forced to sit through a 70-minute debate that pitted him against 11 legislators--six Democrats, five Republicans. Their denunciations of his resolution included a litany of painful memories about the war and Japanese relocation.

The voice of Assemblyman Robert C. Frazee (R-Carlsbad) cracked when he described how a Japanese family graciously bowed in respect during his mother’s funeral. Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) remembered the childhood sadness of seeing his Japanese grammar school friends forced to leave. Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson) suggested that Tuesday’s debate would do Ferguson some psychological good by purging the pain of his long-ago combat in three wars.

No one stood up to support Ferguson and even some of his Orange County colleagues disappeared from the chambers before the vote. Thirteen legislators declined to vote.