German-American Challenges Reparations for War Internees : Courts: Man claims law giving Japanese-Americans compensation discriminates on basis of national origin.

A German-American who was interned by the United States during World War II is challenging the 1988 law that grants interned Japanese-Americans an apology and reparations, charging that the law is unconstitutional because it discriminates on the basis of national origin.

The lawsuit, believed to be the first by a non-Japanese internee, has raised hackles among Japanese-Americans and civil libertarians who fought for more than a decade to pass the redress law and who question the political motivation for the legal attack.

Arthur D. Jacobs, an American citizen, alleges that he was unjustly interned at age 12 when he accompanied his German-born parents to incarceration on Ellis Island and later to a camp in Crystal City, Tex. He claims he suffered the same indignities as Japanese- and Italian-American children in the same predicament, but is being unfairly denied the $20,000 they are eligible to receive.

In a bizarre coincidence of scheduling, arguments in the case will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 6--the eve of the 50th anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jacobs, who was born in Brooklyn in 1933, is a retired U.S. Air Force major who teaches business at Arizona State University in Tempe. His 1989 suit evokes the landmark Bakke reverse-discrimination case of 1978 and ensuing lawsuits claiming that redress for historic wrongs against one ethnic group is unfair to other groups.

In January, a lower court found that Jacobs had no legal standing to sue, and dismissed the case. He is appealing that ruling.

The Japanese American Citizens League argues that the suit has no merit. The U.S. attorney general’s office, which is defending the law, says Jacobs is not entitled to compensation merely because he was interned. Congress approved special redress for Japanese-Americans because it concluded that “the policy under which they were interned was driven by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a lack of political leadership,” the government argues in legal briefs.

Congress rejected reparations for ethnic Germans and Italians because they were not subjected to the indiscriminate mass roundups imposed on those of Japanese descent on the West Coast. Even if some Italians and Germans were unjustly interned, the government argues, that is not grounds for striking down Congress’ decision to remedy “the far more pervasive and stigmatizing injury suffered by the Japanese.”

Jacobs, whose father was arrested in 1944 after his name showed up on a Nazi Party list, says his main motivation is to clear his father’s name and dispel the widely held notion that Germans rounded up during the war “must have been guilty.”

But historian Roger Daniels of the University of Cincinnati alleges that Jacobs had publicly opposed reparations for the Japanese before the reparations law was passed. Japanese American Citizens League officials charge that other longtime foes of redress are helping to finance his lawsuit, including Gardena resident Lillian Baker, who has argued that the wartime internment of all Japanese “enemy aliens” was justified.

Jacobs acknowledges the contributions, but denies any anti-Japanese animus. “I can assure you I am not a racist,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be impugned, to be stigmatized, to be thrown in prison for no cause, to have your father be treated like a criminal, to be torn away from your home . . . and I don’t wish that on anyone.”

In 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry were ordered to leave the West Coast, and more than 120,000, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were sent to relocation camps.

In addition, the FBI also arrested Japanese, Germans and Italian “enemy aliens.” According to government documents cited by Jacobs, 25,655 were interned, of whom 14,426 were Europeans.

Scholars agree that only a small percentage of the more than 1 million German and Italian aliens in the United States were interned, compared to virtually all Japanese on the West Coast, whatever their citizenship. And “every person who was interned got an individual hearing based on their individual guilt or innocence,” Daniels said. “There were no hearings for Japanese-Americans.”

A congressional panel agreed. In its 1982 report, it concluded that the mass internment of Japanese-Americans was unconstitutional. It found that no similar mass exclusion was ordered against Germans or Italians.

But Jacobs contends that whether or not German-Americans were rounded up en masse, individuals whose rights were violated are entitled to relief. Jacobs said his father had no Nazi sympathies and never knew how his name got on the Nazi Party list. A hearing board found that the father was not dangerous. But that decision was overruled by the Justice Department, Jacobs said.

Although league attorney Dennis W. Hayashi predicts that the case will be thrown out, he notes that 27,200 former Japanese-American internees have yet to receive their redress checks. “We take this case very seriously,” he said. “We don’t think his case has merit, but we don’t think it’s something we can ignore, either.”

Jacobs “may have a legitimate beef, but the way he’s trying to remedy his complaint is misguided,” said Hayashi. “What we object to is he is trying to stop reparations because he didn’t receive any. And that’s wrong.”