Blaming the Japanese
Feb. 19, 1992: Fifty years ago today, the U.S. government announced it would herd Japanese-Americans into internment camps.
A few weeks later in Sacramento, I was a carefree 11-year-old strawberry picker plucking free berries from a vacated truck farm. The berries were free because the farm’s owners, who had worked long days cultivating the crop, had been removed. Their house and furniture, seen through the windows, looked as normal as though they had left suddenly after breakfast.
For perhaps the last 25 years, America has struggled with the guilt of this 1942 Japanese internment, and officially apologized. But even as we observe this historic catastrophe, today’s Japanese-Americans are receiving an alarming number of threatening phone calls. The recent anti-American remarks made by Japan’s government leaders in Tokyo are being blamed on Japanese-Americans much as their grandparents were punished for Pearl Harbor.
It was immoral in 1942. It’s moronic the second time around.
LLOYD DARDEN
San Clemente
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