REPARATIONS WATCH : Hysteria Redress

President Bush helped to rectify an injustice in American history when in 1990 he began sending letters of apology along with redress checks to Japanese-Americans who were unjustly interned during World War II. Now he can ensure that this vitally important program is completed.

The White House will soon receive a bill from Congress that would authorize an extra $400 million in federal funding to complete redress payments, authorized four years ago.

The additional funding is needed because government officials underestimated by 20,000 the number of former internees still living in 1988 when Congress passed the original measure to formally apologize for the 1942 mass internment and to pay $20,000 to each surviving internee.

On Feb. 19, 1942, two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, under which 120,000 people of Japanese descent on the West Coast were rounded up and put in 10 makeshift camps. Nearly 40 years later, a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded that the internment decision resulted from “race prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership,” not military necessity.

The Justice Department disclosed earlier this year that the government had miscalculated in its initial estimate of 60,000 living internees. The number is closer to 80,000, so an adjustment in federal funding is needed to provide for all of them. Congress’ admirably prompt response, and the President’s signature, will make that possible.