Protests Over Memorial

* In “Today’s Sensibilities Don’t Apply to Voices from the Past,” (Commentary, July 28), Cherry Tsutsumida reduces the controversy over the Japanese American national memorial to one quotation by Mike Masaoka. In reality, the controversy is much deeper.

Protests over the memorial inscriptions were magnified because the National Park Service failed to provide proper oversight for the memorial, located on federal land. Despite repeated communications from scholars, researchers and the informed public and regardless of a nationwide resolution signed by over a thousand individuals, groups and organizations, the NPS repudiated cries for historical accuracy. Contrary to Tsutsumida’s wishful thinking, the controversy is spreading, not diminishing.

Tsutsumida incompletely quotes Masaoka’s 1942 congressional testimony. In response to the government’s proposal to remove and banish Japanese Americans from Western states, he said, “If the military says ‘Move out,’ we will be glad to move. . . . “ Subsequently, thousands were rounded up and incarcerated in concentration camps, but not Masaoka.

It’s unconscionable to revise and distort history when the facts about what really happened are well established. Masaoka’s own documented reports and transcribed statements provide the best evidence.

A spontaneous grass-roots movement sprouted when the community heard about the proposed memorial inscriptions, including reference to Masaoka as a “civil rights advocate.” Details about the protest movement, nationwide resolution and names of signers are documented in the Web site, https://www.JAvoice.com.

RITA TAKAHASHI

Berkeley