Six Sue U.S., Seek Redress for WWII Internment

Jane Yano was born in an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas, in early 1947 and, along with her family, remained behind barbed wire until August 1947, two full years after the war with Japan ended.

So when the U.S. government offered a formal apology and $20,000 each in compensation to the more than 80,000 Japanese Americans who were rounded up from their homes and shipped to camps across the country during World War II, Yano assumed that she too would get a letter and a check.

But officials told her that because she was born after August 1946, by which time most of the camps had closed, she was ineligible for reparations.

Yano is one of six former internees who filed a lawsuit against the government Thursday seeking redress.

The six were found ineligible by government officials for different reasons, but all say the government is hiding behind legal technicalities to deny them what they are owed.

The lawsuit seeks $10 million per person, but attorney Paul Mills said his clients would settle for the $20,000 given to other internees.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said the office had not had time to review the lawsuit and so could not comment on it.

“It’s hard to believe our government would be so callous,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles). He said he plans to introduce legislation in Congress that would cut the red tape for Yano and those like her. Four of the six are people of Japanese descent from Latin America who were taken into custody by U.S. soldiers and forcibly shipped to a camp in the United States and then deported to Japan after the war.

The government told them that because they entered the country under U.S. soldiers’ guns, they are not legal U.S. residents and therefore not eligible under the law.

The sixth plaintiff is Kay Kato, 91, who came to the United States from Japan in 1937 on a merchant visa, and has been in this country since then. He was put in an internment camp from 1941 to 1945. Because of a law prohibiting Japanese from naturalizing during the 1930s, he did not become a legal permanent resident until 1958. Because he had not been a legal resident during World War II, he was considered ineligible for redress by the government.

The Civil Liberties Act, which provided for redress for those interned during World War II, had “very specific criteria about who was eligible and who was not,” said Chris Komai, spokesman for the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Historians are still trying to piece together why some Japanese Americans, such as Yano, were detained beyond the end of the war at Crystal City, Komai said. Other internment camps were closed in 1944 and 1945. But Crystal City remained open, and in some cases, Komai said, people were sent from other camps to Crystal City.