New Reparations Measure Planned for WWII-Era Japanese Americans

Art Shibayama was just 13 when he and other family members were forced from their home in Peru in 1944 and put on a ship for a three-week voyage to the United States --and an internment camp in Texas.

The Shibayamas and tens of thousands like them who lost their freedom and property were “guilty” only of being of Japanese ancestry and of living in the Americas at a time when the United States was at war with Japan.

They were rounded up and placed in camps either out of fear that they might assist Japan in the war effort or, in other cases, to be used as part of prisoner exchanges. Many, including the Shibayamas, were held long after World War II had ended.

The U.S. government compensated most of the victims and their families for their losses. But many others, including Shibayama, a 69-year-old retired service station operator in San Jose, were left out.

Now there’s a new congressional effort to help Japanese Americans and Japanese Latin Americans who didn’t benefit from earlier reparations.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) is introducing a measure to pick up where the original restitution plan left off when it expired in 1998 after providing $1.65 billion in benefits to victims.

A 1998 court settlement plus supplemental appropriations from Congress provided $50 million more for the Japanese-ancestry victims of wartime excesses.

Becerra says his proposal is a final necessary step.

“We toyed with the lives of a lot of people, a lot of good people. And since we’ve already admitted wrong, there’s no reason that we can’t let justice, if it exists, apply to all of them equally,” he says.

Becerra isn’t sure of the amount he will propose, but says it won’t come close to the earlier restitution plan. Money isn’t the issue anyway, he adds.

“These are people who deserve to have some justice. When you tell people what happened to them, they say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ That’s what we’re fighting against.”

Leaders in the push for the legislation include Grace Shimizu, whose father was taken from Peru --where he had lived for 20 years--and confined in the same camp near San Antonio, Texas, where the Shibayamas were held for 2 1/2 years.

The families were kept in one of several federal camps that, along with 10 relocation camps, held people of Japanese ancestry during the war years. Most were in the West.

“It will wrap up all the concerns so that we can close this chapter on a positive ending,” Shimizu says.

“Injustice continues for people whose civil liberties have yet to be vindicated,” adds Fumie Shimada, another advocate of Becerra’s bill. Her father was fired from his job as a railroad machinist in Sparks, Nev., in 1942 after more than two decades on the job.

The U.S. government moved against Kametaro Ishii, Shimada’s father, and hundreds of other Japanese Americans holding West Coast railroad or mining jobs, contending they were national security risks.

For Shimizu’s father, Susumu Shimizu, the Shibayamas and at least 2,600 others like them from Latin America, the plan was to exchange them for American citizens trapped in Japan at the start of the war.

Hundreds of Japanese who had spent years in Latin America, including Shibayama’s grandparents, were involved in the little-known exchanges. “They went back to Japan. I never got to see them again,” he says.

Other Japanese Latin Americans were locked up in U.S. camps. Only a handful returned to Latin America. Most remained in the United States when the war ended.

Backers of Rep. Becerra’s bill include members of the Campaign for Justice. Formed in 1996, the group includes the National Coalition for Redress, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project.

They estimate their efforts could help as many as 1,400 people, including those who lost their homes and jobs. It also would help the children of those whose lives were disrupted if the victims have since died.

In 1988, Congress acknowledged that U.S. wartime treatment of Japanese Americans and aliens, particularly the 120,000 who were rounded up and confined at internment camps, was wrong.

The 1988 Civil Liberties Act provided for reparations, and some 80,000 survivors applied for payments for lost property and freedom. Most were paid $20,000 each under the restitution law, which expired two years ago.

Many--but not all--of the railroad workers were included largely because of efforts by Shimada, a Sacramento teacher who spent years tracking down proof of a government order for the railroads to fire her late father and other workers of Japanese ancestry.

Because they weren’t citizens or legal residents of the United States during the war, Japanese from 13 Latin American countries--mainly Peru--weren’t eligible for the $20,000 payments. But some received $5,000 as a result of the 1998 court settlement.

“But it’s not just the money,” says Shimizu, of El Cerrito, Calif., who cares for her 93-year-old father. “It’s more a feeling of appreciating the severity of the human rights violations that occurred.

“Since the end of the redress program in 1998, different people in government are saying this chapter is closed,” she adds. “And we’re saying, ‘No, not yet. Don’t close the door yet.’ ”

Shimizu and Shimada already have received restitution for their families. Now they’re working to get those benefits for others who applied too late, were unaware of the benefits or were excluded on technicalities.

They’d also like to get access to government files that might show what happened to some Japanese Latin Americans who simply disappeared.

“In some cases, family members were taken away and the families never heard from them again,” Shimizu said.

Shibayama has received no restitution or apologies, and he’d like both. His family was broken up and their successful textile and clothing business in Peru was lost.

After a 21-day sea trip on a transport ship--below decks most of the time--he, his parents and five brothers and sisters lived in two rooms in a barracks near San Antonio.

Years later, he waged a long battle with the Immigration and Naturalization Service for U.S. citizenship--which resisted even though he had served in the U.S. Army in Germany during the Korean War.

Shibayama says he feels some bitterness but still thinks “the United States is the best country to live in.”

“But people made mistakes, big mistakes. I was discriminated against so many times,” he says.

“I was offered the $5,000 settlement but I opted out because it was another discrimination, a slap in the face,” he adds. “The offer said nothing about how we were brought here--not even an apology.”

“I tell people what happened and they don’t believe it. They say, ‘We did that to you? No.’ I say, ‘Yes, you did.’ ”