Japanese-American and Arab-American groups are (understandably) demanding an apology from Rep. Howard Coble for his remarks approving of Japanese-American internment during World War II. Coble claimed that it was done because, for “…many of these Japanese-Americans, it wasn’t safe for them to be on the street.” (Coble’s official website contains no mention of the remark, the reaction, or his spokespersons’ statements on the matter.)
The San Jose Mercury News quotes Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), who, as a child, was interned in one of the camps in Colorado: “If we were incarcerated for our safety, why were we inside the barbed wire fences, and why were the gun towers facing us?”
Rep. Honda is introducing a resolution [pdf] in the Congress declaring February 19 — the day in 1942 when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the internment — as a national “Day of Remembrance.”
Meanwhile, in Eric Muller’s IsThatLegal? blog, the UNC Chapel Hill law professor has answered Coble’s challenge to prove that the internment wasn’t done for the benefit of the internees. (Coble claims that if this is proven, he will issue an apology. Since Coble already voted against the 1988 act which gave reparations to the survivors and families of the internees, I’m not holding my breath for an apology.)
In a clear and lucid essay, Professor Muller explains the history of the decision to inter the Japanese-Americans, including the revelation (to me anyway) that the issue of potential Japanese-American disloyalty and what to do about it was being discussed well before the Pearl Harbor attack. His research easily disproves any supposition that there were any beneficent facets of the internment.
Professor Muller boasts some expertise on the era, having authored “Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II“, an incredible account of the drafting of the interned Japanese-Americans.
One passage in particular stays with me from the excerpt of Professor Muller’s book available on the web:
Some very wise words which need to remembered today, when newpapers which depend on the First Amendment for their very existence disgustingly equate protest with treason.
