A tangible gesture
Polner, Murray
A TANGIBLE GESTURE COMPENSATION FOR THE JAPANESE? ONCE WORKED with a west coast Japanese-American who I had served in the army during World War II while his parents and younger sisters were...
...Or that about 850 Aleuts were also taken from their homes by the U.S...
...It is a safe guess that the commission members will try to render a compassionate and understanding finding...
...And said another: "Of course no monetary compensation could possibly pay for the hardships we endured...
...And since the whole affair was so blatantly racist it is no wonder that German- and Italian-Americans on the west coast were permitted to go scot free...
...Despite Hayakawa and a few other demurrers most asked for some form of redress...
...But the most important thing, I think, is that the government should not do this ever again to its people...
...Hayakawa, charged one former internee, had never been in a camp and was allowed to work in Chicago during the" war...
...ONCE WORKED with a west coast Japanese-American who I had served in the army during World War II while his parents and younger sisters were incarcerated in a federal internment camp...
...Others recognized the impracticality of so much money being wrested from the Reagan administration and sought instead to suggest alternatives such as granting scholarships to internees and their children, awarding social security for the years wasted, establishing a museum to record the tragedy, calling for a televised Japanese-American version of "Roots" or "Holocaust...
...And a lawyers group urged that the Supreme Court decisions upholding the forced removal of citizens and law-abiding aliens without any due process be reversed...
...We were sympathetic except for one co-worker...
...I barely gave the subject much thought until last summer when I attended several hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians at Golden Gate University in San Francisco...
...160,000 Japanese in Hawaii were left alone inasmuch as they were deemed vital to the islands' economy and therefore the war effort...
...Some may no doubt point to the 1948 settlement in which claimants were paid ten cents on the dollar for their losses of property although as Mineo Katagiri of the United Church of Christ in San Francisco pointed out, "How can we be repaid fully for the properties lost, the health destroyed, the education denied, the employment opportunities lost...
...The Japanese-American merely shrugged...
...Some mentioned $25,000 per victim but it seemed to be more of a battle cry than a definitive amount...
...All I'm saying," I remember him answering, "is that this government did something terrible to my people and they owe us...
...One day, over lunch, he told us that his family had lost their business and property as a result and that one of his relatives had died, separated unwillingly from her children and relatives...
...He had been a combat veteran and remarked that while no offense was intended, surely the attack on Pearl Harbor had frightened a good many Americans into thinking that an invasion of California was near...
...And but for Senator S. I. Hayakawa's remark that internees had been on a "three-year vacation" and that the notion of reparations "makes my skin crawl with shame and embarrassment"-virtually all the speakers in all three cities spoke of their debasement, their fear, and often, the shattering consequences internment had on their families and livelihoods...
...Besides, he added, the imprisoned Japanese were a lot safer than he had been as a rifleman...
...MURRAY POLNERAY POLNER...
...Army and imprisoned in southeastern Alaska while non-Aleuts in the Aleutian chain went untouched...
...What is less predictable is how the Reagan administration will treat the question...
...The hearings had opened weeks before in Washington and then moved on to Los Angeles...
...The commission had been established by Congress in the waning days of the Carter administration to "determine whether any wrong was committed" after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 allowed 110,000 Japanese-Americans to be taken from their homes and relocated-a popular euphemism of the time-to camps in California, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas...
...We are talking about a tangible gesture that can be seen and gauged which says to us that a genuine act of contrition has taken place in the heart of this great nation...
Vol. 108 • October 1981 • No. 19
