California to apologize for internment of Japanese Americans

Cuneyt Dil of the Associated Press reports that the California’s Legislature is expected to approve a resolution offering an apology to persons subject to internment during World War II.  The apology is for the state’s role in aiding the U.S. government’s policy.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order No. 9066 establishing the internment camps was signed on February 19, 1942.  February 19 is now marked by Japanese Americans as a Day of Remembrance.

Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi was born in Japan and is one the roughly 430,000 people of Japanese descent living in California. he is sponsoring the resolution.  “We like to talk a lot about how we lead the nation by example,” he said. “Unfortunately, in this case, California led the racist anti-Japanese American movement.”

A congressional commission in 1983 concluded that the detentions were a result of “racial prejudice, war hysteria and failure of political leadership.” Five years later, the U.S. government formally apologized and paid $20,000 in reparations to each victim.

The California resolution doesn’t come with any compensation. It targets the actions of the California Legislature at the time for supporting the internments. Two camps were located in the state — Manzanar on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in central California and Tule Lake near the Oregon state line, the largest of all the camps.

“I want the California Legislature to officially acknowledge and apologize while these camp survivors are still alive,” Muratsuchi said. He said anti-Japanese sentiment began in California as early as 1913, when the state passed the California Alien Land Law, targeting Japanese farmers who some in California’s massive agricultural industry perceived as a threat. Seven years later the state barred anyone with Japanese ancestry from buying farmland.

KJ