Is That Legal?

Do you happen to know if those pictures were contemporary, or if they were painted/drawn later? I'm guessing the former.

One of the paintings by Estelle Ishigo has a date listed of 1944; it's the only one of the paintings that has people as the main subject (two children, climbing over a low barbed wire fence holding a kite).

The image of that red chimmney stack brought back powerful memories of another camp, where the chimmney is all that remains of most barracks buildings. I can't tell if that's what I'm reacting to.

ELM: Yosh created those images when he was interned at Heart Mountain.

On February 13, 2007 the House of Representatives passed Resolution 122 regarding a National Day of Remembrance -

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) recognizes the historical significance of February 19, 1942, the date Executive Order No. 9066 was signed by President Roosevelt, restricting the freedom of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans, and legal resident aliens through required identification cards, travel restrictions, seizure of personal property, and internment; and
(2) supports the goals of the Japanese American, German American, and Italian American communities in recognizing a National Day of Remembrance to increase public awareness of these events.

Given the US House Resolution, why on the first Day of Remembrance event after the resolution, did the Japanese American Citizens League officially deny European internment at a very public event at Portland State University titled “Fighting for Civil Rights in an Era of Terror”?

Of course, the irony is that the JACL when contacted prior to the event confirmed they were aware of the resolution and that their lead speaker “ will speak about the internment experience, which include German and Italian Americans . . . I will be sure to discuss this fact with the audience and am aware of the resolution . . .our DoR focuses on the past, but also present civil rights issues that affect everyone-- German American, Japanese American, legal permanent residents, foreign nationals, etc. We hope to educate the public about past and present civil rights issues.

Five minutes into the presentation the lead speaker told 250-300 attendees that German Americans and Italian Americans were NOT interned! When the offending speaker was asked during the intermission to correct the record and inform the audience that 14,000 German Americans and Italian Americans were interned she chose not to. Needless to say, after the intermission no correction was forthcoming.

Tell me how should the primary sponsors Portland State University, the ACLU, and the JACL remedy the situation? What about Academic responsibility and integrity? I am very curious to hear your response.

House Resolution 122 has done little for a National Day of Remembrance for European Internment. Here is one more example of internment bias. About a dozen letters were written (not one published) in response to this article in the LA Times "Japanese Latinos: The Forgotten Internees"

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-abductees18mar18,0,3946117.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

Japanese were not the only victims of the wartime kidnapping policy. 200 Italian Latinos and 6,000 German Latinos met the same fate, claims the
recent editorial "Japanese Latinos the forgotten internees". As Rep.Beccerra and Rep Lungren sponsor a bill that will establish a commission to investigate ONLY Japanese Latino internment, who are the forgotten internees????? Oops! I guess the congressmen have already forgotten the
6,200 non Japanese Latino victims. According to the article the US owes long overdue redress to the Japanese Latinos kidnapped during WWII, dare I ask the obvious, what does the US owe to the German Latinos and Italian Latinos kidnapped?

If the pursuit of historical truth enriches all Americans why do we continue to hide the German and Italian internment story? The article misleads the public by insinuating that there is a current bill in congress to investigate ALL Latino victims of WWII wartime kidnapping. Take the time to read H.R. 662, the bill is an advocacy bill, exclusively for one group of victims - the 2,264 Japanese Latinos. Hmmmm, what about the other 6,200 kidnapped Latino victims of German and Italian ancestry? It is pretty clear that these Congressmen do not believe they were elected to represent ALL victims of bad US government policy, isn't it?

More to remember -

During the CWRIC hearings James Rowe, Assistant to the Attorney General, the number two position in the Justice Department, stated the following:

". . . there had been a planning commission at the Department of Justice, a war planning committee, whatever you wish to call it that had been operating for about a year or six months on the theory we might get into a war. Also on the theory which proved correct that our enemies would be the Japanese, the Germans and the Italians. And what they were doing was trying to make a selection of the German, Italian, and Japanese aliens, enemy aliens we might have thought were dangerous.

. . . The program worked quite well; we picked up right after Pearl Harbor about 60,000 enemy aliens - - I think mostly German, a large number of Italians and a large number of Japanese.

It appears that the long held speculation by the German American community regarding the validity of the published numbers of arrests and detentions for the enemy alien program during WWII may be well founded. The numbers that are most frequently quoted are from secondary sources and generally include the Japanese relocation victims. Certainly, as one researches original documents it is hard not to become suspicious of the accuracy of the commission's work and the detention numbers generated.

Particularly troubling are eight (8) CDs from the FBI recently released under the Freedom of Information Act. What is interesting and intriguing regarding the files received is the label of most of the files. Review the sample forwarded. The example shown is from the FBI's 405 page Honolulu Division file which is titled "Japanese 1941." [The cover sheet is shown first; followed by the first document entry page in the file.] Also, included in the division file are 33 files of Arrest Warrants of Alien Enemies during WWII which are all labeled “Japanese 1941.” After reviewing the files, I am left with the question - Why were the cover sheets of these files labeled “Japanese 1941"? As one reviews the actual arrest warrants and sees the hundreds of German American names listed in file after file titled "Japanese 1941" one begins to question why the files were labeled and indexed as such. The arrest lists were pretty damning. Hundreds of aliens were arrested before the US was at war with Germany, significant numbers of US citizens of German ancestry were arrested, district arrests were made on "no basis" ignoring the FBI's own faulty custodial index etc. etc.

Who would like to share their thoughts on why these files were labeled "Japanese 1941"?

S.A. Weiss