Is That Legal?

It was indeed a moving event. Also a foggy, chilly one. A large crowd, perhaps one-third elderly, stayed to the end despite the weather.

If you live in the West, you aren't too far from either an "assembly center" or one of the internment camps.

Walk around your house, and decide what you would take with you (only what you can carry), then imagine never seeing the rest again. Do you take your family photos, or another heavy coat for winter? Your little girl's teddy bear, or the blanket that she can't sleep without?

Now imagine that all of your family and your friends are going through the same thing in their own homes, and that the government which you count on to defend your liberties is doing this to you, simply because you have "one drop" of your ancestors' blood!

This was done by the "great" Franklin Roosevelt, who suspended habeas corpus (is THAT legal?), and the American Civil Liberties Union said that it was okay! The national organization condemned the handful of ACLU San Francisco types who worked on behalf of the "evacuees."

I have visited several of the camps. I have met some of the survivors. Some of my friends when I was a kid in California had parents who had been in the camps, and I didn't know about it at the time.

It's one thing to read about it, to see films like "American Pastime" and to know that something bad happened, but it's something entirely different to relive it, to walk between the gateposts and envision the gate closing behind you, maybe for the rest of your life and your CHILDREN'S lives . . .