Photo: Sedat Suna/EPA, The Guardian
On November 16, President Obama announced the awarding of a Medal of Freedom to Minoru Yasui in recognition of his lifelong fight for justice, including his challenge of discriminatory orders resulting in the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Two days later Roanoke Virginia Mayor David Bowers invoked President Roosevelt's policy of "sequestering Japanese" as justification for denying assistance to Syrian refugees in his part of the state.
Bowers' statement, far from justifying exclusion, is perhaps the strongest argument we could make against discriminating against Syrians on the basis of national origin.
The comparison is accurate, but the historical lesson the diametric opposite. The World War II exclusion of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast is now widely considered one of the darkest chapters of U.S. history - with an even darker footnote that at the same time, the United States closed its doors to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
In 1983, the U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment (CWRIC) concluded in its definitive report that it was not a question of "military necessity" as found by the Supreme Court in 1943, but that
These actions were carried out without adequate security reasons and ... were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.
- CWRIC, Personal Justice Denied
Those characteristics are most clearly exemplified by Mayor Bowers, who is alone only in his vocalization of the historical parallel otherwise skirted in discussions of the refugee controversy.
Though Bowers has apologized and says "it is not in my heart to be racist or bigoted" ... there's the rub. How many others who support the exclusion of Syrian refugees - including 32 governors and 289 members of the House of Representatives who voted for H.R. 4038 - are not "racist or bigoted," but justify their position by a deep and sincere concern about national security?
We, as a people, and our leaders, must closely examine the unspoken assumptions upon which this exclusion policy is based, in order to not only learn from the past, but also to act upon those hard-learned lessons.
In 1942, entire families, elderly and infirm, children of all ages were excluded from the West Coast and shipped off to concentration camps in Idaho, Wyoming, California, Utah, Arizona and Arkansas because General John DeWitt, in charge of the "Japanese problem," said: "A Jap's a Jap ...."
Today, New Jersey governor (and Presidential hopeful) Chris Christie says even Syrian orphans under the age of 5, who have lost their families to terrorism, should not be allowed into the U.S. - since the existing screening procedures aren't adequate ... a Syrian's a Syrian ...
In 1942, authorities insisted that among Japanese, you couldn't "separate the sheep (the good) from the goats (the bad)" so ALL were excluded from the West Coast. But, for some reason, white sheep were distinguishable from white goats - a few selected German and Italian nationals were incarcerated in Department of Justice internment camps, but their entire communities were not uprooted and imprisoned in concentration camps.
Today, opponents of Syrian refugee resettlement in the U.S. say they cannot be adequately screened and therefore ALL must be subject to regulations that essentially exclude them. Among Syrians, sheep cannot be separated from goats, even though for some reason, U.S. Immigration screening procedures, the most rigorous in the world, can make that distinction for all other ethnicities and national origins.
In 1942, official stigmatization exacerbated fear and suspicion toward all persons of Japanese ancestry even though there was no evidence of a single case of espionage among over 120,000 persons excluded from the West Coast.
Today, war hysteria underlies rejection of Syrian refugees - who are victims of the terrorism that essentially all Americans deplore. In general, refugees are, as a group, statistically the least likely to commit crimes in the U.S.
On April 4, 1942, a few days after he intentionally violated a discriminatory order against all persons of Japanese ancestry, Min Yasui wrote to General DeWitt, author of that order:
"The President ... has oftentimes repeated that we are fighting to preserve the four freedoms throughout the world. Surely then, it is of paramount importance to preserve those self-same freedoms within the United States of America."
On November 16, 2015, as Bowers and Christie were making their infamous statements, President Obama asserted:
"The values we are defending, the values we are fighting against ISIS for, are precisely that we don't discriminate against people because of their faith. We don't kill people because they are different from us."
So, the past doesn't stay "back there" - the same moral and political dilemmas confront us today.
One benefit derived from Mayor Bower's statement is that it has roused opposition and a reflection upon the issues underlying the World War II "sequestration" of Japanese: national security, race prejudice, war hysteria and the failure of political leadership. The Roanoke City Council has roundly opposed Bower's policy, committing their city to "welcoming of all nationalities."
And though more than half of the governors in the U.S. declare they will not accept Syrian refugees, over 50 mayors and others in many cities oppose that xenophobia. For example, although the governor of Idaho declared that his state will not accept Syrians, the city of Boise has accepted more than New York and Los Angeles combined.
This is how real grass-roots democracy works: people act upon what they know is right, in spite of decrees - "errors" - made by higher-up government officials ... During World War II, this happened in small but significant ways in the U.S. The American Friends Service Committee assisted young Japanese Americans to relocate to college campuses outside of the exclusion zone, and there were many acts of compassion by other churches and individuals. And in Europe there were many individuals- including Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara who hand-wrote thousands of visas to Lithuanian Jews before he left that country - who risked their own lives to help Jews escape the Nazis.
So let's stand behind our president, who wants to do the right thing: accept 10,000 Syrian refugees (as compared to 30,000 that France, which suffered ISIS attacks, is accepting), whose homeland has been wrecked by terrorism.
This is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, founded in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal ... As an American citizen, as a lawyer, I felt we owed at least the obligation ... to tell our government they are wrong! That is the sacred duty of every citizen, because what is done to the least of us can be done to all of us. I KNEW we had to protest it.
- Min Yasui in Never Give Up! Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice
And so, we protest the Un-American policy of excluding any persons from any part of our country on the basis of race, religion or national origin. It is wrong! And we call upon you to stand up and speak out, to let your members of Congress know why our country should not discriminate against any ethnic group based on national origin. The Syrian refugee bill is being debated in the U.S. Senate and may face a veto override in coming days.
Excluding any persons on the basis of race and/or national origin does not make us more secure, but on the contrary undermines the very foundations of our country that make us strong.
Please also see: www.minoruyasuifilm.org - about our film Never Give Up! Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice ... and don't give up! The fight for justice is ongoing and depends on you!
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