Editorial: Regrets, we’ve had a few

“I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War,” wrote President Franklin Roosevelt in signing executive order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, “to prescribe military areas… from which … the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War… may impose in his discretion.”

And, with that, the internment of Americans of Japanese descent was officially sanctioned by the government of the United States of America.

Nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans – about two-thirds American citizens; about three-quarters from California – were incarcerated in camps throughout the western U.S. during World War II, when their loyalty was questioned following the Empire of the Sun’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

It was among the darkest actions in American history – a racist denial of two of the three pillars of “unalienable rights” promised in the Declaration of Independence: the pursuits of liberty and happiness. That the denial of “life” is not within its decree is what most obviously separates it from the Nazi ghettoization of the Jews in the late ‘30s and other persecutions of greater infamy. I’m sure that’s little consolation to those who lost more than three years of freedom to internment.

When those Americans were eventually released from their detention centers following the war, many returned to nothing – having been forced to sell their homes, businesses and even cars within weeks of being ordered to report to camps, trading their most valued possessions for pennies on the dollar or risk having their valuables “requisitioned” for war purposes while they were incarcerated.

In officially repealing Executive Order 9066 in 1976 – 30 years after the breakdown of the camps – President Gerald Ford vowed that such “a sad day in American history… shall never again be repeated.” Survivors of the internment were given $20,000 in reparations in 1988, while a formal apology was issued by the U.S. government.

On Thursday, a day after the 78th anniversary of EO 9066, the California state legislature approved HR 77, a formal apology from the state – acknowledging its role in the cruelty and injustice of the internment camps during World II and “for its failure to support and defend the civil rights and civil liberties of Japanese-Americans during this period.” The resolution was introduced by state Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from south Los Angeles.

Despite the regrets of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act and its $20K in reparations – a piddling amount given the circumstances – California’s own mea culpa is long overdue. Pre-empting EO 9066 in the wake of Pearl Harbor, California lawmakers also approved a resolution OKing the firing of state employees suspected of disloyalty to the U.S. and sent a letter to state newspapers arguing that Japanese Americans were loyal to the Emperor of Japan.

California’s anti-Japanese maneuverings can’t simply be chalked up to wartime hysteria and misplaced paranoia – East Asia residents had been targeted by California lawmakers for decades. The federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 halted Chinese immigration in response to the California business community’s complaints about their successes in fishing and other ventures; and, in 1913, Japanese residents were in the crosshairs of the California Alien Land Law, which prohibited Japanese and other Asian immigrants from owning or long-term leasing agricultural land. The Golden State has a longstanding history finagling land from those of non-Northern European ancestry. Just ask the Bear Flaggers.

While it’s commendable that Californians are reflecting upon the injustices of their recent past – it was only our parents and grandparents generations, after all – it also begs an alarming question of the future: What injustices and ignominies of today will our grandkids be dropping their jaws over 80 years from now? The answers play out like a game of Name That Recent Headline.

Attempts by the Trump administration and other far-right supporters to phase out the DACA program and strip the so-called Dreamers – citizens in everything but name – of their hopes for permanent residency is certainly a candidate for future abashment.

The cruel and frightening separations of border-crossing families will surely earn its unique place in American infamy; the placing of children in cages at the detention camps a particularly dark chapter in the book on the Trump era.

The lust to deny Americans healthcare; the zealotry in rolling back environmental and consumer protections; the bitter banning of travelers from poor Muslim countries.

The Orwellian “doublethink” that renders facts subjective and finds equivalency in the “very fine people” on both sides of a Neo-Nazi rally.

The abuse of the dignity and decency that was once an ideal of the American brand.

Still, one supposes there’s hope in the fact that none of these recent dishonors are as near as bad as the Japanese internments.

But give us time, future generations. As they say, atonement wasn’t built in a day.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.