For decades, Japanese American activists have marked Feb. 19 as a day to reflect on one of the darkest chapters in this nation’s history.
On that date in 1942, during World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the forced removal of over 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent from their homes and businesses.
On Thursday, the California Assembly will do more than just remember.
It’s expected to approve, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s endorsement, a formal apology to all Americans of Japanese descent for the state’s role in policies that culminated with their mass incarceration.
HR 77, introduced by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) and co-authored with six others, spells out in excruciating detail California’s anti-Japanese heritage.
It mentions the California Alien Land Law of 1913 (which made land ownership for Japanese immigrants illegal) and a 1943 joint resolution by the Assembly and state Senate that called for the forfeiture of U.S. citizenship by residents who also were citizens of Japan. It calls out U.S. Army Gen. John L. DeWitt for telling California politicians shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack that “the Japanese in this country have more [arms and ammunition] in their possession than our own armed forces,” in convincing them to round up Japanese Americans.
And HR 77 also connects this history to the present.
“Given recent national events,” it states, “it is all the more important to learn from the mistakes of the past and to ensure that such an assault on freedom will never again happen to any community in the United States.”
Muratsuchi told the Japanese American Citizens League that he pushed for the bill because he wanted “California [to] lead by example ... while our nation’s capital is hopelessly divided along party lines and President Trump is putting immigrant families and children in cages.”
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) said it is essential for the state to acknowledge its past failings in order to move forward.
“We so often talk about our need to not repeat mistakes of the past,” he said. “The first step in doing so is making sure we acknowledge wrongs. We owe it to those who suffered by acknowledging their mistreatments but also to educate our future generations so history does no repeat itself.”