June 8, 2012

This week, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to repeal a resolution from 1942 that forced Japanese Americans into internment camps. Seventy years after Executive Order 9066 was issued, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas took the necessary action to address one of the darkest institutionalized wrongs in our nation’s history.

The repeal passed, and was needed—even if it happened 70 years after the order took place. The simple act of proposing the repeal speaks volumes in attempting to amend the decision to round up 120,000 Japanese Americans and force them to internment camps. They’re only “crime” was that they were of Japanese ancestry, and to this day we are still living with the ethnic and racial profiling of Americans.

The physical internment of Japanese Americans was a psychological internment of all Americans; it defined a moment in which the strength of our diverse American fabric became compromised. The fact that we allowed our fear to dictate our nation’s moral compass in 1942 is appalling. As history often repeats itself, we must caution ourselves from going down the same path of instituting irresponsible policies based on fear.

Indeed, we have already seen the manifestation of fear in destructive policies today. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 was voted in by Congress with provisions that allow American citizens to be indefinitely detained without any charges being brought against them. This is not the America that our Founding Fathers envisioned. Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying, “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

While Japanese Americans were being spoken about as a “potentially dangerous fifth column enemy” in 1942, American Muslims were branded in the same tone in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Let’s get to the point where we do not have to have similar resolutions repealed in another 70 years based on bad judgment. It is our duty to take this opportunity to learn from the embarrassing mistake of the past and heal the wounds of a cruel and unjust episode.

As Supervisor Ridley-Thomas noted, “I don’t see repealing this error as merely a gesture of goodwill to Japanese Americans. It is an essential step toward redemption of all Americans.”

After the horrific attacks of 9/11, Japanese Americans stood in solidarity with the American Muslim community to make sure the same institutionalized attack against an entire community did not happen again. This week, the American Muslim community was proud to support the Japanese American community in repealing the 1942 resolution.

Salam Al-Marayati, MPAC President, was asked to speak at the hearing and he underscored the role of the American public in defending civil liberties. “It’s our sacred duty to protect one another; this is what it means to be a true American and a true human being. The Japanese American community came out politically and figuratively, after 9/11 in support of the Muslim American community to make sure what happened to them didn’t happen to us,” Al Marayati said.

In the end, the actions of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors speak to the collective resiliency of our nation. It is imperative we make past mistakes teachable moments to ensure we never repeat dark episodes again. 

[Contact: Hoda Elshishtawy, Legislative and Policy Analyst, (202) 547-7701,hoda@mpac.org]