Seventy-Five Years Ago Today; A Day That Also Should Live in Infamy
From Sol's Civic Minute:
Today is the 75th anniversary of the executive order that President Franklin Roosevelt signed three months after Pearl Harbor creating a system of internment camps to which Japanese Americans were sent.
Seattle writer Mayumi Tsutakawa wrote a piece for the International Examiner looking back at the internment and using it as a warning about Trump's Muslim ban (one of his surrogates suggested during the transition that Roosevelt's executive order could be a model for the new administration);
Thomas Shapley in Crosscut wrote about a small community newspaper on Bainbridge Island that was one of the only local media outlets to speak out against the internment at the time; and,
KING 5's Lori Matsukawa spoke to local residents who were detained in the camps 75 years ago.(Editor's note: Sol Villarreal is a real estate broker and former staffer in Mayor McGinn's office. His Sol's Civic Minute is a weekly round-up of local news/events.)
Sol's Civic Minute is a weekly email newsletter that I send to my subscribers every Sunday morning at 6 am. As the tagline implies, you can scan the entire thing in under a minute to catch up on what happened in Seattle the previous week. Lots of people tell me it's the only email they get that they read in its entirety, though, so be forewarned that reading the whole thing and clicking on a bunch of the links will take you longer than a minute. My focus is on local politics & government and other related items–the kinds of things that we all want to pay more attention to but that it's tough to take the time to stay up to date on. I spend hours each week reading all the local news I can find so that you don't have to!
Comments
http://www.vashonhistory.com/videos/gruenewald/gruenewald_interview.html
-Danielle Clark
http://www.historylink.org/File/3642
Apology at 1984 SPS school board meeting;
1986 state action authorizing redress payments:
https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/Archives/resources/WHEN%20JUSTICE%20PREVAIL2.PDF
FWIW
I pay quite a bit of attention to the history of EO9066 in general, but I had not heard this particular story. Thanks for the comment fwiw. The historylink article is a short easy read for anyone remotely interested, Clickable link here
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/italian-americans-were-considered-enemy-aliens-world-war-ii-180962021/
My g grandparents told us about it as well as they were affected. It was a scary time and they told us they could not speak their native language in public.
-PH
HP
http://www.thc.texas.gov/preserve/projects-and-programs/military-history/texas-world-war-ii/japanese-german-and-italian
HP
It should be pointed out that many more Japanese (2/3 were American citizens) were interned and for the duration of the war. In regards to German Americas, I had read elsewhere that just under 11,000 German Americans were interned and I do not remember if they were nationals or citizens or a combination.
The travel restrictions on 600,000 Italian born American citizens lasted about a year and was lifted on "Columbus Day" in 1942, but the FBI and other agencies continued to violate their rights. From the article "EO 9066 not only allowed the government to arrest and imprison “enemy aliens” without charges or trial, it meant their homes and businesses could be summarily seized." I personally take away from this example that history unfortunately repeats itself and that we need to be more aware of the past.
-PH
Peace
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