Calif. meeting marks internment of Japanese-Americans

SAN FRANCISCO — Some 800 people gathered at the Kabuki Theatre here Feb. 19 to mark the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous Executive Order 9066, which led to imprisoning 120,000 Japanese-Americans for the duration of World War II, two-thirds of them citizens of the United States. Detainees being moved from California, April 1942.

Given only 72 hours to dispose of their property, they lost their farms and crops, fishing boats, small businesses, homes, pets and personal possessions. They were herded into 10 concentration camps in remote areas, surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers in guard towers with machine guns.

A number of speakers spoke out against the Donald Trump administration’s moves against immigrant workers, efforts to ban entry to those from six majority-Muslim countries, and against recent attacks aimed at mosques. “We are thankful for the Japanese-American community standing with us,” said Sameena Usman, for the Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Grace Shimizu of the Campaign for Justice spoke about the U.S. government’s kidnapping and incarceration of over 2,200 citizens of Japanese descent from Latin America

“The U.S. government in the name of ‘national security’ seized them from their homes and communities, forcibly deported them, stripped them of their passports, transported them over international borders, and imprisoned them in U.S. concentration camps,” she said.

— PATTI IIYAMA