REFERENCE: Vol. 133 No. 171

TITLE: A THOUSAND DAYS' DETENTION

SPEAKER: HON. ROBERT T. MATSUI OF CALIFORNIA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

TEXT: Text that appears in UPPER CASE identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by a Member of the House on the floor.

[*E4248] MR. MATSUI. MR. SPEAKER, I RISE TODAY TO ASK MY COLLEAGUES TO TAKE NOTE OF AN INSIGHTFUL ARTICLE WRITTEN BY PROF. ROBERT F. DRINAN CONCERNING THE INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE-AMERICANS DURING WORLD WAR II. ALTHOUGH THE ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THE HOUSE PASSED H.R. 442, THE CONTENT OF MR. DRINAN'S DISCERNING PASSAGE IS WELL WORTH CONSIDERATION. I URGE MY COLLEAGUES TO TAKE A FEW MOMENTS TO READ IT.

A THOUSAND DAYS' DETENTION

(By Robert F. Drinan)

Will the 60,000 surviving Japanese-Americans confined to detention camps during World War II finally receive some indemnification for their improper incarceration? The Civil Liberties Act of 1987, H.R. 442 and S. 1009, designed to achieve that end, could be enacted in the near future. H.R. 442, with 135 co-sponsors, passed the House Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly. S. 1009, with more than 75 co-sponsors including Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd and Minority Leader Robert Dole, is expected to pass.

As a member of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians appointed by President Carter and the Congress in 1980, I experienced in 20 days of hearings with over 750 witnesses the sufferings of the Americans of Japanese origin who were confined for three-and-one-half years in bleak barracks inland from the West Coast. The commission established the facts on which experts had previously come to a general consensus: There was no military necessity for uprooting Japanese families, citizens and noncitizens alike. Not a single case of espionage, sabotage or fifth-column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast. Moreover, the Japanese community in Hawaii -- one-third of the population of that island -- was not confined. Nor were Japanese outside the West Coast arrested. It is also noteworthy that not a single resident of the United States of German or Italian origin was detained solely because of ethnic background.

The Commission on Wartime Relocation established conclusively in its 467-page report that it was wartime hysteria and a long tradition of anti-Japanese feeling in California that led to the decision to round up and confine all Japanese-Americans. The hearings the commission conducted in San Francisco, Seattle and elsewhere were extraordinarily moving as the residents of the two dozen camps recalled their humiliation and shame at being, in essence, accused of disloyalty to the nation they had adopted or in which they were born. Witnesses related how there was almost a conspiracy of silence about the camps by those who endured them lest, in their judgment, anti-Japanese feeling break out again.

It was the children and the grandchildren of those confined who, refusing to accept their elders' silence and shame over their imprisonment, began to insist that the Government that humiliated their parents and grandparents investigate its own conduct. Thus the Commission on Wartime Relocation was born. Made up of nine persons, including former Justice Arthur J. Goldberg and former Senator Edward W. Brooke, the commission worked effectively with archivists, ehtnic groups and historian who have produced a vast array of documents about an event unprecedented in American history -- the confinement without a hearing or a trail of a large number of people only because of their race.

The commission looked for evidence that would justify the decision to segregate the Japanese community. There was little, if any, militay justification. One man, General John L. DeWitt, responsible for security on the West Coast, urged the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, to persuade President Roosevelt to act. On Feb 19, 1942, 10 weeks after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 giving the power to the military to confine all persons, citizens aliens, not because they were suspected of sabotage, but only because they were of Japanese ancestry. In the chaos of the first few weeks of World War II, little attention was given to the fact that 20,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were taken to barracks in desolate areas of the West.

The commission saw evidence, oral and written, of the hateful, anti-Japanese feeling at the time and the general approval of what was done to the Americans of Japanese origin.

The only group to protest the mass exclusion and detention was the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit it brought was lost in the United States Supreme Court. But it was the work of the A.C.L.U. along with others, that helped to expedite the release of many Japanese after the American victory in Midway in June 1942 made the possibility of serious Japanese attacks on the United States no long credible.

The report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation persuaded a number of members of Congress that the nation should redress the injustices done to the Japanese community during World War II. During hearings at which I was authorized to testify on behalf of the commission, it became clear that the members of Congess realized that the contention that there was in fact no military necessity to separate and segregate all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast raised the most serious questions. No U.S. Government may take away the liberty of its citizens, even in wartime, unless there is some clear and provable reason. Lacking any such reason, the deprivation of liberty of any U.S. citizen is a clear violation of the Constitution, which states in the 14th Amendment that no person may be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process of law."

There was some testimony given to Congress opposed to the claims of the commission. It reflected a reluctance to challenge the correctness of a judgment made by a high military official in the early days of the war -- a decision that was ratified by the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court. Some persons in Congressional testimony also objected to the recommendation of the commission that there be a sum of $20,000 made available to every person confined to the camps for the duration of the war. That sum was calculated roughly on the idea that there should be at least $20 per day given in reparation for illegal confinement; that sum has some basis in judgments levied against Federal and state governments when they have wrongly detained persons. Since the average or median time for detention of the Japanese-Americans was 1,000 days, the suggested amount of reparation was $20,000. The commission thought first of rewarding the survivors of all those detained, but ultimately recommended that only the actual survivors collect. The commission, recognizing that the surviviors are at an age when many are dying, recommended that the oldest survivors be compensated first.

The bills presently before Congress stipulate that the survivors be paid over a three-year period. It is uncertain how many of the survivors would actually claim the money due them. Several prominent survivors have said that they would not file a claim. But they are very anxious that Congress enact and the President sign the bill that extends an apology to the Japanese people for America's violations of their rights during the war between the United States and Japan. But even if all the 60,000 detainees claim the $20,000 the total payout of $1.2 billion would be significantly less than the economic losses of the ethnic Japanese during 1942-46 which, as estimated by the Commission on Wartime Relocation, ranged from $2.5 billion to $6.2 billion.

Also involved in the mandate of the commission was the relocation of many families from the Aleutian Islands during World War II. While the removal of these American citizens may have been justified for military reasons, there has been no indemnification to the Aleuts, devout followers of the Russian Orthodox faith and represented ably on the Commission by a Russian Orthodox priest, the Rev. Ishmael V. Gromoff. The commission recommended that appropriate indemnification be made to the surviving Aleuts who were injured by the actions taken by the United States Government.

After I was appointed to the Commission on Wartime Relocation, I reread the opinion of the Supreme Court in Hirabayashi v. United States, decided on June 2, 1943, in which the Court unanimously sustained the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066.

I also reread Korematsu v. United States, in which, on Dec. 18, 1944, the Supreme Court in a 6-to-3 ruling sustained the conviction of an American citizen of Japanese descent for violating an order given pursuant to Executive Order 9066. After hearing from dozens of Japanese internees and reading the several major books on the confinement of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans (two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens), I concluded that Justices Frank Murphy, Owen J. Roberts, and Robert H. Jackson were correct in their dissent in Korematsu. Justice Jackson, a former U.S. Attorney General, wrote that military orders are subject to review for their compliance with the Constitution and that even if General DeWitt's orders were "permissible military procedures" it does not follow that they have to be constitutional. Justice Murphy was more blunt: For him, the challenged practice was a "legalization of racism."

Americans have not focused much attention in the last 40 years on the confinement of the Japanese. The Canadians who detained most of the Japanese in Canada during the war -- under worse conditions and for a longer period of time than the United States did -- have also been content to forget about the sense of outrage and feeling of humiliation the Japanese community experiences today over the way in which its members were treated. The December 1982 report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation is the first official compilation of all the evidence about the acts of the United States Government toward a tiny minority of its people. The feeling appears to be growing that those acts, however, understandable at the time they were taken, must now, in the light of history, be deemed shameful.

The 100th Congress is thinking seriously of enacting a measure that is designed to confess error and make amends. No one should underestimate the resistance to that measure or be unaware of the widespread reluctance to bring it up -- especially in view of the anxiety, and even panic, over the enormous federal deficit.

Every person experiences moments of regret for things done years ago. The stab of conscience is itself a grace of God. Nations, too, experience moments of grace when they recognize and regret evil things done. Perhaps the 100th Congress will recognize and recompense what a nation, angry at its opponent in war, did to 20,000 human beings of Japanese ancestry.