REFERENCE: Vol. 134 No. 50

TITLE: WARTIME RELOCATION OF CIVILIANS

SPEAKER: Mr. ADAMS; Mr. BYRD; Mr. CRANSTON; Mr. GLENN; Mr. HOLLINGS; Mr. MATSUNAGA; Mr. MURKOWSKI; Mr. RUDMAN; Mr. SIMON; Mr. STEVENS

TEXT: [*S4267] The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the bill.

The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 1009) to accept the findings and to implement the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.

The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, what is the pending business?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The committee substitute to S. 1009 is the pending question.

Mr. GLENN. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, S. 1009 is a bill to accept the findings and to implement the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.

The Commission was established by Congress in 1980 to examine the facts surrounding the U.S Government's relocation and detention of citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II. The Commission was also mandated to examine the circumstances surrounding the evacuation of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands and the relocation of Native American Aleuts. The Commission held over 20 days of hearings, heard from over 750 witnesses, and subsequently submitted its findings and recommendations to Congress in the form of a report entitled "Personal Justice Denied."

The Commission found that the exclusion, relocation and detention of the primarily American-born citizens of Japanese ancestry was not justified by military necessity, thus violating their basic constitutional rights and civil liberties. The Commission also found that the United States failed to provide reasonable care for the health and property of the Aleuts.

S. 1009 was introduced by Senator Matsunaga in April, and it now has 73 cosponsors.

I think that attests to how the Senate looks at this particular piece of legislation.

In June, Senator Pryor, chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Services of the Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing on the bill. Subsequently, the subcommittee reported favorably on S. 1009, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. On August 4, the Governmental Affairs Committee, by voice vote, agreed to send the bill, as amended, to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation.

I agree it is time to redress the wrong committed over 40 years ago. The internment of civilians of Japanese ancestry without regard to their demonstrated loyalty was a grave injustice. S. 1009 includes a long overdue apology from Congress on behalf of the Nation for this treatment.

The bill also includes a total authorization of approximately $1.3 billion to compensate the surviving Japanese-American internees and Aleuts for the harm they sustained, for the establishment of an education fund, and for other purposes. Obviously, this is the most controversial aspect to the bill. Concerns have been raised about the substantial sums necessary to make the proposed individual payments at this time of large budget deficits, and in general, about the propriety of making lump-sum payments.

The committee made certain changes to the bill to address these concerns. Budget authorization will be available no earlier than fiscal year 1989, and authorization for the funds allocated to compensate the surviving individuals of Japanese ancestry will [*S4268] be done in increments over a 5-year period beginning in fiscal year 1989.

Let me add a few words on this subject as well. I would like to note this bill's important symbolic significance. At the time of the exclusion, relocation and internment of civilians of Japanese ancestry, I was fighting in the war.

I was a junior in college at the time of Pearl Harbor and then went in the service, went into flight training, and fought in the Pacific during that war. I recall at that time that I thought that the Government's action was unfair -- to take a whole class of people and treat them in this way without giving them individual consideration. But I also recall that national passions were running very, very high.

This bill reminds us of the harm that can come when national passion is directed at persons with certain racial characteristics. Passage of this bill, and its authorization to finance efforts to inform the public about the treatment of such individuals, will not only help to prevent the occurrence of another similar event, but will set a particularly shining example to the world of America's concrete commitment to justice and the redress of wrongs. No other nation on Earth would take this unprecedented action -- and I am sorry about that. Let us then be proud that in America, this can and will be done.

At this time, I send to the desk modifications to the bill which are technical in nature. These modifications were suggested by several different committees after the bill was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are these amendments or modifications?

Mr. GLENN. They are technical modifications.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has a right to modify on behalf of the committee.

Mr. GLENN. Yes; that is correct.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill is so modified.

The modifications to the committee-reported substitute are as follows:

On page 40, line 12, insert ", subject to the availability of monies appropriated for such purpose," after "shall".

On page 40, line 14, insert ", subject to the availability of monies appropriated to the Fund for such payments," after "shall pay".

On page 40, line 15, insert ", subject to the availability of monies appropriated for such purpose," after "shall".

On page 46, strike lines 9 through 15 and insert the following:

Sec. 207. No authority under this title to enter into contracts or to make payments shall be effective in any fiscal year except to such extent and in such amounts as provided in advance in appropriation Acts. In any fiscal year, the Administrator of the Fund shall limit the total benefits conferred by this program to an amount not in excess of the appropriation for such fiscal year, and if the requirements of this program exceed the limitations set in this section, the benefits shall be limited, consistent with the provisions of section 205(b), to the extent necessary to comply with the provisions of this section.

On page 50, line 2, strike "Out of monies from the" and insert "Subject to the availability of monies appropriated to the ".

On page 50, line 6, after "shall" insert ", subject to the availability of monies appropriated for this purpose,".

On page 53, line 21, insert ", subject to the availability of monies appropriated to the Fund for such payments," after "shall pay".

On page 53, line 22, strike beginning with "All" through line 24.

On page 54, strike lines 8 through 13 and insert the following:

(4) Any payment made under this subsection --

(1) shall be treated for purposes of the Internal Revenue laws of the United States as damages for human suffering; and

(2) shall not be included as income or resources for purposes of determining eligibility to receive benefits described in section 3803(c)(2)(C) of title 21, United States Code, or the amount of such benefits.

On page 56, line 25, after "shall pay" insert ", subject to the availability of monies appropriated for this purpose,".

On page 57, line 6, strike "the traditional" and all that follows through line 11 and insert "all right, title, and interest of the United States to the surface estate of the traditional Aleut village site on Attu Island, Alaska (consisting of approximately 10 acres) and to the surface estate of a parcel of land consisting of all land outside such village that is within 660 feet of any point on the boundary of such village. The conveyance may be made pursuant to the authority provided by section 14(h)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. 1613(h)(1)), except that following the date of enactment of this section, no site on Attu Island, Alaska, other than such traditional Aleut village site and such parcel of land,".

On page 57, strike lines 18 through 23 and insert the following:

Sec. 308. (a) No authority under this title to enter into contracts or to make payments shall be effective in any fiscal year except to such extent and in such amounts as provided in advance in appropriation Acts.

(b) In any fiscal year --

(1) the Secretary, with respect to the Fund set forth pursuant to section 303; and

(2) the Secretary with respect to the trust set forth pursuant to section 305, and with respect to the provisions of sections 306 and 307,

shall limit the total benefits conferred to an amount not in excess of the appropriation for such fiscal year, and if the requirements exceed the limitations set in this section, the benefits shall be reduced to the extent necessary to comply with the provisions of this section.

Mr. GLENN. The purpose of the modifications suggested by the Budget Committee is to make clear that titles II and III of the bill do not create new entitlement funds. Rather, the bill directs that the authority to enter into contracts and make payments under titles II and III is subject to the availability of appropriations. It further provides that benefits conferred in any fiscal year shall not exceed the funds appropriated in that fiscal year and requires benefits to be limited if appropriations are insufficient to cover the total costs of the benefits.

The modifications suggested by the Finance Committee amend the tax treatment of payments to the Aleuts in title III to conform with the treatment of payments to the Japanese-Americans in title II. Also, the provision in title III concerning the impact of payments to the Aleuts for purposes of eligibility to receive other Federal benefits is amended to conform to its counterpart provision in title II.

The modification suggested by the Commerce, Justice and State Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee concerns the bill's direction to the Justice Department to locate eligible Japanese-Americans and to conduct a public awareness campaign. The modification makes these requirements on the Justice Department subject to the availability of appropriated funds for those purposes.

Finally, Senator Stevens suggested a technical amendment concerning title III's authorization of the transfer of the Attu Island village site to the Aleut Corp. The modification clarifies that the transfer is limited to 10 acres of surface estate.

Mr. President, I want to say a few words personally about Senator Matsunaga. Spark, as we know him around the Senate, is the junior Senator from Hawaii. He deserves full credit for the success of this legislation. I do not believe that in the 13 years I have been in the Senate I have ever seen anyone pursue a particular piece of legislation, buttonhole Senators more effectively, call on them in their office, make certain he had their support for a particular piece of legislation, and do that job as well as Spark Matsunaga has done on S. 1009.

He has been a real bird dog on this one. He really has followed it through. That is the reason he has 73 cosponsors for S. 1009. He has convinced those Senators of the rightness of his position. Before turning over the floor management of the bill to him, I would like to make a few additional remarks about the service that he, Senator Inouye, and thousands of other Japanese Americans rendered to this country during World War II. Senators Matsunaga and Inouye both volunteered for active service during World War II. They served with the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team in Europe. That was the most decorated and one of the most celebrated American military units in all of World War II.

Senator Inouye enlisted in the Army in March 1943 at the age of 18, and was very seriously wounded 2 years later. His military decorations include the Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart.

Senator Matsunaga, who has done such an effective job with this legislation, himself was commissioned as an Army officer after his graduation from college in 1941. He was also twice wounded in battle. He resigned from the Army with the rank of Captain in 1945, and his decorations include the [*S4269] Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the Army Commendation Medal.

Many of the other decorated soldiers of the 442d Regiment volunteered out of the internment camps set up in the West Coast States during World War II. Even though their relatives were still interned in those camps, they volunteered for service to this country. The courage of these men and their remarkable fighting skills are unimpeachable proof of their willingness to sacrifice everything for their country.

Yet, while they fought and died, thousands of their relatives and friends remained confined to internment camps in the States. It is their unfortunate experience that Senator Matsunaga has diligently sought to redress through this bill.

So I am very proud to be able to relinquish my position here as floor manager to Senator Matsunaga. He deserves full credit for this legislation.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii is recognized.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, as of September 17 of last year, we have been observing the bicentennial of the greatest human document ever written -- the U.S. Constitution. With pride in our unique heritage, we Americans should reaffirm our commitment to the proposition that the United States is "one nation with liberty and justice for all."

I am, therefore, extremely grateful to the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Glenn, for expediting the reporting of this bill to the floor, and I thank the chairman for his most generous remarks. I assure him that the admiration is mutual. I do appreciate all the help he has given me on this piece of legislation. I thank him very much.

I also wish to thank the ranking member of the committee, Senator Roth, and the distinguished majority and the distinguished minority leader for scheduling for floor action S. 1009, a bill which I introduced with 73 cosponsors, to provide a long overdue remedy for one of the worst violations of individual civil liberties in our Nation's history -- the evacuation, relocation, and detention of American citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

In the life of every individual, and every nation, there are certain events which have a lasting, lifelong impact and which change the shape of their future. For some Americans, the October 1987 stock market decline brought back frightening memories of the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression which followed it. For others, the image or words of a slain president or civil rights leader remind them of a turning point in their lives.

For Americans of Japanese ancestry who are over the age of 45 years, the single, most traumatic event, the one which shaped the rest of their lives, is the wholesale relocation and incarceration in American-style concentration camps of some 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry and their parents and grandparents, who were legal resident aliens barred by United States law from becoming naturalized American citizens.

All Americans of that generation no doubt recall with great clarity where they were and what they were doing on December 7, 1941, the day that Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. I myself was in active military service on the Hawaiian Island of Molokai as an Army officer in temporary command of an infantry company. In fact, I was one of 1,565 Americans of Japanese ancestry who had volunteered for and were in active military service before Pearl Harbor, and who, with other Americans, stood in defense of the Territory of Hawaii against the enemy.

We remember vividly the atmosphere which prevailed in this country immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Rumors of a Japanese attack on the West Coast of the United States were rampant and numerous false sightings of enemy war planes off the coast were reported. A great wave of fear and hysteria swept the United States, particularly along the West Coast, where a relatively small population of Japanese Americans had, even before the outbreak of war, been subjected to racial discrimination and often violent attacks.

Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, in February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. The Executive order gave to the Secretary of War the authority to designate restricted military areas and to exlcude any or all persons from such areas. Penalties for violation of the restrictions were subsequently established by Congress in Public Law 77-503, enacted in March 1942.

At about the same time, the military commander of the Western District, Lt. Gen. John DeWitt, issued public proclamations establishing restricted military zones in eight Western States, instituting a curfew applicable to enemy aliens and persons of Japanese ancestry, and restricting the travel of Americans of Japanese ancestry and enemy aliens. The first "civilian exclusion order" was issued by General DeWitt on March 24, 1942, and marked the beginning of the relocation and internment of the Japanese American population on the West Coast.

Significantly, the military commander of the then Territory of Hawaii, which was under martial law, did not believe that it was necessary to order the wholesale evacuation of all Americans or resident aliens of Japanese ancestry, although about 1,400 leaders of the Japanese American community in Hawaii were rounded up immediately after the attack and sent to detention camps on the mainland.

J. Edgar Hoover, then Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, opposed the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, pointing out that the FBI was capable of apprehending and arresting any spies or saboteurs. Japanese diplomats, consular officials and military attaches who were in this country at the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan were not incarcerated in detention camps. On Hoover's orders, they were confined to house arrest and treated courteously, because the FBI director hoped that American citizens in Japan would be treated in a similar manner. The Office of Naval Intelligence had also informed President Roosevelt that the wholesale incarceration of Japanese Americans was unnecessary, pointing to the lack of evidence of any acts of espionage or sabotage by Americans of Japanese ancestry or their parents, before, during or after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Of the 120,000 individuals who were ordered on 72 hours notice to pack, leave their homes, and report to assembly centers prior to being moved to camps in the interior United States, about 80 percent were native-born American citizens -- many of them young children and teenagers. The remainder, including many elderly people, were legal alien residents of the United States who were prohibited by the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924 from becoming naturalized American citizens regardless of how much they wanted to be, like my father and mother. All of them, citizens and alien residents alike, were entitled to the protection of the U.S. Constitution, but their constitutional rights were summarily denied. Without being charged or indicted, without trial or hearing, without being convicted of a single crime, they were en masse ordered into what can only be described as American-style concentration camps, surrounded by barbed wire fences, with searchlights, watch towers and armed guards -- and there they remained, many for over 3 years.

In 1980, 38 years after the beginning of the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans, Congress authorized a thorough study of the circumstances surrounding the event. A distinguished nine-member Commission, appointed by the President of the United States, was mandated to examine the facts surrounding the issuance of Executive Order 9066 and the subsequent relocation and internment of Japanese Americans. In addition, the Commission was authorized to study the circumstances surrounding the evacuation of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands in Alaska and the relocation of Native American Aleuts. The Commissioners were Joan Z. Bernstein, a Washington, DC, attorney, chairman; Daniel E. Lungren, a Member of Congress from California, vice chairman; Edward W. Brooke, a former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts; Robert F. Drinan, a former Member of Congress from Massachusetts; Arthur S. Flemming, formerly [*S4270] chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Arthur J. Goldberg, a former Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; Ishmael V. Gromoff of Alaska; William M. Marutani of Pennsylvania; and Hugh B. Mitchell of Washington State.

In 1983, following 20 days of public hearings which included more than 750 witnesses, and extensive review of Federal records, contemporary writings, pesonal accounts and historical analyses, the Commission filed its report, entitled "Personal Justice Denied." See how thick a volume it is.

The Commission's comprehensive report was welcomed by Americans of Japanese ancestry who had lived through the relocation and internment. It revealed publicly for the first time what they had always known: The relocation and internment of Japanese Americans was not justified by military necessity or national security, but was the result of racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and the failure of political leadership.

The Commission found that the precipitous action had been taken under the leadership of men like General DeWitt, who believed, and stated to the U.S. House of Representatives Naval Affairs Subcommittee on April 13, 1943:

A Jap's a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty ... it make no difference whether he is an American; theoretically, he is still a Japanese, and you can't change him. ... You can't change him by giving him a piece of paper.

Moreover, the Commission found that the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the west coast and their detention continued long after the initial panic following the attack on Pearl Harbor had abated. In a meeting with Justice Department officials in 1944, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy is reported to have remarked that:

It was curious how the two major cases in which the Army had interfered with civilians had started out for serious military reasons and had ended being required by wholly non-military considerations. For example, the Japanese were evacuated back in the dark days before Midway when an attack on the Pacific Coast was feared. Now the exclusion is being continued by the President for social reasons.

The Battle of Midway, a great American naval victory, took place in June 1942, at the very beginning of the Government's relocation and detention of Japanese Americans. It ended the threat of a Japanese attack on the continental United States.

While revelation of the truth at last by a congressionally created commission is a great relief to Americans of Japanese ancestry who were victims of this grave wartime mistake, the public report alone is not enough to provide them with justice too long denied -- anymore than it would be for any other American falsely imprisoned for years on trumped-up charges. In our great society, the victims of such errors in justice are entitled to more tangible relief.

What kind of relief is appropriate? The Commission recommended and S. 1009 provides, first, for an official acknowledgement of the injustice and an apology to the surviving internees. Second, the bill establishes a civil liberties education fund which would conduct educational research and fund projects designed to inform the public of the events surrounding the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans, to ensure that such a think never happens again. S. 1009 also provides that court cases wherein Japanese Americans were convicted of violating curfew and travel restrictions imposed by the western military district be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice, and that Presidential pardons be recommended where appropriate. Finally, S. 1009 provides for the payment of $20,000 to each of the approximately 60,000 former internees who are still alive.

This last provision is perhaps the most controversial in the bill, Mr. President, and I would like to take a few minutes to address it.

Opponents of the individual payments provision often ask why the Commission picked the seemingly arbitrary figure of $20,000 and why there was not an effort to base the compensatory payments on actual losses.

In 1983, the Commission asked the firm of ICF, Inc. to estimate the value of losses sustained by Japanese Americans because of their evacuation, relocation, and incarceration during World War II. Michael C. Barth, the president of ICF, Inc., testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations, on April 28, 1987, stated that:

We were asked in the late winter of 1983 to estimate the economic losses in the aggregate of American citizens of Japanese descent and resident aliens as a result of their exclusion and detention during the Second World War.

My firm, ICF, Inc., then endeavored to determine what information was available and to determine the concepts of losses that could be estimated. Economic losses were divided into two categories -- income losses and property losses.

Two other important categories of losses were not either susceptible of estimation or able to be estimated. The first were what are called human capital losses, which are no doubt of immense importance. These are losses resulting from losses in education, training, and experience during exclusion and detention. We were unable to come up with any estimate of these.

The report also does not address concepts such as pain and suffering. Therefore I will concentrate on our estimates of income losses and property losses.

Income losses were defined to be the amount of income that might have been earned by excludees had they not been in the detention camps during the period 1942-46. These were adjusted for the actual income that was earned by excludees -- by detainees while they were in the camps since modest amounts of pay was paid.

This analysis yielded an estimate of the income losses, and we produced a range estimate, in 1945 dollars, of between $108 million and $164 million for that concept. Adjusting that to 1983 dollars yielded an amount of between roughly $600-$900 million, and we further adjusted that for illustrative purposes because it's possible that had this money been available to the detainees they might have been able to invest it as other citizens might have, and that yielded an amount between $900 million and $1.4 billion.

Property losses were particularly difficult to estimate because of the lack of information. We were given access to all of the claims files available for the 1947 Japanese-American Evacuation Claims Act, (which has been referred to earlier) as well as the private files of some citizens who were involved in litigation at that time.

Based on this information, we estimated ranges of the amounts of losses per claimant. Now it's possible that not all persons who had property losses filed under the 1947 Evacuation Claims Act. Accordingly then, in order to ensure that we were not grossly underestimating claims, we conducted various analyses of the amounts of claims that might have been claimed for had people not been ignorant or unaware or otherwise unable to make claims for which they could not provide adequate justification.

We also then adjusted our estimates for the fact that $37 million was in fact paid by the U.S. Government to claimants, and between 1947 and 1956 when the final claim was paid (sic). These estimates, because of the substantial data problems, resulted in a large range, but putting together the income and the property loss estimates and adjusting that for inflation to 1983 yielded a range of $810 million to $2 billion. Adjusting for the foregone interest that might have been earned yielded a range of $1.2-$3.1 billion.

It's my understanding that the commission then used our range of losses in the aggregate to develop what they thought was the appropriate amount of restitution per claimant. ...

Those who contend that token payments are an inappropriate way to redress this injustice overlook the basic fact that compensatory remedies are deeply rooted in American jurisprudence. It has long been considered proper for our courts to award monetary damages to individuals who have been unjustifiably injured. In tort law, for example, there are virtually thousands of reported cases in which substantial damages have been awarded to persons who were falsely arrested or imprisoned, on nonracially motivated grounds.

The amounts of damages in such cases vary considerably, ranging from several hundred dollars to well over $100,000. The vast majority of reported awards stem from detentions lasting no more than a few days in duration, as compared to 3 years in the case of Japanese Americans. In many jurisdictions, an award for false arrest or imprisonment can include an amount for mental suffering. Humiliation, shame, and fright are elements that are considered in determining mental suffering. In addition, many jurisdictions include punitive damages where the conduct of the wrongdoer was particularly egregious or outrageous. [*S4271] Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I may append to my remarks examples of false arrest and false imprisonment cases in which monetary damages were awarded, including the factors upon which the judge relied in upholding the award.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

Mr. MATSUNAGA. These examples are contained in the appendix of testimony by Mr. Angus Macbeth, former special counsel to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.

When one considers the fact that most of the internees were detained for 3 years or more, the $20,000 lump-sum payments simply cannot be considered excessive. The funds authorized for these payments are allocated over a period of 5 years and will constitute but a tiny fraction of our trillion dollar Federal budget. In addition, as was pointed out several times during the House debate on this legislation, the $20,000 lump-sum payments are equivalent to less that $3,000 in 1945 dollars, a very small amount of compensation considering the degree of economic, social, and emotional injury incurred by the internees during their 3-year confinement.

In addition, opponents of S. 1009 often express the concern that enactment of the bill will set a dangerous precedent and invite similar claims by other minority groups.

It should be noted that under the provisions of S. 1009, payments are to be made only to those living individuals who were victims of the Federal Government's wartime policy. No payments are to be made to heirs or descendents of the former internees. S. 1009 would, therefore, not open the door for claims by descendents of former slaves or the descendents of Native American victims of the Federal Government's 19th century policies with respect to American Indians. When we look for cases of people alive today who were themselves directly injured by the Federal Government because of their race or ethnicity, the incarceration of Japanese-Americans is unprecedented.

Finally, I am often asked about the case of American citizens who were held captive by Japan during World War II. The War Claims Act of 1948 compensated each civilian American citizen who was held by the Imperial Japanese Government in the amount of $60 per month. The act was later extended to cover civilians captured by North Korea during the Korean conflict. Later still, it was extended to cover American civilians captured by North Vietnam during the war in Vietnam. Civilians captured in Vietnam were compensated in the amount of $150 for each month they wre imprisoned. Like the Japanese-Americans, these Americans suffered a loss of liberty; the difference is that Japanese-Americans were deprived of their freedom through the actions of their own government -- the United States of America, not the enemy.

Federal courts have also addressed constitutional violations and false imprisonment in individual or class action settings. In DELLUMS v. POWELL, 566 F. 2d 167 (D.C. Cir. 1977), the case which grew out of the mass arrests of demonstrators at the 1972 May Day demonstration in Washington, DC, damages for false imprisonment were awarded in amounts ranging from $120 for 12 hours or less to $1,800 for 48 to 72 hours of detention.

Individual payments have also been made to Americans held hostage as a consequence of terrorism. Of the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days, all but one were U.S. Government employees. Congress voted each of these 51 a special bonus of $50 per day for that period -- a total of $22,200 for each former hostage.

So it is clear that Congress can act to provide appropriate compensation to individuals who were the victims of such a grave injustice. Such compensation is long overdue. Since the end of World War II, many who were directly or indirectly involved in the mass evacuation and detention of Japanese-Americans and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry have acknowledged the wrong inflicted on the evacuees.

President Roosevelt, in approving the induction of Japanese-Americans into the U.S. Army, observed that "Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart -- not race or ancestry." Henry L. Stimson, then Secretary of War, recognized that "To loyal citizens, this forced evacuation was a personal injustice." Francis Biddle, then the Attorney General of the United States, expressed his belief that "The program was ill-advised,unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel." Milton Eisenhower, the first Director of the War Relocation Authority, described the evacuation and detention of Japanese-Americans as "An inhuman mistake." The late Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Warren, who, as attorney general of the State of California, urged evacuation of Japanese-Americans, stated "I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens."

S. 1009 also has the strong support of a large number of contemporary individuals and organizations, and I ask unanimous consent that such a list may be printed in the Record following my statement.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[See exhibit 2.]

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, it is time that Congress, too, recognized the grave injustice inflicted by the Federal Government on American citizens of Japanese ancestry and move to make amends. Passage of S. 1009 would remove a longstanding blot on our National Constitution -- a most appropriate way to commemorate its bicentennial. It would also remove a cloud which has hung over the heads of innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry since World War II.

When the Japanese-American 442d Regimental Combat Team, described by Gen. Mark Clark as the "most fightingest and most highly decorated military unit in the history of the United States," marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, upon its return from the European Theater at the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman, in presenting the team with its seventh Presidential Unit Citation said, "You fought not only the enemy, but prejudice -- and won."

Mr. President, as a twice-wounded veteran of the 100th Infantry Battalion, which is the first battalion of the 442d Regimental Combat Team, I plead with my colleagues to make that victory complete and meaningful by passage of S. 1009.

EXHIBIT 1

The following are examples of cases, principally those cited in briefs submitted to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, in which damages have been awarded in false arrest and false imprisonment cases, including the factors upon which the judge relied in upholding the award.

In BUCHER v. KRAUSE, 200 F.2d 576 (7th Cir. 1952), the police mistakenly identified and arrested the wrong man for a crime. There was a scuffle in the bar where he was arrested and he was detained for injuries sustained in a hospital that was an adjunct to a jail. His I.D. clearly showed him to be the wrong man and his fiancee told the police that he was not the man the police were seeking to arrest. The plaintiff was to be married the day of the scuffle and his detention. The period of confinement was less than a day and plaintiff was awarded $50,000 in damages based on assault and battery and the false arrest and imprisonment. Punitive damages were also awarded because of the outrageous conduct of the police.

In HOFFNER v. STATE, 207 Misc. 1070, 142 N.Y.S.2d 630 (Ct. Cl. 1955), a man was wrongfully convicted of first degree murder and served 12 years in prison. Upon his release he was awarded $112,290 in compensatory damages based on pain and suffering and mental anguish due to the false imprisonment. The court noted that the award was low, but the judge took into account that the improperly convicted man has low earnings prior to his incarceration.

In SKILLERN & SONS, INC. v. STEWART, 379 S.W.2d 687 (Tex. Civ. App. 1964), a woman was awarded $10,000 actual damages and $10,000 punitive damages for assault and battery and false imprisonment because she was fired and wrongfully detained by her employer who charged her with shoplifting. She was harassed into signing a statement that she was guilty, even though she was not, and she was handled roughly by the interrogator. Her doctor reported that he had seen the plaintiff weekly for four months because of nervous tension and the doctor predicted that he would have to see her at least once a month for the following two years. The doctor testified the women was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

[*S4272] In QUINN v. ROSENBERG, 399 S.W.2d 433 (Mo. App. f a nervous breakdown.

[*S4272] In QUINN v. ROSENBERG, 399 S.W.2d 433 (Mo. App. s patient records of an employee who was making a claim before the Workmen's Compensation Board. The lawyer had a past history of spinal and neck injuries and the doctor-defendant roughly handled her when he refused to permit her to inspect his patient's records. The police were summoned and she was arrested for disturbing the peace and was briefly detained. The woman was awarded $10,000 in actual damages for mental pain and suffering caused from the false arrest and imprisonment and $500.00 punitive damages.

In STATE v. VARGAS, 419 S.W.2d 926 (Tex. Civ. App. 1967), one of the most egregious cases found, a man was wrongfully imprisoned for murder for four years and was on death row for about two months. The day he was to be executed, his head was shaved and he was shown the coffin in which he was to be buried. His sentence was then commuted by the governor and he was found not to have committed the murder. He was awarded $20,000 for pain and suffering caused by the false imprisonment.

In S.S. KRESGE CO. v. PRESCOTT, 435 S.W.2d 203 (Tex. Civ. App. 1968), the plaintiff, who was a store owner was arrested by police when plaintiff forcibly evicted his competitor's employees who were checking prices in his store. There was a public scene and heated discussions on both sides including pushing and shoving. The jury awarded the plaintiff $100,000 which was remitted by the court to $35,000 in actual damages.

In ROTHSCHILD v. DRAKE HOTEL, INC., 397 F.2d 419 (7th Cir. 1968), plaintiff refused to pay her hotel bill and she was arrested by the police. The woman would not pay until she moved out even though the manager demanded payment prior to that time. She had a small child with her. She spent three days in jail and the court found there was no probable cause to arrest the woman. She had no prior arrest record. Although the jury awarded her $400,000 damages, this award was reduced to $75,000 by the court.

In THOMAS v. E.J. KORVETTE, INC., 320 F. Supp. 1163 (E.D. Pa. 1971), plaintiff was security guard of a store. He put an article from the store which he intended to buy in the trunk of his car and then returned and paid for both it and an additional article. He then put the other article in the trunk of his car with the sales slip covering both articles. When his employer went out with the security manager to check the trunk, no sales slip was found. The sales clerk who had sold the articles to the security guard corroborated the plaintiff's story but the security guard was still arrested and jailed. The man recovered $100,000 for the destruction of his career as a security guard, the costs of defending himself, and for pain and suffering. This case is instructive of the principle that if wages are lost or a career is destroyed because of the false imprisonment, the damage award will be greater than when damage to income is not proven.

In GLOBE SHOPPING CITY v. WILLIAMS, 535 S.W.2d 53 (Tex. Civ. App. 1976), the plaintiff was awarded $35,000 for being falsely imprisoned for five to six hours in jail as compensation for his physical and mental pain and suffering.

In GUION v. ASSOCIATED DRY GOODS CORP., 56 App. Div. 2d 798, 393 N.Y.S.2d 8 (1977), the court approved the award of $10,000 in compensatory damages for a three-hour detention on the basis of loss of earnings and mental suffering.

In JOSEPH v. JEFFERSON STORES, 228 So. 2d 103 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1969), the court awarded $5,000 actual and $10,000 punitive damages to a woman accused of shoplifting who was detained along with her two small children for two and one-half hours.

In ENRIGHT v. GROVES, 560 P.2d 851 (Colo. App. 1977), an award of $1,500 for false imprisonment was affirmed. The plaintiff, a woman, was approached for violating a dog leash ordinance but refused to hand over her driver's license after the officer demanded to see it. He yanked her out of the car and took her to jail. She was eventually convicted of the ordinance violation. She was recompensed for her physical injury and the mental pain and suffering which she suffered as a result, partially due to the fact that persons were not normally arrested for failing to produce a license to an officer or for a violation of the dog leash ordinance.

In STOWERS v. WOLODZKO, 386 Mich. 119, 191 N.W.2d 355 (1971), a housewife was wrongfully committed to a mental institution against her will by a psychiatrist and remained there for 23 days. She was awarded $40,000 in actual damages for pain and suffering.

As is readily discernible, the cases do not provide a consistent and rational basis for predicting a court award for false arrest and false imprisonment in any particular situation. However, the following factors will increase the size of a damage award: assault and battery or other outrageous conduct on the part of the captors, such as creating a sense of fear or unjustifiable assertion of authority; physical pain suffered as evidenced by medical bills; loss of wages or other income; damage to reputation; and shame, humiliation and the like.

It should be noted that the length of the incarcertataion is generally correlated to the amount of damages, i.e., the longer the imprisonment, the higher the damages. Yet the correlation is not by any means proportionately similar between short and long periods of incarcertaion. In the preceding cases, the damage awards levied per hour of the time incarcerated are much larger for brief periods of incarceration, than those for longer periods. For instance, in Hoffner, supra, an award was made of $112,290 for a 12-year wrongful incarceration. This amounts to 1.8 cents per minute of incarceration. In Vargas, supra, the man who was wrongfully imprisoned for four years and placed on death row, a particularly egregious false imprisonment case, was awarded $20,000, or .095 cents per minute of incarceration. On the other hand, in Rothschild, supra, a woman who was jailed for three days for failing to pay her hotel bill was awarded $75,000 in damages, which is $17.36 per minute of incarceration. In Guion the man who was accused of shoplifting and detained for three hours was awarded $10,000 or $55.56 per minute of incarceration. If the Hoffner plaintiff were awarded the same per minute damage award for his 12-year incarceration as the plaintiff in Guion for his three hour detention, the total award would have been $350,418,038.

Deprivation of Constitutionally-Protected Liberty. The common law torts of false imprisonment and false arrest have constitutional ramifications under certain circumstances. Under the Fifth Amendment no person may be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. ..." A person who has been deprived of liberty by a federal official in a constitutionally impermissible manner may bring an action under the Fifth Amendment. The celebrated analogous case of BIVENS v. SIX UNKNOWN FEDERAL NARCOTIC AGENTS, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), recognized that a person may recover damages for governmental invasion of his Fourth Amendment right to security in his house, papers and effects where there is no probable cause justifying a search. In Bivens the police conducted a warrantless search and seizure without probable cause, and falsely arrested plaintiffs, in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

From the cases, there is no reason to believe that damage awards in constitutional tort cases will be computed differently from common law false arrest and imprisonment cases. However, the calculation of damages on a class basis, rather than on proof of injury by each individual, may be somewhat different.

In DELLUMS v. POWELL, 566 F.2d 167 (D.C. Cir. 1977) the court awarded class damages in the Vietnam War demonstration case where 2,000 demonstrators were corralled into a fenced compound and detained without a warrant. The court found that there was a constitutional tort for false arrest, the elements of which were defined as an imprisonment which was unlawful, i.e., lack of probable cause to arrest. The court awarded damages of between $120 and $1800, the award increasing as the length of the imprisonment increased. Id. at 174 n.6. The court was not awarding "general damages" in that case, but rather awarded actual damages based on the length of incarceration and other aggravating circumstances. Cf. id. at 196. The award was an estimate of these damages on behalf of the 2,000 incarcerated individuals as a class without requiring separate proof as to each individual's damages.

In ANDERSON v. ROBINSON, 497 F.2d 120 (5th Cir. 1974), civil rights demonstrators were wrongfully imprisoned by police. Damages were calculated at $5.00 per day per individual, but the court did not award "general damages," but rather termed the damages "nominal."

In TATUM v. MORTON, 386 F. Supp. 1308 (D.D.C. 1974), plaintiffs were Quakers who were peacefully demonstrating against the Vietnam War. They were arrested, fingerprinted, photographed and confined in cells after refusing to disperse at the request of police. The case was brought under 42 U.S.C. ? 1983 and the court found that the plaintiffs had failed to mitigate damages by posting a small $10 bail, thereby aggravating their own damages. The court noted that "nominal damages are presumed to follow from the violation of any valuable legal right, even if no actual damages are involved." Id. at 1313. In the recent case of MEMPHIS COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT v. STACHURA, 106 S. Ct. 2537 (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that damages based on the abstract "value" or "importance" of constitutional rights was not a permissible element of compensatory damages in Section 1983 cases, so that the award in Tatum would probably not be allowed today.

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EXHIBIT 2

ORGANIZATIONS WHICH HAVE ENDORSED S. 1009 the War Reparations Act, April 19, 1988

The following is a list of major endorsements for JACL-LEC's legislative campaign for redress. "Endorsement" often denotes organizational support for the recommendations made by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, including individual monetary compensation for former internees. The term may also mean that an organization has acknowledged the injustice of the internment, but has not addressed the question of monetary redress.

(1) NATIONAL

Americans for Democratic Action, National Board.

Congressional Black Caucus.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

[*S4273] Democratic Party Platform.

National League of Cities.

Republican Party Platform.

U.S. Conference of Mayors.

(2) PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

American Bar Association.

American Federation of Teachers.

American Immigration Lawyers Association.

American Orthopsychiatric Association.

American Psychiatric Association.

American Public Health Associations.

Association of Asian American Educators.

California State Bar Association.

California Flower Cooperative.

California State Teachers Associates.

Civil Rights in Education Committee, State Council, CTA.

National Associates of Social Workers, Minority Issues Conference.

National Education Association.

Peralta Federation of Teachers.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

(3) LABOR ORGANIZATIONS

AFL-CIO Executive Council.

AFL-CIO of Florida.

California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

California Labor Federation, Executive Council, AFL-CIO.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Chauffeurs, Warehousemen & Helpers of America.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters; American Communications Associates.

International Longshoremen's and Warehouse Union.

Federated ILWU Auxiliaries 1985 Convention.

ILWU Auxiliaries 1986 Convention.

ILWU California Auxiliaries No. 16 & 17.

ILWU Locals No. 6, 8, 10, 12, 40, 50, 53, and 92.

ILWU Columbia River and Northern California District Councils.

Office and Professional Employees International Union, 1986 Convention.

Office and Professional Employees, Local 29, AFL-CIO.

Service Employees International Union, Local 87, AFL-CIO.

(4) VETERANS GROUPS

34th Infantry Division Association of Chicago.

34th Infantry Division Association of Minneapolis.

503 Parachute RCT Association.

American Legion, Chicago Nisei Post 1183.

American Legion, 6th District Council, Department of Illinois.

American Legion, 66th National Convention.

Jewish War Veterans of the USA.

Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Veterans of Foreign Wars, Americanism Com., Department of California, 64th Annual Convention.

Veterans of Foreign Wars, Department of California.

Veterans of Foreign Wars, USA, 85th National Convention.

Veterans of Foreign Wars, Department of North Dakota.

(5) ETHNIC/CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.

ACLU of Monterey County.

American Jewish Committee.

American Jewish Congress.

American Jewish Congress Executive Committee.

American Jewish Congress of Northern California Division.

Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith.

Anti-Defamation League, National Civil Rights Executive Committee.

Chinese American Citizens Alliance.

Chinese American Service League.

Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, D.C.

Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Eastern Bay.

Jewish Community Relations Council of South New Jersey.

Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia.

Jewish Community Relations Council of Seattle.

Jewish Community Relations Council, National Advisory Board.

National Council of La Raza.

Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Pan American Nikkei Association.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, State Advisory Chairs.

(6) CIVIC/CULTURAL ORGANIZATION

Committee on Police & Fire, Ill.

League of Women Voters, Salinas.

Northshore Kiwanis.

Salinas Bonsai Club.

Satsuma Bonsai Club.

Urban League of Portland.

(7) RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS

American Friends Service Committee.

American Baptist Churches, USA.

Asian American Baptists.

Buddhist Churches of America.

Buddhist Temple of Salinas.

Chirst Church, Diocese of California.

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), General Board.

Church of Brethren, General Board.

Congregation of Nevah Shalom.

Disciple of Christ, General Board.

Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.

Episcopal Church Center.

Episcopal Church, Executive Council.

Episcopal Church (Trinty) Rector, Warden and Vestry.

Episcopal Asiamerica Strategies Task Force, Bay Area Convocation.

Immanuel Lutheran Church Society.

Japanese Presbyterian Conference.

Lutheran Church in America, Committee of Reference and Counsel.

Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

Lutheran Church, Red River Valley Synod.

Presbyterian Churches: Lincoln Avenue & Parkview.

Presbyterian Church of USA, 1984 General Assembly.

Presbyterian Synod of Alaska.

Presbytery of the Cascades.

Presbytery of Riverside.

Religious Society of Friends, San Francisco, California.

Second United Unitarian Church.

United Church of Christ, 14th General Synod.

United Methodist Church, California Nevada Annual Conference.

United Methodist Church, California Pacific Annual Conference.

United Methodist Church, Pacific/Southwest Conference.

United Methodist Church, National Federation of Asian American U. Methodist 1987 Convocation.

United Methodist Church, Board of Church and Society.

United Methodist Church, 1980 General Conference.

United Methodist Church, USA General Assembly.

United Presbyterian Church.

(8) STATEWIDE

California State Assembly.

California State Senate.

California Association of Human Rights Organizations.

Hawaii House of Representatives.

State of Hawaii.

Gov. of the State of Illinois.

Illinois Committee on Intergovernmental Relations.

Gov. of Massachusetts.

Minnesota State Legislature.

State of Missouri.

New Jersey General Assembly.

New York State Legislature.

Oregon State Legislature.

Oregon State Rainbow Coalition.

Washington State Democratic Central Committee.

State of Washington.

Governor, State of Washington.

State of Wisconsin.

Western Governors' Conference.

(9) COUNTYWIDE

California 2nd Dist. Board of Supervisors.

Contra Costa County Supervisors.

King County (WA) Democratic Central Committee.

Marin County Human Rights Association.

Marin County Human Rights Comm.

Monterey, CA Board of Supervisors.

Multnomah, Ore. County Commissioners.

Placer County Supervisors.

Sacramento, CA County Supervisors.

San Francisco City & Co. Supervisors.

San Mateo Supervisors.

Santa Clara County Supervisors.

Santa Cruz, CA Board of Supervisors.

Ventura County Supervisors.

(10) CITYWIDE

City of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

City of Chicago City Council.

Cleveland, Ohio City Council.

El Cerrito, CA City Council.

Marina, CA City Council.

Orinda-Lafayette-Moraga Council for Civic Unity.

Orinda-Moraga Democratic Club.

New York City Council.

Major, City of New York.

City of Philadelphia, PA.

Portland City Council.

Richmond, CA City Council.

Sacramento City Council Members.

Salinas City Council.

Salinas Valley Democratic Club.

San Jose City Council.

Seaside City Council.

Seattle City Council.

Watsonville City Council.

(11) MISCELLANEOUS ORGANIZATIONS

Asian Pacific American Advocates of California.

Mr. RUDMAN. Mr. President, I am a cosponsor of S. 1009, the legislation being considered by the Senate to carry out the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. I wish to commend my distinguished colleagues from Hawaii for their efforts over several years to right the wrong imposed upon those individuals who were interned during World War II as a result of their Japanese heritage. It is appropriate that the United States apologize to those Japanese Americans whose liberties were deprived and make restitution for the losses and hardships they suffered as a result of their internment.

My colleagues should be aware, however, that this bill does not in itself provide compensation for these losses. Further the possibility of providing such compensation during fiscal year 1989 appears bleak, since these claims will not be paid from the judgment [*S4274] fund as other claims against the Government are paid.

Mr. President, in an effort to comply with the terms of the Budget Act, the bill, as reported by the Government Affairs Committee, was amended to make the payment of compensation to Japanese Americans through a Civil Liberties Public Education Fund subject to the availability of appropriations, with an authorization of $1.3 billion over fiscal years 1989 to 1992, of which $500 million is authorized for fiscal year 1989. In other words, we are authorizing new domestic discretionary spending. This $500 million program will fall within the jurisdiction of the Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, on which I serve, since the Attorney General is charged with making the payments to those individuals eligible to receive compensation.

Mr. President, I am concerned over the impact this bill will have on other programs funded by the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Subcommittee if it is the intent of my colleagues to request appropriations during fiscal year 1989 to establish this trust fund.

Realistically in the current budget climate, it is not possible to absorb a new $500 million program within the allocation the Commerce, Justice, State Subcommittee will receive under the fiscal year 1989 budget resolution which passed the Senate earlier this week. The budget resolution complies with the terms of the budget summit agreement reached between the White House and the Congress last fall by placing a cap on domestic discretionary spending for fiscal year 1989. The only increases assumed in that resolution for the domestic discretionary programs funded by the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Subcommittee are for major law enforcement programs -- FBI, DEA, INS, and the Bureau of Prisons. Absorbing a new program of this magnitude would force the subcommittee to make choices between compensating for inequities imposed upon Japanese Americans over 40 years ago or funding such high priority areas as core Federal law enforcement and drug enforcement efforts being carried on by the FBI, DEA, INS, the Marshals Service, and U.S. attorneys; the critical expansion program of the Bureau of Prisons; the 1990 census being undertaken by the Commerce Department, necessary growth needed in the Federal court system to keep pace with the burgeoning bankruptcy and criminal caseload; or traditional congressional priority areas such as NOAA's fishery programs, and State and local grant programs in the areas of juvenile justice and drug enforcement.

Mr. President, these are difficult choices. I personally do not believe the Commerce, Justice, State Subcommittee, the full Appropriations Committee or the U.S. Senate will be willing to make substantial cuts in existing high priority programs in order to fund this new program. Nor do I believe that it is fair to offer hope to the individuals affected by this legislation that their claims will be settled during fiscal year 1989. If we are to authorize new programs, regardless of their merit, we simply must be willing to find a way to pay for them. Given where we seem to be headed in the budget process, the Senate should be aware that the new discretionary authorization provided by this bill cannot be funded during fiscal year 1989. However, I am willing to work with the distinguished Senators from Hawaii to attempt to resolve the funding problem.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I want to, first of all, compliment our colleague from Hawaii, Senator Matsunaga, as well as Senator Glenn, and the committee for reporting this legislation.

My interest in this legislation is, in part, personal. I grew up in the State of Oregon. My father was a Lutheran minister.

To understand what happened in 1942 you have to be my age, if you will forgive me, Mr. President, because I think you and I are roughly the same. I am 59 years old.

You have to understand that there was a patriotic fervor like we have never known since. And 2 1/2 months after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued the Executive order saying -- Senator Matsunaga used the figure 120,000, some people use the figure 130,000 -- people should be removed from their homes.

That was backed and requested by Secretary of War Stimson. It is interesting that the Attorney General of the United States, Francis Biddle, said he thought it was not necessary, would be a violation of their rights. And a man who was not that sensitive to civil liberties, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, said that it was not necessary. But it happened.

My personal involvement was just that of a son of a Lutheran minister who stood up. We had in Eugene, OR, then, a station called KORE. I do not know if it exists at all anymore. But my father got on that station and said this is wrong to do this to Japanese-Americans.

Again, you have to understand the tenor of the times. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, did not stand up for Japanese-Americans at that time.

I wish I could tell you as part of the story that I went around and was very proud of my father. I can remember my father explaining to my brother and me, I was then 13, why he had done it. But I remember some of my friends shunning me. I remember being embarrassed, wishing my father had not done it.

But now, as I look back on it, it is one of the things I am proudest of my father for. But it was a horrible, horrible violation of civil rights.

Senator Matsunaga called it one of the worst violations of civil liberties in our Nation's history. And it is hard to deny that is precisely what it was.

This bill, in addition to the compensation and everything else, on page 36 of the bill, and I read through the bill, it has one sentence in there that I would guess is unprecedented. At least I know of no such sentence in any legislation ever passed before. Page 36, down to line 11, it says very simply: "On behalf of the Nation, the Congress apologizes."

That is a powerful sentence and it is a sentence that we owe to the Japanese-Americans.

This bill, and I see the two Senators from Alaska here, applies not only to Japanese-Americans but to some of Aleut ancestry in the Aleutian Islands. They can explain the details there.

But it is hard to deny that what happened was a massive, massive injustice. And then the question is, why have the compensation?

Let me explain what happened after the war to the people who came back. People, typically, were given 72 hours' notice and it was said you have to leave your homes and you can take with you anything you can carry. Nothing more. Everything else had to either be sold or abandoned. In 72 hours. And people suffered massive losses.

After the war, they were permitted to be compensated but, again, even after the war the prejudice against Japanese-Americans, unfortunately, was very real. We said they could be compensated to 75 percent of proven losses or $2,500, whichever is less. In other words, if you had losses of $100,000 that you could prove, and most people could not even prove them, but if you have losses of $100,000, then you would be, in theory, eligible for $75,000 or $2,500, whichever is less. And they were given $2,500. A massive, massive injustice.

I was pleased to note among the organizations who have endorsed this bill are the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I am a little prouder to belong to those two organizations right now, after seeing that, because they are also standing up for seeing that we have justice.

There is no question, something terrible happened. We look at what Hitler did, and I am not comparing them, but we look at what Hitler did and we say, "How could that massive violation of civil liberties have taken place in Germany?"

Well, we had a massive violation of civil liberties, and I want to pass this bill, not simply -- and I do not mean this disrespectfully to my friends who are Japanese-Americans -- not simply to apologize and provide a little justice to them. I want to pass this so we send [*S4275] a signal to future administrations and Congresses and Supreme Courts of this Nation. At no time should we ever again perpetrate this kind of an injustice to a people. We ought to pass this bill and pass it overwhelmingly and resolve never again this kind of an injustice.

I yield my time, Mr. President.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am here today also to speak in support of this legislation that implements the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation in Internment of Civilians.

Let me say to my good friend from Illinois that I, too, was involved at that time as a high school student in California when over half of the student body of my school was removed pursuant to this order that relocated people of Japanese ancestry.

It was a sad time for many of us who lost contact with Japanese-Americans that we had known for years. It was very difficult to understand what was going on.

This Commission that, we are reviewing the recommendations of today, was established pursuant to Public Law 96-317, and it was directed to review the relocation and the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry during that period of World War II.

It was at my request that Congress expanded this mandate to include the examination of the Federal Government's treatment of our Aleut people of Alaska during that war.

In discharging its congressional mandate, the Commission held 20 hearings, 3 of which were held in Alaska. It received the testimony of more than 750 witnesses.

Through exhaustive research in the National Archives and elsewhere, the Commission was able to document in minute detail the tragic circumstances surrounding the detention and relocation of Japanese-Americans and Alaska's Aleuts.

The Senators from Hawaii, Mr. Inouye and Mr. Matsunaga, can speak and have spoken far more eloquently than I about the internment of thousands of loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry, so I will confine my remarks to the relocation of the Aleuts in Alaska.

Let me mention as an aside, however, that there are a number of Alaskans of Japanese ancestry who were also interned during the war.

One of the young women in my office, Marie Matsuno, a lifelong Alaskan of Aleut and Japanese descent, was born in a relocation camp in Idaho. Her Japanese father was a loyal American who fought with honor in the Fighting 442d. Marie's family was uprooted from their home in Ugashik, AK, a remote native village on the Alaska peninsula, and their lives were never the same.

He was of Japanese ancestry. He was sent to the relocation camp in Idaho, and that is where Marie was born.

We have several other Japanese families I know who were interned at that time, but mostly Alaskans who were relocated in that period were Aleuts.

It was in my capacity as Solicitor of the Department of the Interior during the Eisenhower administration that I first learned about the facts surrounding the relocation of the Aleut people during World War II and the terrible hardships they had endured.

There really had been no press accounts of these events at the time; correspondence and information between Alaska and what we call the lower 48 had been censored during the war. It was only after the Commission had completed its report, "Personal Justice Denied," that the true story was fully revealed.

Let me just mention some of the facts that came out in that report.

After the bombing of Dutch Harbor and the conquest of Attu and Kiska Islands by the Japanese in June 1942, the United States military authorities ordered the evacuation and relocation of the Aleut villages located on the Pribilof Islands and those west of Unimak Island on the Aleutian chain.

Nearly 900 Aleut, American citizens, were removed from their island homes and placed in squalid relocation camps in southeastern Alaska.

The evacuation and relocation were a logistical nightmare. Housing, eating, and sanitation conditions were totally deplorable.

The long abandoned canneries and gold mining camps from the turn of the century that served as housing were not properly insulated for the harsh Alaska winters. They were never intended for habitation during the winter.

There were repeated epidemics; disease ran rampant. Medical care was entirely inadequate and nearly 10 percent of the Aleut people died during their internment.

I emphasize that: This was internment of Aleut people who were moved from their own homes for their protection, but they were literally interned.

According to the Commission: "This treatment clearly failed to meet the Government's responsibility to those under its care."

The trauma of the relocation was recently brought to light in an article that appeared in the Anchorage Daily News on October 1, 1987. In that article, another good friend of mine, Flore Lekanoff, recounts the painful story of his village's relocation through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy. His own personal experience.

He said it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and his family had just returned from church. The village manager came to the house and informed young Flore's father that the Japanese had just bombed Dutch Harbor and that a Navy ship was on its way to take them off the island.

They had only 2 hours to gather together their possessions and could take what they could carry on their backs. The family went to wait on the beach along with 200 other residents of St. George Island, each with a small sack containing his personal possessions.

Flore recalled that as they waited for the Navy ship that would take them over 2,000 miles away from their homes, some people prayed, some wept, and some were in shock.

Flore and his family, along with the entire village populations of St. George and St. Paul Island in the Pribilof, were taken to Funter Bay, an abandoned fish cannery in southeastern Alaska. Fore remembers how entire families lived in drafty 10-by-10-foot rooms and how he and other contracted tuberculosis.

He recalls that "Funter Bay Camp was unsanitary, without toilets, dilapidated, and cold. Food was scarce." He said: "We ate a lot of beans and corn soup." But this the the thing that amazes me about Flore's story:

During his internment, Flore, a young boy, was forced into labor for the Government, our Government, without pay. He, along with 34 other Aleut boys and men, were sent back to St. Paul Island without their families to harvest fur seals for the military.

He said: "We were there for 6 months during the war. We never got paid. The bosses told us the Army needed the seal oil for guns."

After the war ended, the Lekanoff family and other Aleuts were allowed to return home. They expected a joyous homecoming, but instead were shocked to find that their personal possessions had been destroyed by military order or had been vandalized.

Their homes had been ransacked. Their Russian Orthodox Churches had been burned to the ground. Their sacred Icons, many of which dated back to Czarist Russia, had been either lost or stolen.

There were some attempts made to provide restitution for these losses, but they were woefully inadequate. Consider, for instance, that the Aleuts, when they returned home, received only $12 each from the Government to help them rebuild their lives. They were never fully compensated for their losses, but they were literally kept prisoner in the southeast Alaskan cannery for the period of the war.

The Commission on Wartime Relocation found that "appropriate, full compensation clearly has not been made in the case of the Aleuts."

After evaluating the evidence, the Commission recommended five specific measures of restitution for Aleut losses during World War II.

These included: A trust to be established for the beneficial use of the six surviving Aleut villages which were relocated and for the beneficial use of [*S4276] surviving Aleuts and their descendants; per capita payments to each surviving Aleut evacuee; no payment to descendants or any dependents -- strictly to the survivors; the rehabilitation of churches and restoration of property damaged or destroyed by U.S. forces in those villages during the war; and the cleanup of wartime debris left on populated islands of the Aleutians.

Few Americans realize that the only place where World War II debris still remains is on the islands of the Aleutians in Alaska. Much of the wartime debris there is still contaminated with wartime ordnance, making it totally unsafe for habitation. It still remains.

One of the recommendations of the Commission is that debris be cleaned up. We cleaned up everywhere else in the world that we were associated with in World War II, except the only part of the United States that was occupied by the Japanese during World War II, the Aleutian Islands.

The Commission also calls for the rehabilitation of Attu Island for Aleut ownership and use.

Unfortunately, that is not possible, as I will mention later.

The legislation we consider today would make reparations substantially in accordance with the Commission's recommendations. This bill includes the $5 million trust fund that was recommended.

Each Aleut who survived the camps would be entitled to receive a $12,000 payment over a period of time, as in the case of the Japanese, from the fund in exchange for relinquishing all claims against the Government related to their relocation and internment.

The authorization of appropriations for the rehabilitation of churches and church property is established at $1,400,000.

In lieu of conveyance of Attu Island to the Aleut people, this measure provides compensation for the loss of the island in an amount to be determined by an appraisal conducted by the Secretary of the Interior.

This is necessary because Attu Island was designated as wilderness by an act passed by the Congress in 1980 and is not now available to be conveyed back to the Aleut people.

Mr. President, the Aleuts suffered great physical harm and 10 percent of them or more, as I said, suffered death due to the negligence of the Government as it assumed the burden of care for these people as they were moved from their homes in the Aleutian Islands during World War II.

Flore Lekanoff lost a sister and both grandparents in the camp in which he was located due to disease. As I said, he contracted TB and spent 3 years recuperating in a sanitarium in Alaska after the war.

The Aleuts were also victims of vandalism, as I mentioned, by military personnel, who occupied the islands during the war. Neither of those islands were under attack by the Japanese, by the way. Lekanoff's home was ransacked and looted during the family's internment.

I believe this bill is an attempt to remedy those wrongs and this year of the bicentennial of our Constitution is a good year for us to consider this.

I, too, call attention to the apology that is in the bill. In my opinion, that is an apology that ought to be made. Many of my constituents do not agree, but I tell the Senate, being one who lived through that period and, as did the Hawaiian Senator, served in World War II, when we came home we had no idea these wrongs had been inflicted on our generation, and I believe they should be remedied at this time.

Mr. ADAMS addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, will the distinguished Senator yield?

Mr. ADAMS. I yield to the majority leader.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank my friend.

Mr. President, there will be no rollcall votes today. The Senate ladies are having a very important function this evening to which they are going to be kind enough to invite their husbands. I take the floor at this time to say that I would like tomorrow morning at 9:30 to get started on this bill. I would like at that time, and will intend to move, that the Sergeant at Arms request Senators to attend. That will be a rollcall vote. In view of the fact that it will be an early vote, I will ask that it be either a 20-minute vote or something a little longer than a 15-minute vote since it is early and the first vote of the day.

I want the Senate to get started early on this bill tomorrow in the hope that we can finish action on it tomorrow. I do not know whether we can, but at least we should put in a full day on the effort.

Mr. ADAMS. Mr. President, I am deeply honored to rise in support of S. 1009 today. Before the distinguished Senator from Alaska leaves the floor -- and I want also to thank the distinguished Senator from Illinois -- we share a common experience in that all of us were on the west coast in 1942 and 1943. We later served in World War II, and we were aware, as I will indicate in my statement, of all of a sudden everyone leaving -- a third of my high school class left in 1 day and we did not see them again for 3 years, and some of them we did not see again ever.

So it is with great emotion and support for this bill as an original cosponsor, Mr. President, that I rise today. People in my State and in my city have waited a long time for this legislation and the presentation that has been made by the great Senator from Hawaii, Spark Matsunaga. I, too, agree with the Senator from Alaska that one of the most important parts of this bill as far as my constituents are concerned, particularly my Japanese-American constituents, Mr. President, is the fact that the Government of the United States does issue an apology. I agree with the Senator from Alaska; not all of my constituents are in agreement with the position I take today, but I think the position is right and those of us who were there in the 1940's and came back at the end of World War II feel that way. I think it is important that we say so.

I particularly pay my respects to Senator Spark Matsunaga and to Senator Inouye and the others who have and will speak eloquently about this bill. My thoughts and feelings are based on my experience, Mr. President, and on what happened in terms of the hardship, loss of life, really psychological pain, and personal struggle by people who have consistently demonstrated the best qualities of American citizenship.

Mr. President, as I said before to the Senator from Alaska, I watched a third of my classmates of Broadway High School in Seattle leave and just vanish. People like Shig Murao, John Okamoto, and others, we were all playing basketball together one day and the next day they were gone. I saw families with small children, grandparents residing in our central district and North Beacon Hill forced to report -- of which I think we need to remind people because many do not know really what happened, and those of us who remember need to share it -- to specific collection points within the city.

It happened all around me -- in Tacoma, White River, Auburn, Kent, Yakima, and in the process families were forced to sell their homes, their possessions, even their children's toys, for pennies on the dollar. For my friends and their families, the physical hardship came close to unbearable. They were forced to live in parking lots of the Puyallop Fairground, and later, for 2 incredible years, in the heat, cold, and dust of camps located in very lonely and desolate areas, Mr. President, like Minikoka, ID, and Tule Lake, CA. It is even more incredible to accept the fact that this hardship was forced upon the Japanese-American communities despite the assessment by both the FBI and the Navy that the Army was overreacting to the issue and mass incarceration was unnecessary.

Even worse than physical hardship, though, was the psychological pain. For example, one of my Seattle constituents, Ms. Shigeko Uno, assured her family that aliens might be affected, but American-born citizens need not fear -- she told them that just before she, an American citizen was shipped off. Or consider the fear and dread of Mrs. Yasashi Ichikawa and her family of seven children, as she watched her minister husband led from their home on Jackson Street in central Seattle by the FBI to a military prison in Crystal City, TX, not [*S4277] knowing if she would ever see him again.

You know, I am proud of the fact her grandson works on my staff, and a wonderful person he is, and how lucky I am.

Maybe in some way we can look at those tragedies, Mr. President -- and we should. But we also need to remember that at the same time that America was placing people in prison simply because they had Japanese blood flowing in their veins, other Japanese Americans were shedding their blood for America.

We need to remember the men of the all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion, 442d Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service of the Pacific campaign. Many of the top officers of the 5th Army called the 100th Battalion the finest offensive combat unit in the Italian theater of operations. As for the 442d, they were well known among the German command as one of the top offensive combat teams, and their movement to another sector was always closely watched. Called the most decorated unit of its size in the U.S. Army, the 442d Regimental Combat Team received throughout its tenure -- to me this is just incredible -- seven Presidential Unit Citations, a Congressional Medal of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 588 Silver Stars and 9,486 Purple Hearts. In the seven major campaigns fought by the unit, 680 men were killed in action. Col. Sidney Mashbir, who headed the allied translator and interpreter section, for the military intelligence service probably best summed it up when he said:

The United States owes a debt to these men and to their families which it can never fully repay.

I would remind my colleagues that our friends, Senators Matsunaga and Inouye, served in those forces.

They never talk about it. So some of us who know them well and know the history must do that.

As an aside, I would say that I remember the day that Senator, then Representative Sparky Matsunaga took the floor of the House of Representatives with seven other decorated veterans and declared what we needed to do in Vietnam. It took courage, and it made a great deal of difference because these were people who had served with distinction in World War II.

So we owe them a great debt not only for what they did in that war but what they did to save lives in later wars and do to this day, Mr. President. I am proud to be associated with them. They represent courage, valor, and personal sacrifice that reach an epitome that we may never reach again.

Mr. President, ever since our fellow citizens were forced to assemble their meager belongings, and the Senator from Illinois, the Senator from Alaska stated it very well, they could take what they could carry. They went to places like Union Station, Jefferson Golf Course in the city of Seattle, and there they had to assemble and wait to leave. There has now been an effort to correct the blight on the country's record. It has been a slow and painful process. With leadership provided by our two colleagues, and particularly by Senator Matsunaga in his efforts on this particular bill, it now appears we are ready to act.

My friends, I think we finally are going to be able to do it. But they have not led the fight alone, Mr. President. There are people in my city, citizen activists like Ms. Cherry Kimoshita who is from my State, and locally affected city officials like council member Dolores Sibonga and Washington State Senator George Fleming, and others, and many that I have met with who served as volunteer lawyers who worked on this bill and this effort from countless years.

One last thought, Mr. President. For those who say that what was done should be accepted as a wartime necessity, that is not so. The Constitution stands for basic and fundamental truth, Mr. President.

We speak about a document that stands for not only a specific generation in time, but for a principle in perpetuity. The Constitution of this country does not change day to day, nor does it protect some but not others. It embodies an incontrovertible axiom that speaks for liberty and prohibits the loss of that liberty without due process of law.

In conclusion, Mr. President, Mr. Frank Kitamoto, from Bainbridge Island, in my State put it very simply and succinctly when he asked for the passage of this legislation. He said, "Only 50 percent of the American citizens held in the internment camps remain alive. Are we waiting until all of us are dead -- and the memory gone?"

Mr. President, the time to act is now. The States are ready for this legislation; this country is ready for this legislation. I believe that we in the Senate are ready to follow our conscience to do what is morally right. That is why I am supporting this bill. That is why I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

I am honored to be a cosponsor with the Senator from Hawaii.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Would the Senator yield?

Mr. ADAMS. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I wish to thank the Senator for his statement. It was much more meaningful because of his personal experience with those who had been interned. And I wish to thank him also for being one of the earliest cosponsors of the bill. I share his optimism that this bill will pass.

Mr. ADAMS. I thank the Senator from Hawaii. It is a great pleasure to be associated with him and particularly on this bill.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.

Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania. I will be very brief.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to once again join Senator Matsunaga, Senator Inouye, and Senator Stevens in the sponsorship of S. 1009, legislation to implement the recommendations of the Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. The Senator from Hawaii has over 70 cosponsors at this time, and I think it merits this important legislation. That is certainly clear.

Of course, Senator Matsunaga has eloquently stated the merits in titles I and II of this bill, addressing the internment of Japanese-Americans during the World War II. I am going to confine my remarks, Mr. President, to title III, and that is the portion of the bill which addresses the injustices suffered by the Aleut people in my State of Alaska.

Mr. President, nearly 900 Aleuts were removed from the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands during World War II. The Japanese threat necessitated removal of these people. But we must ask: Was it necessary to intern Alaska Natives in temporary homes of old abandoned fish canneries and mining camps? To provide substandard food and sanitary facilities? To provide no medical assistance or medical assistance to some communities for only a few months during their 3-year internment? The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment found: "There was no justification for the manner in which the Aleuts were treated in the camps in southeastern Alaska."

Ten percent of the Aleuts interned in these camps died there. Those who survived had no homes to return to. Instead they returned to ransacked houses, desecrated churches and the debris of the U.S. military occupation. The Government has not compensated the Aleuts for their damaged or destroyed homes, churches, and material goods.

Mr. President, let me just very briefly refer to the comments of one of my constituents, Mary Bourdukofski, as a specific example of how Aleut individuals were affected by forced relocation and internment.

On a Sunday afternoon in 1941, Navy boats arrived off the coast of St. Paul Island, the village where Mary lived in Alaska. She was told that the boats were there to evacuate the village residents from the island and that she could not take anything but what she was wearing and a suitcase of personal items. Mary recalls she tried to put away personal belongings such as antiques that had belonged to her mother, but was not given time to do so. She was told to leave her home and not to lock the door. Within 12 hours, all 500 residents of St. Paul were evacuated. The boat then picked up all the [*S4278] residents of St. George and other residents of the Aleutian Islands and the Alaska Peninsula. After 10 days on the boat, the nearly 800 individuals were taken to abandoned canneries and mining camps in Southeastern Alaska where camps were established nearly 1,000 miles away in the wilderness.

At the camps, Mary describes the living conditions as terrible. The only running water in the Funter Bay Camp where she was located was in the mess hall. There were no rooms, and partitions were established by hanging blankets from the ceiling in order to gain some privacy. There was no stove to cook food. The unsanitary conditions and inadequate shelter lead to a substantial number of deaths. At Funter Bay alone, it is estimated 40 people died.

After 2 years of living in these conditions, Mary and the surviving Aleuts were returned to their villages. Mary found her home had been converted into a club where the only items left in the house were a pool table, dart board, and a stove. All of her personal effects, including her mother's antiques, were gone.

Mary's experience is not unique, approximately 881 residents of Alaska suffered similar losses and they are all entitled to compensation.

From the time when the Aleuts were placed in the holds of U.S. ships to the time when they were finally returned to their ransacked homes in 1944 and 1945, these natives endured great hardships. With the encampment of these people and the loss of their precious icons, a vital part of Aleut and American culture was lost, never to be replaced or regained.

Mr. President, our legislation implements the five recommendations of the Commission to provide restitution to the Aleut people for the losses they suffered as a consequence of Government operations during the war years. Title 3 of S. 1009 sets up a restitution fund out of which will come:

Individual payments of $12,000 to surviving Aleut evacuees;

assistance for the needy, elderly, disabled, or severly ill;

persons and scholarships for needy students in Aleut villages;

funds for restoring church property that was lost or damaged; and

compensation to the Aleuts for the loss of their land on Attu Island.

While the Commission recommended the return of Attu Island to the Aleuts, monetary restitution is provided because this area is now designated as wilderness and environmental groups strongly oppose giving the Aleuts back their land.

Mr. President, I recall, as a small child, observing on the outskirts of Ketchikan, the Aleut camp at Ward Lake. It was a very isolated area at the end of the road along side a creek that flowed into a lake. The military used the old Civilian Conservation Corps dormitories to house relocated Aleuts. Their only running water was what they could fetch from the creek.

It was generally known that a large number of the residents, the Aleuts, were suffering from tuberculosis. While there was limited medical care available, this was an area that was prone to some of the exposure of the outdoors in Alaska, which at times can be quite severe. The city of Ketchikan, to a large degree, attempted to facilitate food and clothing for these people, who were brought in from 1,000 miles away, from their previous home, the Aleutian Islands.

It was a trying and difficult time, and I hope that the pending legislation will offset, in some small way, the injustice that was done to these Americans.

Mr. President, 40 years and more have passed since the Aleuts were relocated to unimaginably inadequate camp facilities in Southeast Alaska. A number of those who suffered the most are now very old -- an even greater number have already passed away. I urge the Senate to pass this important legislation today, as substantial justice to the Aleut people demands compensation for losses sustained as a result of U.S. Government activities in World War II. The restitution provided in our bill should not be delayed any longer.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, will the junior Senator from Alaska yield?

Mr. MURKOWSKI. I am happy to yield.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I thank the Senator from Alaska and his senior colleague for being two of the earliest copsonsors of the bill which is now pending. I thank him and his colleague, Senator Stevens, for the great assistance they have given me in getting the bill on the floor today.

Mr. MURKOWSKI. I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Hawaii. As he and I know, Alaska and Hawaii have much in common. We are two States not connected to the rest of the United States, and for that uniqueness we share a common interest and many other common interests.

I am very pleased to work with my colleague from Hawaii on this very important legislation.

Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, I would like to express my support for S. 1009, legislation aimed at redressing one of our Government's greatest acts of injustice. This legislation would implement the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment. I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation which my very good friend from Hawaii, Senator Matsunaga, introduced on April 10, 1987. It is similar to legislation, S. 1053 in the 99th Congress, and S. 2116 in the 98th Congress, which I cosponsored. I hope that this measure will be supported today by my colleagues in the Senate.

The passage of this legislation by the Senate will culminate many years of seeking a means to provide the apology the U.S. Government owes to those Americans of Japanese or Alaskan Aleut ancestry who were unjustly interned during the Second World War and to provide some redress for those who lost so much as a result of this unfortunate act of our Government.

As we look back with regret on this painful period of injustice -- 45 years ago -- we must reaffirm our pledge that this kind of injustice must never recur.

Enactment of this legislation will help to prevent a recurrence.

I believe that our Government's action in this case was a terrible affront to the ideals for which our Nation stands.

My involvement in opposing the relocation of Japanese-Americans dates back to the very beginning.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, I was assigned to the Office of War Information. There I worked closely with Eleanor Roosevelt and Archibald MacLeish trying to dissuade President Roosevelt from forcefully evacuating Japanese-Americans from the west coast and interning them in so-called relocation camps.

Unfortunately for 120,000 Japanese-Americans -- and for the good name of our Nation -- military authorities prevailed, and the orders for internment were issued.

More than two-thirds of the internees were American citizens. The rest were legal U.S. residents.

After the internment process began, I visited two of the camps, Tule Lake in California and Hart Mountain, WY. Recently, the children of internees visited Hart Mountain trying to sense what their parents had felt. In part I can tell them.

For 4 days in the cold, snow-covered camp at Hart Mountain, I spent my time round the clock inside the barbed-wire camp, talking to internees and visiting with a number of boyhood friends from Los Altos.

We ate meals together, talked over old times, walked around in the bitingly cold weather, played poker, and cheered at a football rally.

My friends and former classmates justifiably felt themselves robbed of their citizenship. They were distressed at the racial prejudice behind their internment. They were anxious for their Government to prove its own adherence to democracy and to the very ideals for which we were then at war.

President Roosevelt himself proclaimed, "In vindication of the very ideals for which we are fighting this war it is important to us to maintain a high standard of fair, considerate and equal treatment for the people of this minority as for all other minorities."

But this standard was not upheld.

The mere presence of Japanese blood in loyal American citizens was believed to be enough to warrant removal and exclusion from places they otherwise had a right to go.

[*S4279] The argument that they were removed for their own good, because of possible vigilante attacks, was not persuasive. Most, if not all, Japanese-Americans would rather have faced the risk of being killed by individuals than deprived of their liberties by their own American Government. Given the choice to remain interned or fight in the war, most enlisted and served.

It was ironic to see American-Nisei soldiers, home on furlough and clad in uniform, wandering around inside a fenced-in camp. These Nisei soldiers returned from the battlefields of Europe as the most distinguished and decorated combat unit of the war, and from the Pacific theater as loyal soldiers and as officers in military intelligence. I have never forgotten these impressions.

One of my most poignant memories is of an intelligent and progressive-minded mother who was still managing -- with much difficulty -- to conceal from her 4-year-old child that they were prisoners in what most inmates considered a racial internment camp.

In 1980, I was a cosponsor of the legislation establishing the Relocation Commission. The Commission report issued in 1983 called for our Government's official apology -- 41 years overdue -- to the internees and their families.

It confirmed what a great many conscientious Americans have long believed: these Americans of Japanese descent were clearly mistreated, and their basic civil liberties violated.

The ACLU singled out the internment and related abuses at the time as "the worst single wholesale violation of civil rights of American citizens in our history."

As one commentator on the period said:

Japanese-Americans were the immediate victims of the evacuation. But larger consequences are carried by the American people as a whole. Their legacy is the lasting one of precedent and constitutional sanctity for a policy of mass incarceration under military auspices. This is a result of the process by which the evacuation was made. That process betrayed all Americans.

Since those tragic events took place, a number of the participants have had changed hearts and minds. Henry L. Stimson, who was Secretary of War, realized that "to loyal citizens this forced evacuation was a personal injustice." Former Attorney General Francis Biddle reiterated his belief that "the program was ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel." Justice William O. Douglas, one of the Supreme Court majority in the Korematsu decision hold the evacuation constitutionally permissible, later said the case "was ever on my conscience." And Chief Justice Earl Warren, who as California's attorney general had urged evacuation, afterward said:

I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens.

On February 17, 1942, Attorney General Francis Biddle wrote to Secretary Stimson opposing the proposed exclusion order, stating that the War Department and the FBI had found no danger of imminent attack or evidence of planned sabotage. Biddle especially objected to removal from their homes of 60,000 American citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent. He refused to let the Justice Department participate in any way with the exclusion policy.

Not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage, or fifth column activity was committed by the Nisei or by resident Japanese aliens on the west coast. Yet their lives were disrupted, fortunes were lost, and loyal citizens and legal residents incarcerated.

The victims of this policy were held collectively guilty, and collectively punished.

Moreover, the Government's attitude toward these innocent people fostered suspicions that often led to violence against them. Many were attacked when they attempted to return to the homes 3 years later.

The legislation we are considering today redresses this mass violation of civil liberties and compensates internees for their suffering.

Although the loss of liberty and the personal stigma attached to internment can never be erased, Federal reparations are a justifiable response to the legitimate financial losses incurred. An independent study done for the Commission found the economic losses alone to evacuees between $2.5 and $6.2 billion in today's dollar values, including interest for the past 40 years. Many consider this a conservative estimate of the real economic losses of homes and other property, stores and businesses. And these estimates do not begin to measure the personal hardships suffered.

The Commission found the cause of the exclusion and internment policies to be "race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership."

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Shortly afterward, all American citizens of Japanese descent were barred from living, working or traveling on the east coast. The same exclusion applied to a whole generation of Japanese immigrants residing at that time in the United States who, because of Federal law, were not permitted to become U.S. citizens.

After the initial plan for "voluntary" exclusion failed, these American citizens or legal residents were forcibly removed by the Army, first to "assembly centers" -- makeshift quarters in fairgrounds and racetracks -- and then to "relocation centers." These latter camps, located in desolate western areas, were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by military police.

The U.S. Government carried out its policy without reviewing individual cases or providing due process of law, and continued its policy virtually without regard for individuals who demonstrated loyalty to the United States.

Congress made it a crime to violate Executive Order 9066. The U.S. Supreme Court -- in one of its most agonizing decisions -- held the removal constitutionally permissible because of the war. Interestingly, since that decision a number of Justices from the majority -- enough to have reversed the 5-to-4 decision -- have written that on hindsight, they would have voted differently. The Supreme Court in a related case struck down imprisonment of these admittedly loyal American citizens. But long after the fact.

The Commission found that the main impetus leading to the exclusion order was the mistaken notion that individuals of Japanese descent would be loyal to Japan, not to the United States, and groundless fears of fifth column activity even though no evidence of such activities could be uncovered. The Commission stated that "the record does not permit the conclusion that military necessity warranted the exclusion of the ethnic Japanese from the west coast."

After exclusion became official policy, the War Relocation Authority [WRA] -- the civilian agency charged with supervising the relocation -- assumed that the vast majority of evacuees were loyal and should be allowed to resettle outside of the west coast. But because of harsh objections from certain Mountain State politicians, a consensus plan for detention of the evacuees emerged. The WRA gave up on its idea of resettlement, and accepted a program of confinement. Despite WRA's belief that evacuees should be returned to normal productive life, it had, in effect, become their jailer. Since there was no military justification for detention, the WRA instead contended that the program was for the evacuees' own safety.

The history of life during the evacuation and in the relocation camps is one of suffering and deprivation. On the average, families received only 1 or 2 weeks notice of evacuation to an unknown destination. They could take with them only what could be carried. All else was lost or sold for cutrate prices. Life in the relocation camps was spartan, with shoddy and crowded buildings, defective facilities, faulty heating, inadequate health care, and limited education programs. Privacy was impossible. Families and individuals alike lost their identities and became known only by identification numbers.

Because the Western Defense Command opposed individual loyalty reviews -- for fear of weakening the blanket exclusion -- no opportunity for individual review was created in the assembly centers. The War Department favored conducting loyalty reviews, but did not act on this until the end of 1942. Although these reviews eventually [*S4280] permitted some to leave relocation centers, it didn't end the exclusion from the west coast. Moreover, even this belated process was offensive, since it treated Japanese-Americans as guilty until proven innocent.

In the spring of 1943, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, and Gen. George C. Marshall reached the conclusion that the loyalty reviews eliminated any justification for exclusion from the west coast. They kept their view private, however, and General DeWitt repeatedly opposed ending exclusion until he left the Western Defense Command in late 1943, as did west coast anti-Japanese fractions. Secretary Stimson finally put the recommendation before the Cabinet in May 1944. But no action was taken until December 7, 1944, while confinement continued for the great majority of Japanese-Americans.

The exclusion and removal of Japanese-Americans resulted from a long history of anti-Japanese-American agitation and legislation on the west coast. By contrast, in Hawaii, where the military commander restrained plans for radical measures and treated the ethnic Japanese as loyal residents -- absent evidence to the contrary -- only 2,000 ethnic Japanese were taken into custody. The policy developed was in sharp contrast to Government actions against enemy aliens or citizens of non-Japanese descent. For example, the United States never ordered a mass exclusion or detention against American citizens of German or Italian descent.

This episode in American history should never have happened. It's the Government's responsibility to set the record straight and to try, at least, to recognize and partially compensate for past injustices, although the tarnish on our Constitution can never be completely removed.

Our purpose is to recognize and redress the injustices and violations of civil liberties against U.S. citizens and U.S. residents of Japanese and Aleut ancestry by the United States and to discourage similar injustices and violations of civil liberties in the future.

The bill provides for the establishment of a $1.5 billion trust fund from which individual payments to the surviving internees would be made.

Those eligible are people of Japanese or Alaskan Aleut ancestry excluded from the west coast between December 7, 1941, and June 30, 1946, or deprived of liberty or property as a result of a series of executive orders, proclamations, laws, Armed Forces directives, or other Federal actions resulting in exclusion, relocation, and/or detention of individuals on the basis of race. The remaining moneys in the trust fund would be utilized for humanitarian and public education efforts to preclude this event from occurring again in the future.

This act is a just and fair redress to those individuals who were excluded and/or interned without justification, in gross violation of their civil liberties as American citizens and residents. I urge my colleagues to support it.

(Mr. ROCKEFELLER assumed the chair.)

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Will the distinguished Senator from California yield?

Mr. CRANSTON. Of course.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, I did not know of the Senator's experience during the early period of the war and his efforts to convince President Roosevelt that he not issue Executive Order 9066.

I want to thank him also for his excellent statement and for the great assistance he has provided in bringing this measure to this point.

I wish also to thank him for his early cosponsorship of the measure. I thank the Senator very much.

Mr. CRANSTON. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Hawaii very much. It has been a long, long time over my life that I have been involved, in one way or another, from time to time, in this issue. I have many friends in the Japanese-American community in California who went through this experience and who look upon it as something they would never expect to happen in the United States.

I, again, praise you for your leadership, for the remarkable way you have shepherded this measure to this point in this legislative progress. Now we have to carry it to the final victory.

Thank you very much, Senator Matsunaga.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, there were others who had indicated that they would like to speak in support of the measure. At least one Senator indicated that he would like to speak tomorrow rather than this evening.

I am pleased that we have had no one speak against the measure all day today.

Tomorrow, Senator Hecht will offer an amendment and Senator Helms will offer a series of amendments to the measure. I announce now that I will oppose any and all amendments which will be offered tomorrow and am confident that these amendments will be defeated.

S. 1009: A WELL-INTENTIONED BILL THAT IS WRONG IN PRINCIPLE

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to S. 1009. The regret is that I must oppose my good friend, the junior Senator from Hawaii, a man whom I respect enormously. He has presented an effective and passionate case for S. 1009, and I am not surprised that his eloquence has rallied more than 70 Senators to join him as cosponsors.

I hope, however, that the Senator from Hawaii will respect my principled opposition to his bill. I cannot overcome by basic philosophical objections to the approach taken in S. 1009. To attach a price to the Japanese-American internees' suffering -- as I see it -- would have the unintended effect of demeaning and cheapening their tragic experience.

In essence, S. 1009 seeks to attach a monetary value to human suffering. It strikes me, however, that the idea of doling out $20,000 to each internee is an unfortunate example of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Once we start down that path, where do we stop? How do you monetize the suffering of, for instance, the soldier who was killed in action, or the black man who fought in the front line yet returned home to sit in the back of the bus? Should we monetize that suffering? And what about the suffering of American Indians, of prisoners of war, of Americans who returned from war with crippling injuries. Surely they are no less deserving than the internes? If we establish a precedent with S. 1009, where do we draw the line against reparations to the countless other groups of Americans who have suffered because of actions of the U.S. Government? Or do we tell those other groups that their suffering was somehow less meaningful, less tragic, less deserving of recompense?

In contrast to this dubious practice of monetization, it is my conviction that there can be no more meaningful and valuable compensation to internes than the solemn apology of the American people expressed by their Congress and President. Certainly, this Senator apologizes. I vow to do everything in my power to prevent any recurrence of such an outrage against any of our citizens in the future.

What's more, it strikes me that a solemn and formal apology is especially appropriate in this case. The internment of Japanese-Americans was a mistake -- no question about that. But it was an honest mistake committed by honorable men. The internment was not the result of bigotry or maliciousness. It was the result of our leaders' legitimate determination, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, that extreme measures were necessary in order to safeguard our Nation's security. Of course, from the perspective of history, we know that the internment was an overzealous measure; it was a tragic mistake. But -- I repeat -- it was an honest mistake committed under extraordinary circumstances.

Mr. President, I opposed this bill in principle. I must also oppose it for obvious budgetary reasons. To put it bluntly, the Government is broke. We do not have money to finance this new program. Certainly, there is no provision for S. 1009 in the budget resolution we just passed. It is a cruel irony that S. 1009, which purports to make amends for the injustices done the internees, risks dealing them a fresh injustice if no money can be found to finance this bill.