REFERENCE: Vol. 134 No. 51

TITLE: WARTIME RELOCATION OF CIVILIANS

SPEAKER: Mr. BYRD; Mr. CHAFEE; Mr. CRANSTON; Mr. HECHT; Mr. HELMS; Mr. INOUYE; Mr. MATSUNAGA; Mr. REID; Mr. SIMPSON; Mr. STEVENS; Mr. WARNER; Mr. WILSON

TEXT: [*S4322] The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will now resume consideration of S. 1009, which the clerk will report.

The 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.

QUORUM CALL

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

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk called the roll, and the following Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their names:

[Quorum No. 17]

Byrd

Chiles

Cranston

Exon

Garn

Graham

Heinz

Levin

Pressler

Stevens

Trible

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. A quorum is not present.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I move that the Sergeant at Arms be instructed to request the attendance of absent Senators.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on agreeing to the motion of the Senator from West Virginia to instruct the Sergeant at Arms to request the attendance of absent Senators.

On this question, the yeas and nays have previously been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk called the roll.

Mr. CRANSTON. I announce that the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Bumpers], the Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Gore], and the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] are necessarily absent.

I also announce that the Senator from Delaware [Mr. Biden] is absent because of illness.

Mr. SIMPSON. I announce that the Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Boschwitz] is necessarily absent.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber who desire to vote?

The result was announced -- yeas 73, nays 22, as follows:

(See Rollcall Vote No. 101 Leg. in the ROLL segment.)

So the motion was agreed to.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. With the addition of Senators voting who did not answer the quorum call, a quorum is now present.

The majority leader.

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I hope Senators will offer amendments. Is there a Senator who has an amendment ready?

Very well. Mr. President, Mr. Hecht has indicated that he will offer an amendment within about 2 minutes. If any Senator wishes to speak in morning business for 2 minutes, this would be a good opportunity.

I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Hecht be recognized upon the calling off of the quorum call so he may offer his amendment.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. HECHT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanford). Without objection, it is so ordered.

AMENDMENT NO. 1919

(Purpose: To remove the authorization of appropriations and other funding, disbursement, and expenditure provisions)

Mr. HECHT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Hecht] proposes an amendment numbered 1919.

Mr. HECHT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

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

The amendment is as follows:

On page 35, line 2, add "and" after the semicolon.

On page 35, line 6, strike out the semicolon and insert in lieu thereof a period.

On page 35, beginning with line 7, strike out all through line 3 on page 36.

On page 37, line 22, strike out all through line 3 on page 38.

On page 38, line 4, strike out "(4)" and insert in lieu thereof "(2)".

On page 38, line 7, strike out "(5)" and insert in lieu thereof "(3)".

On page 39, beginning with line 21, strike out all through the end of the bill.

Mr. HECHT. Mr. President, the amendment I am offering to S. 1009, is simple in intent and in structure, even though the issue we discuss here today clearly is not. In plain language, S. 1009 would accept the findings and implement the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. My amendment does not affect those findings; it does eliminate the recommendation of payment to individuals as compensation for their internment during the early 1940's.

There is no question, that December 7, 1941, and the days and weeks immediately after were, indeed, terrifying and confusing for all Americans. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise to a nation that never thought it might be vulnerable to such an ordeal. With that came extraordinary events. I will not digress into an oratory on actions taken by the Government following Pearl Harbor or precautions taken for the public welfare. But I think it is [*S4323] safe to characterize this period as one of extreme unknowing. Rumor became fact and whether true or not, fear of the unknown moved nervous Americans, including President Roosevelt, to act to protect themselves.

The internment of Japanese-Americans, while unfortunate, happened, and it happened at a time frought with fear and trepidation of an enemy from without and one thought to be within. How was anyone to know different? How were Americans to know if, in fact, an attack was not imminent somewhere on the west coast? Well, Mr. President, the benefit of 20-20 hindsight has shown these fears and concerns to be without foundation.

The events of 1942 and following years are well known, and this bill seeks to make amends. Yet, I question whether or not the United States has already made restitution for its actions in 1942. We all know that in 1948, Congress agreed to the American-Japanese Evacuation Claims Act. Compensation was provided for those impacted by the internment and 26,568 claims were settled; $37 million was paid out.

Under S. 1009, the United States would once again be required to pay reparations to individuals who were interned. I want to assure my colleagues that I in no way wish to act in a prejudicial manner, or one in which may be construed to be anti-Japanese or anti-Aleut.

What I do wish to do is bring to this body a sense of what this legislation, if enacted, would cost the American taxpayer. The price tag as now envisioned is in the realm of $1.3 billion. That is approximately $20,000 for every person addressed in this legislation. And if enacted, the administrative cost to the Department of Justice to find and process persons entitled to payment could not be paid out of the trust fund created by this bill.

Just last week the Senate passed its version of the fiscal year 1989 budget and we applauded the fact that the deficit would only be $136 billion. The House budget is similar. Both cut significantly from our most important programs, including defense. So I ask, with this huge Federal deficit, how can we in good conscience now approve a bill with a price tag of $1.3 billion -- $1.3 billion in new money -- money that this Nation just does not have to spend? I do not think we can, which is why I have proposed this amendment.

Mr. President, this is a simple amendment and one I believe to be in the best interest of America's fiscal household. I urge its adoption, and ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

Mr. INOUYE addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.

Mr. INOUYE. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my distinguished colleague, Senator Matsunaga, in urging the passage of S. 1009, a bill to accept the findings and implement the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.

Before proceeding, Mr. President, I wish to commend my colleague from Hawaii for this extraordinary feat. I believe that this is the first time any measure has reached this stage with 73 cosponsors. We have considered before us measures of great popularity, noncontroversial, but they have never had 73 cosponsors.

The measure before us is the source of much anguish and much controversy. Because of the commitment and dedication of Senator Matsunaga, he has been able to convince 72 of his colleagues to join him in this endeavor.

Many fellow Americans, including my colleague from Nevada, have asked: "Why should Japanese-Americans be compensated?" During times of war, especially in times of fear, all people suffer. That is a very common argument made against this measure.

Mr. President, while it is true that all people of this Nation suffer during wartime, the Japanese-American internment experience is unprecedented in the history of American civil rights deprivation. I think we should recall, even if painful, that Americans of Japanese ancestry were determined by our Government to be security risks without any formal allegations or charges of disloyalty or espionage. They were arbitrarily branded disloyal solely on the grounds of racial ancestry.

No similar mass internment was deemed necessary for Americans of German or Italian ancestries, and I think we should recall and remind ourselves that in World War II, the Japanese were not our only enemies.

These Japanese-Americans who were interned could not confront their accusers or bring their case before a court. These are basic rights of all Americans. They were incarcerated, forced to live in public communities with no privacy, and stripped of their freedom to move about as others could.

Japanese-Americans wishing to fight for this country were initially declared ineligible. However, once allowed to volunteer, they volunteered in great numbers. In fact, proportionately and percentagewise, more Japanese-Americans put on the uniform of this country during World War II, more were wounded and more were killed, even if they were restricted to serving in ethnically-restricted military units.

The individual payments acknowledge the unjust deprivation of liberty, the infliction of mental and physical suffering, and the stigma of being branded disloyal, losses not compensable under the Japanese Evacuation Claims Act of 1948.

Several years ago when this matter was being debated, I was asked by one of my colleagues whether $20,000 was too much. My response to him was, "If I were interned, I would consider $20,000 as being too little. How do you compensate a child who had just lost his mother, who committed suicide because of depression and anguish? How do you compensate those families who lost their fathers and husbands, who stood up and voiced objection and were shot down by the troops in the camps? They were no violating any of the laws of the United States. They were just exercising their first amendment rights to speak up, petition the Government. They were not armed. It was a peaceful demonstration. How do you compensate the families of those men? How do you compensate a fellow American for the stigma of being branded disloyal?" $20,000, Mr. President, is just token.

Rights guaranteed by the Constitution were sacrificed under the cloak of national security. This has been a common occurrence in the United States, and I think the time has come when we should put a stop to this. In the name of national security it has been fashionable to deny other Americans their constitutional rights, and in this case the Congress supported the President's policy of removal and detention by making the violation of orders issued pursuant to this Executive Order 9066 a criminal offense. And, sadly, the U.S. Supreme Court also upheld exclusion in the context of war.

But as we know, Mr. President, the Supreme Court has not always been correct. There was a time when the Supreme Court upheld slavery, and that was the law of the land. The Supreme Court in this case upheld internment, and that was the law of the land at that moment.

The Presidentially appointed Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians found no documented acts of espionage, sabotage, or fifth column activity by any, Mr. President, by any identifiable American citizen of Japanese ancestry or resident Japanese aliens on the west coast.

This was supposed to have been the rationale for this mass evacuation and mass incarceration, that these Americans were not to be trusted, that these Americans were agents of an enemy country, that these Americans would spy and carry out espionage, and this Presidentially appointed Commission, which incidentally was made up of leading citizens throughout this land -- and only one member of that Commission was of Japanese ancestry -- declared that there were no acts of espionage whatsoever. And sadly, the Commission in its 1983 report concluded that internment was motivated by racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

[*S4324] The Commission further found that "widespread ignorance about Americans of Japanese descent contributed to a policy conceived in haste and executed in an atmosphere of fear and anger at Japan." The Government and society at large refused to recognize the distinction between the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor and Japanese-Americans and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry.

I know that this sounds facetious and trite, but to many Americans just because we look alike we must be alike. Mr. President, as we all know, that is not so. But the signs of the times, those times, were reflected by Gen. John Dewitt's famous sentiment that "a Jap is a Jap."

If, Mr. President, we as a nation fail to learn from this tragic experience, history may repeat itself, hiding behind the cloak of national security and persecuting Americans of a particular race or ethnic group or religious group for the actions committed by people of their ancestoral homeland. For example, it is not inconceivable that a possible future conflict with countries south of the border could rouse hostile feelings against millions of Hispanic Americans in this country. I hope that this would never occur.

Mr. President, the goal of S. 1009 is to benefit all citizens of our Nation by educating our citizens to preclude this event from occurring again to any other ethnic or religious group or any person suspected of being less than a loyal citizen. This bill reinforces the strength of our Constitution by reaffirming our commitment to upholding the constitutional rights of all our citizens. So, respectfully, I strongly urge its passage and in so doing once again commend and congratulate my distinguished colleague from Hawaii.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Will the distinguished senior Senator from Hawaii yield?

Mr. INOUYE. I will be very pleased to yield to the Senator.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I congratulate the senior Senator from Hawaii for his excellent statement. Coming from one who served in the 442d Regimental Combat Team, the most highly decorated military unit in the entire history of the United States, and having been highly decorated with the second highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross, and having sacrified an arm in that war, I believe what the senior Senator from Hawaii has to say should be taken most seriously. I do hope that our colleagues will take him in all seriousness and defeat the Hecht amendment. I once more congratulate my senior colleague from Hawaii.

Mr. INOUYE. I thank the Senator for his generous comments.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, while I understand the amendment of the Senator from Nevada, I hope that the Senate will disapprove it. The recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians were clear. They found that there had not been compensation for the damages and losses suffered by the Japanese-Americans and Aleut people.

A recounted yesterday what happened when the United States military removed 900 American citizens -- Aleuts, who lived on the Aleutian chain and the Pribilof Islands -- from their homes and took them to abandoned canneries and gold mining camps in southeastern Alaska.

Not many people understand the distances in our State. Attu and Kiska, which the Japanese invaded, are the most western islands in the Aleutian chain. The military saw fit to remove all Aleuts from all of the islands. Alaskans believed they did that because they wanted to occupy the islands and just did not want any local people in their way.

The Pribilof Islands were over 1,000 miles from the two islands the Japanese had taken. The Japanese never attempted to move further up along the Aleutian chain. They made an invasion of those two islands and fortified them. But there was really no necessity to remove these people.

I agree with what the Senator from Nevada said, having lived through that period, that there was a lot of rumor and fear. I remember as a young boy in California at that time going out of the house at night when the antiaircraft guns were shooting at the Moon, literally, in Los Angeles. There was no Japanese attack being made upon Los Angeles, but somone had reported there was. Antiaircraft batteries from all over Los Angeles lit up the sky for 2 or 3 hours that night until they found out there were no Japanese planes in the vicinity and no enemy to shoot at at all. It was a period of really intense hysteria. There is no question about that.

But let us put this in perspective. Let us assume that the Japanese came to Baltimore. The action of the United States military removing the Aleuts would be like going to Chicago and then going west from Chicago about 1,000 miles and taking everyone between Chicago and Denver and moving them out of harm's way.

The record is clear that in terms of this internment -- and it was an internment -- was for the convenience of the Government. And these people, because they were of native desent, were taken and interned. They were kept for 2 to 3 years in those camps. In those days, Alaska was a territory, under wartime conditions, and it was not possible to travel.

I related yesterday how one of my friends, Flore Lekanoff, was taken from one of those camps in southeastern Alaska back to the Pribilof Islands to hunt for seals for the military. He was never paid for that. He was never recognized as being in the service of the Government. None of these people were treated as though they were in the service of the Government. They were literally just shoved aside.

I also knew a great many people, I knew them personally, who were sent to Santa Anita, another of these Japanese-American relocation camps.

This bill provides compensation that the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians found was warranted. When I was chairman of our subcommittee I held hearings in Los Angeles. They lasted for several days. We have conducted hearings on this subject now for a series of Congresses, and the strange thing is, Mr. President, that the circle of those who suffered narrows. And because of deaths the number of people affected by this legislation is much different than it would have been even 3 years ago when I held those hearings. In fact, several Aleuts have died just in the last few months as we've been working to get this bill to the floor.

I believe that the Senator's amendment is clear. It says that, as a nation, let us apologize, but let us ignore all of the losses, all of our failures, to compensate the victims.

As our committee report points out, in August 1944, President Roosevelt allocated $200,000 from Federal funds for rehabilitation of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands. Some 900people had spent 2 to 3 years confined, many of them working without any compensation at all from the Federal Government, their homes destroyed, their churches destroyed, and the Federal Government in its kindness allocated $200,000 to rehabilitate the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands. That included only $25,000 for all damages suffered by the Aleuts.

The Commission reports to us that there was substantial damage, and it still exists. As I remarked yesterday, the only place where the U.S. flag flew in World War II that has not been cleared of World War II debris is in the Aleutian Islands. Congress in its wisdom has made a great portion of that area a wildlife refuge. It is a bird sanctuary. But is it unique in that it is the only bird sanctuary in the world that no one can go to because it is still contaminated with World War II ammunition, mines, and other devices that were brought to the Aleutian Islands, not by the Japanese but by the United States.

I find the amendment of the Senator from Nevada one that I strenuously oppose because it removes the mechanism to settle this issue now. Most of these people that are going to be benefited by this bill are past 60. They have waited a long, long time. Most of them never recovered financially, particularly the people I represent in the Aleutian chain. Many are still destitute. This settlement is the final act to close this chapter of history and to try to make restitution for that period of hysteria.

The people who made those decisions were good Americans. They were defending the country. They made mistakes. President Ford was the first President to make the finding that mistakes were made in World War II with regard to Japanese-Americans and Aleuts. I think it was important [*S4325] that President Ford made that finding.

We now know from the Commission's record that the Attorney General warned the President that what was to be done was not constitutional. The former Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, notified the President that the order was not necessary from the point of view of intelligence or any type of activity, and that it was contrary to the best interests of the Government at that time.

The Secretary of War expressed his belief that the program was "ill advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel," and Milton Eisenhower, the former President's brother, who was Director of Wartime Relocation, described the evacuation and detention as "an inhuman mistake."

The late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, who was then Attorney General of California, stated that, "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."

I think the record is clear that there ought not to be any dispute that our country made a serious mistake. While I support the apology that is contained in the bill, that is not sufficient. If the Senator's amendment passes, who is going to restore those public buildings that were destroyed and have never yet been replaced? Who is going to compensate these people who spent time living in the abandoned canneries and gold mines in southeastern Alaska -- whole families?

I think the amendment should be defeated because again, with great affection for my friend from Nevada, the Hecht amendment will gut this bill. The provisions which the amendment would delete are the provisions we fought over. We had hearings on it throughout the country. Everyone has had a chance to review it.

Strangely, the amendment would retain the findings of the bill that these people suffered enormous damages and losses and have not been compensated adequately, but would remove the compensation.

I hope the Senate will reject the amendment of the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Matsunaga legislation and in opposition to the Hecht amendment.

I think it is difficult to add to the eloquent arguments made by my friend from Alaska and my friend from Hawaii as they have stated, clearly and succinctly, that this is a good Nation, one with a proud history, but by no means perfect, because we are, as human institutions, subject to all the fallibilities of human beings, particularly those of fear, as were all of us at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

What ensued was a terrible failure of judgment. At the time, it seemed entirely reasonable, when we had been taken unaware and suffered a catastrophic blow, to be suspicious of all those who, in the fear of the moment, might in some way be suspect as contributing to further espionage against the United States.

As we have heard from the Senator from Alaska, those in charge of our security, those charged with the responsibility for collecting domestic intelligence, found that we had very quickly overreacted, perhaps reasonably so in the panic of the moment, or, if not reasonably, at least understandably. But, Mr. President, having made that mistake, we persisted in it for 4 long years and perpetrated on a group of loyal Americans one of the great traversities in our history. We kept behind barbed wire the fathers, the mothers, the uncles, the aunts, the younger brothers and sisters of the most celebrated and highly decorated combat units in American history. We kept them behind barbed wire, living at Santa Anita and other places.

We now acknowledge the tragic error of judgment that required, in that moment of panic, that we take protective action, rounding up Aleuts and Americans of Japanese ancestry who posed no threat, and who, to the contrary, gave us their sons as volunteers.

Mr. President, the question before us is whether or not, in order to make the adequate apology that is contained in this legislation, we are required to make adequate compensation. The answer is that we do.

A moment ago the Senator from Hawaii said, "How do you compensate for the psychic suffering, for the pain, the anguish, the incalculable anguish, suffered by those interned in those camps?" It is a rhetorical question; because it is difficult, if not impossible, to make whole by compensation those who suffered the losses he described. However, as the Senator from Alaska has pointed out, there were losses that involved property.

I can tell you that they were commonplace in California. The generation that had migrated to the United States from Japan and founded small businesses, groceries, and little shops, those small farmers who came to this country and who then raised the next generation of Americans who gave their lives gallantly in combat in Italy, suffered terrible depredations. They lost those businesses, in many cases. They never were able to return to those family farms.

Mr. President, I do not know how one can generalize a prescription and do perfect equity in every case. And that is what this bill attempts to do. But I can only say that I think the $20,000 it seeks as the reward for the suffering and the property lost involved is in no way an exaggeration of what actually was lost and suffered. Indeed, I would guess that in most cases where property loss occurred, $20,000 is a small fraction of the actual loss in the value of that property, compounded over the years.

As the Senator from Alaska has said, those who will be the recipients of these awards, in almost every case, are now 60 years or more of age. It is a declining population, declining in number.

The Senator from Nevada quite correctly points out that we are called upon to set and keep priorities in a time of deficit reduction. I say to him, with the greatest respect -- and to others who make the same argument -- that the first call upon a nation is that it honor its just obligations. This is a just obligation, an effort on the part of the United States, belatedly, to make an apology to loyal Americans and to right an injustice which, in a moment of panic, was visited upon them. In that view, it must be seen as a priority, a high priority, one that we are late in recognizing, and one that we should, without further delay, not just acknowledge but bring to fruition, so that this debt can be paid. We cannot close this chapter, because we should not forget.

There are certain lessons in human history that the next generation and the next and the next should be reminded of. These were not evil people among our leadership who were guilty of this error in judgment. They were decent Americans, moved by what they thought to be reasonable fears to take what they thought to be legitimate protective measures. But they were wrong. Afterwards perhaps, it should have been clear to them that they were wrong, that injustice continued.

As we must never forget the Holocaust and what the indifference and the timidity of good and decent people permitted to occur in Europe throughout the duration of World War II, so we must recognize that good and decent people had a lapse of judgment and, very candidly, a lapse of the mind, of spiritual courage that is necessary to right these wrongs in this country where we prize justice, in this country where we have welcomed succeeding waves of immigrants, recognizing that in each came the richest resource of this Nation, adding to our strength by adding to our diversity, even as these new generations of immigrants sought to be assimilated and take advantage of the opportunity that has been the fundamental meaning of this land for one wave of immigrants after another.

So, Mr. President, we should pay this debt. We should acknowledge this injustice. We should right this wrong. And in order to make this apology adequately, this measure of compensation, it seems to me, is entirely warranted. I hope my colleagues will view it as in fact we should, as an urgent priority, a call upon our own national honor.

[*S4326] Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, will the Senator from California yield?

Mr. WILSON. With pleasure.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I wish to thank the distinguished junior Senator from California for being one of the early cosponsors of S. 1009 and for his most persuasive statement just made not only for the provisions of the bill but against the Hecht amendment.

I wish to thank him once again, and I do hope that what he has said will influence those who are not cosponsors of this measure and vote against the Hecht amendment.

Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Hawaii. He has been most generous in his comment. I think I should thank him for the great tenacity of purpose on his part that has brought this legislation to the floor with the number of cosponsors that have been added to it, but perhaps most significantly I should point out that he and his colleague from Hawaii represent I think the very kind of courage, physical and moral, that was demonstrated not only years ago on the field of battle on behalf of the United States, but the kind of courage and moral stamina on the floor of the Senate that they have both so often demonstrated.

It is, I think, perhaps the clearest vindication of my statement just made about the good fortune of the United States in being able to welcome to our shores the sons and daughters of immigrants who perhaps understand better than many of us who are native born the meaning of this country.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I thank the Senator from California.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Hecht].

The Hecht amendment would delete from the bill funds provided to compensate each of about 60,000 surviving former internees and would also delete funds provided for the establishment of a "civil liberties education fund." Further, the Hecht amendment would delete title III of the bill, pertaining to compensation for Aleuts, in its entirety.

Those who contend that monetary compensation is an inappropriate way to redress this longstanding injustice overlook the fact that monetary compensatory remedies are an integral part of our system of jurisprudence. It has long been regarded as proper for the courts to award monetary damages to individuals who have been unjustifiably injured. The amounts of damages vary widely, of course, ranging from several hundred dollars to well over $100,000, and the vast majority of such awards are for wrongful detentions of only a few days. To cite only a few examples, in the case of BUCHER v. KRAUSE (200 F. 2d 576, 7th Cir., 1952), a man wrongfully arrested following a barroom scuffle and held in jail for just 1 day was awarded $50,000 in compensatory damages; in GLOBE SHOPPING v. WILLIAMS (Tex. Civ. App. 1976), a shopper falsely arrested and imprisoned for only 6 hours was awarded $35,000 in compensatory damages; and in SKILLERN v. STEWART (379 S.W. 2d 687, Tex. Civ. App. 1964), a woman who was falsely charged with shoplifting by her employer, detained for several hours, and assaulted, was awarded $10,000 in compensatory damages plus $10,000 in punitive damages. In Dellums versus Powell, the case stemming from the arrest and detention of demonstrators during the anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC on May 1, 1972, compensatory damages in amounts ranging from $120 to $1,800 were awarded to those detained for a few hours up to 3 days.

In addition to these actions by the courts, Congress has acted to redress the claims of civilians and military personnel held captive by the enemy in World War II, the Korean conflict, and the war in Vietnam. Civilian Federal employees who were held hostage in Iran for less than 18 months were awarded compensation in the amount of $22,000 per person by act of Congress.

Mr. President, the American citizens of Japanese ancestry who were the victims of the Federal Government's wartime policy were imprisoned for 3 years or more not by an enemy, but by their own government, the United States of America. It seems to me that it is equally important, if not more important, that we provide monetary compensation as was done in cases I just cited. To do any less would demean the serious injustice which they suffered; $20,000, equal to $3,000 in 1945 dollars, is truly not too much for individuals who were falsely incarcerated for 3 years or longer.

During hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, which came out with that excellent report which all members have in their offices, former internees, many telling their stories for the first time, told of infants, young mothers, and elderly persons who died for lack of adequate medical care and facilities; of families who were separated, with elderly parents or in-laws going to one camp while their married childern were sent to another; of large families forced to live together in one small room; of the constant, nagging uncertainty about the future, both near and long term; of the strains which this placed on their families and on the close-knit Japanese American community as a whole; and, most dramatically, of internees who were shot and killed by camp guards because they inadvertently wandered too close to the camp barbed wire fences. In one such incident, an elderly man and his grandson were playing pitch-catch ball near the fence late one afternoon. Under the camp rules, one was never to be seen between the two barbed wire fences after 6 p.m. Although it was after 6 o'clock, on this day it was a bright summer day and it was still broad daylight. The grandfather having missed the ball chased after it and when he got in between the two fences the guard up on the watchtower yelled, "Get back," and the elderly gentleman said, "Oh, I am only going for the ball," and continued his chase; whereupon, the guard up on the watchtower fired the machinegun killing the elderly man instantly. His grandson and members of his family still bear the scars of that incident.

And I, myself, become overly emotional when I think about it even to this day.

It is also reported, Mr. President, that an elderly American veteran of World War I committed suicide because he was so ashamed of being branded as "disloyal" to the United States. Indeed, the stigma of disloyalty has haunted Japanese-Americans for the past 45 years and it is one of the principal reasons that they are seeking congressional action to remove that cloud over their heads.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I am happy to yield.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding because I think it is important for the Senate to realize that there are 10 of us from the west coast and the two offshore States. All of us but one were alive and lived through this period. All 10 of us have joined together in this bill. None of us that lived through this period have any question about the statement that the Senator from Hawaii has just made. We know of our own knowledge what we saw in those days as young men.

The thing that is appalling to me is that it has been so long, Mr. President, since so many people have admitted the mistake, and so many people now know that the distinguished leaders of the time urged the military not to do this -- the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the FBI director.

The comments that the Senator has just made have been related to me by Japanese friends of mine that I have known since I was a child -- people that went to school with us, as I said yesterday, people that we have worked with. And each one of them has said to me the same thing that the distinguished junior Senator has just said: "How can we explain to our children what they were doing living in stables, living in camps on the desert or, in the case of my Aleut constitutents, living in places, which were built to be used for 2 or 3 months in the summertime, for 2 to 3 years, when they had done no wrong at all?"

It is not just the generations that were in the camps that have been scarred; it has been the children of those people. It is important now for us not to just say we are sorry, but, as a government, to recognize the compensatory system of our system of justice, as the Senator has said.

[*S4327] I do not think we can -- and I know others are going to speak about this -- I do not think we can really get down to the point of being jurors and saying how much this compensation should be.

But we hired exports. The Commission hired experts to determine what these people would have earned while they were in the camps; how much would they would have been able to save from earnings in those times -- and wartime earnings were pretty good.

Now, there is a question here about the compensation side which to me is a difficult thing to grasp. I just want the Senator from Hawaii to understand that I do not understand people who are willing to say we made a mistake, we were wrong, but are not going to do anything about it. If you were in court -- and incidentally there is still one case pending, maybe two -- in court, the jurors would have the duty of determining what the compensation should be not only in terms of actual compensatory damages, but in terms of punitive damages, too.

We are not going to just hand out money. Those people who apply, who believe that they are entitled to this money and need this money, will be able to get this money.

I do not know how many of our Aleut people will apply, and I do not know how many Japanese-Americans will apply. But the concept is that they can apply for these damages.

I sort of interrupted my friend, but he was choking up, as I want to do in this debate once in a while, and I wanted him to know I share his emotions. I think everybody who lived through that period of time, who had personal friends that literally disappeared, and then came back after the war, can only be appalled.

I think the Senate should know that while this is not a regional consideration, there is not a Senator on this floor who is from the area involved who lived through it that is not an original cosponsor of this legislation, along with the two Senators from Hawaii.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I thank the Senator from Alaska for coming to my relief and for his major role in bringing about the passage of the bill. The way the bill has been reported out of the Government Relations Committee is one in which the senior Senator from Alaska has played a major role. I thank him for that. I join him in the statements he makes.

Mr. President, the sponsors of the bill do not pretend that history can be erased, but the measure would provide for the first time an official acknowledgement of the grave injustice which was done, and it would provide token monetary compensation to those who suffered irreparable losses. Without such compensation the bill would be meaningless.

Mr. President, perhaps of greater significance, as I stated yesterday, is that S. 1009 would remove forever a longstanding blot on that great Constitution of the United States, and its passage, as reported by the committee, will prove that our beloved country is great enough to acknowledge and correct its past mistakes.

Mr. President, I urge the defeat of the Hecht amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Wirth). The Senator from Virginia.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment.

I understand my distinguished colleague from Alaska is preparing to leave the floor. He touched on some of the concerns that I have. I have a twofold concern about the pending proposed legislation: First, the dollars which are addressed in the amendment; and, second, the language in the bill which I find has a judgmental tone about it. And I quote the bill, "a failure of political leadership" at the time.

So really, in effect, what we are doing is trying to judge the actions of our predecessors who stood on this very floor in that period of time and made the decisions which we are reviewing here in hindsight so many years thereafter.

Congress was involved in this decision, as well as the President. And as I understand it, the Supreme Court was involved in a review process.

That is all three branches of the Government: executive branch, legislative branch, and the judicial branch.

Somehow, instead of saying that we cast a blanket indictment on the judgement of those men and women, honorable and exercising their best judgment in light of the facts of the time, it seems to me that we should move with some caution here today.

While I did not live on the west coast, I was a young man right here in the Nation's Capital in northern Virginia. I remember the period very well. Before I entered the Navy in World War II, I can recall our home right here in the Nation's Capital was, like every other home, equipped with curtains that we drew down at night such that the modest amount of electricity that was used in our home could not go through the cracks of the windows. This city lived in a blackout in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. That I remember ever so vividly, the Nation's Capital in blackout.

So I am wondering if we should, with some reflection, go slowly as we pronounce judgment on the leaders of the three branches of our Government at that time.

I have heard the statements made by our distinguished colleagues from Hawaii, and indeed joined in by the distinguished Senator from Alaska in reciting the facts and the hardship and the suffering for which we all have compassion today as, indeed, I am sure Americans did at that time. And we should bring out those cases today, most poignantly, as our distinguished colleague from Hawaii has done. That is a very important part of the debate that we have here today and I respect him for it and I respect the survivors. But I am wondering whether or not we should not reflect a little more caution, a little more understanding on those who sat in this Chamber.

The President at that time was a very courageous man. Indeed, Members of the Supreme Court, and of the Congress all of whom rendered a measure of judgment on this situation -- Does my colleague wish to respond?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to that. I do have to go to a committee meeting; I was just called there. I am happy to stay to make sure we have a good dialog with my friend.

Congress' role was to pass a law to authorize the Federal Government to enforce compliance with directives issued by Executive order. It did not approve this order. It approved a general concept of Executive orders and gave the authority to enforce them.

The Supreme Court refused to uphold a challenge to the legality of the orders that were issued under that general authority that Congress had passed. The Supreme Court has not ruled, to my knowledge, yet, on whether or not the Japanese-Americans or the Aleuts are entitled to compensation for the wrongs that were committed.

Let us look at the question whether we are taking some action now which would cast a challenge upon the decisions that were made then. In 1976, President Ford rescinded the Executive order. Mind you, it had been in effect since 1942 to 1976. He rescinded the Executive order and he stated that the wartime measures under the order were a setback to the fundamental principles on which this Government was founded and they involved national mistakes.

The role of the Commission was to provide us with a record of what happened at that time. Although the President [Roosevelt] signed the Executive order giving the Secretary of War and the commanders of the military the power to exclude any and all persons from designated areas in order to provide security against sabotage and espionage, the Attorney General at that time argued that the total exclusion of the Japanese from the west coast was unnecessary.

The Director of the FBI notified the President's people that ethnic Japanese -- Japanese-Americans -- presented no threat to the national security.

In terms of our Aleut people, a local commander took it upon himself to move 900 people who were almost 1,000 miles from the invasion area on Attu and Kiska 2,000 miles away to southeastern Alaska and dump them [*S4328] off at abandoned canneries and gold mine sites.

To my knowledge, we have already acknowledged we made mistakes. All the way through these hearings I conducted, I cannot remember one person, even our former colleague Mr. Goodell, who disagrees with these actions.

Mr. WARNER. For the record, that should be known.

Mr. STEVENS. He was a former Senator from California. But he did not say there were no mistakes made.

Mr. WARNER. I am not arguing there were no mistakes made. I question this blanket indictment proposed to be cast by this proposed action on the Members of the Senate and the House and the Federal judiciary and indeed the executive branch. You point out there was a division of opinion in the executive branch, as there is on most major subjects.

Mr. STEVENS. I do not think it is a difference of opinion, Mr. President, when the Secretary of State says the forced evacuation of citizens was an injustice; the Attorney General at the time said the program was "ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel;" the Director of Relocation said it was an "inhumane mistake;" the then-attorney general of California has indicated when he became Chief Justice that he "deeply regretted" the order because he thought it was in violation of our duty to our citizens.

I do not think we are attacking anybody. I am not part of an attack of anybody or the Government itself. I served under President Roosevelt and I was proud to do so. I think he was a fantastic wartime Commander. The problem is not whether he was a fantastic Commander. The question is whether the Government, acting under his order, made a mistake.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, he made the decision. The President of the United States of America made the decision after receiving the best advice from his advisers. So the buck stops there.

Mr. STEVENS. No; he made the decision to issue the order, as I indicated, that people who were in areas designated under the order as being areas -- and the west coast was totally designated -- could be removed by military commanders if they were presenting a problem as far as security is concerned. He was particularly concerned with sabotage and espionage. There is not one single thing in the record that indicates either the Japanese-Americans in California or the Aleuts in Alaska were charged with any breach of internal security, any sabotage, or took any action that would warrant their being included under that order.

I think the Senate ought to understand. We are not challenging the order that was made to arrest those who were a risk in terms of internal security. We are challenging the decisions that were made by the military commanders, basically on a local level, to intern people. As I said, I remember the time when they took the people from my high school and put them in Santa Anita. They moved the horses out and put the families in.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I concede that it was an error in judgment by the President of the United States. He should have listened to those advisers who cautioned him against it.

Mr. STEVENS. It was not the President of the United States.

Mr. WARNER. He signed the Executive order.

Mr. STEVENS. He signed a valid Executive order. It was upheld by the Supreme Court. It was valid in this Senator's judgment. It said arrest those people who are a threat to the internal security of the United States, who pose a threat of commiting acts of sabotage or espionage.

But what I am saying is there is no record that there was any justification in taking the Japanese-Americans or the Aleuts under that order. That was not a mistake of the President of the United States. It was a mistake of the arresting officers. It has since been acknowledged as a mistake by a subsequent President of the United States, President Ford, in revoking that order. He said there were serious mistakes -- grievous mistakes made under that order -- and I would hope my friend would accept the distinction, Mr. President.

We are not challenging history. We are not challenging the concept that a country has a right to protect itself against sabotage and espionage. That is not the case.

But show me one shred of evidence that these people, the Japanese-Americans or the Aleuts, were charged with either espionage or a threat to internal security and I will withdraw my name from this act.

Mr. HECHT. Will the Senator from Alaska yield?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. HECHT. We are not questioning that all in my amendment. What we are talking about is compensation for these people. Now, after all of these years, are we saying: "We have harmed you? We have done things we should not have done, but here is $20,000 tax free, and we will forget everything"? Is that what you are trying to say?

We agree in hindsight that it was wrong. I am from a small town in Missouri -- Cape Girardeau, MO. I remember very well Pearl Harbor Day. There was not one American woman who did not have tears in her eyes because they either had children in the service or were soon going to be there.

In this particular little city of Cape Girardeau, there was one Japanese couple who lived on the outskirts. Luckily, the police were able to grab them and move them away because there was a lynch mob that would have reached their house within 2 hours.

I do not think America has ever had a day where the turmoil, the confusion in their minds was so violent. People were in a hysteria. We had been attacked. Let us not sit here in the tranquility of the U.S. Senate 45 years later and think what America was like on December 7, 1941. The President had to make a decision. He did.

The Senator mentioned compensation. Then in a court of law, there must be compensation. This is not a court of law. This is the U.S. Senate.

I have been elected by the people of Nevada, by the people who are taxpayers from Nevada. What I am saying is under our deficit today, the restrictions, and what we are doing, we cannot afford this type of a $1.3 billion or $1.5 billion, whatever it might amount to. I cannot in good conscience go back to my State of Nevada and tell the survivors of Bataan, Iwo Jima -- all of those battles in the South Pacific, in Asia -- and tell them we have forgotten you, but what we are doing is compensating the people who we moved into camps; their houses were ruined.

We cannot forget the American veterans. We are apologizing, but what we are saying is, let us take the monetary part out of it. Many of these people are multimillionaires today. Are they going to -- --

Mr. STEVENS. Mr President, I yielded. Let me disabuse that myth. I know of no multimillionaires on the islands of the Aleutians, and I know of very few in the Japanese-American group that we are talking about. There may be some newcomers into the ranks of millionaires among the younger ones, but I do not know of any of these multimillionaires.

Mr. President, let me also disabuse my friend of our mistreatment of the people who are survivors of Bataan and who are veterans. I am a veteran. I have not abandoned my cause to support the veteran on this floor. Show one veteran we have abandoned. We have laws here to protect and assist the veterans. We provide hospitals. We have attempted to live up to our obligation to our veterans. That is not a subject that ought to come into consideration here.

I have no problem facing my veterans and telling them that I have tried to help right a wrong that was committed when we were fighting that war. Did you know that the people who were taken from the Aleutian Islands to Japan and incarcerated by the Japanese were compensated by the American Government? Did you know that?

Mr. President, I cannot understand why we are arguing about compensation for the survivors. This is not going to dependents. It is only going to those people who still survive. It is not anywhere near the amount that the Commission found would be necessary to fully compensate these people, but it is there for those who feel they need [*S4329] help now to make an application and get this amount from their Government.

Imagine the people from the Aleutians who were taken and put into forced labor for the period of time that they were kept on those islands. They received no compensation at all. When they got back, for all of their islands, which stretch 2,400 miles into the Pacific Ocean -- the Government, in its wisdom, set aside$200,000 to repair and replace the homes that were destroyed by the military and the churches that were destroyed, and included $25,000 for compensation for 900 people for 2 to 3 years. We are talking about common sense in terms of compensation.

I went over this. I will be glad to go over it with the Senator if he would like to know how the Commission went through the process of determining how much money should be included here. The Aleuts and the Japanese-Americans are not being fully compensated under this bill. I tried to make the point that this is not what a jury would award. If you want to send these claims to the courts and let the court award those damages, you better believe you are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars now by the time that money would be brought forward and indexed from the time of the forties.

Mr. WARNER. Did the Senator say hundreds of billions?

Mr. STEVENS. Hundreds of billions.

Mr. HECHT. Hundreds of billions?

Mr. STEVENS. If it was properly indexed in terms of actual compensatory and punitive losses for what a jury should have awarded in the forties.

Mr. WARNER. I know the Senator has to leave. My major concern again is reflecting on the history. The Senator from Alaska has taken issue with the Senator from Virginia that the action which is pending before the Senate today is a blanket indictment of our political leadership at that time.

I would like the Senator to turn to page 33 of the bill, if he would. In "Findings and Purpose," section 1, part 4:

The internment of the individual of Japanese ancestry was caused by racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

Are we to sit here 45 to 47 years later and make that blanket assertion on the entire Government of the United States, the three branches that had some measure of involvement in this case?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, if that is directed to me, I will point out that that portion of the bill is not affected by the Hecht amendment.

Mr. WARNER. I understand that, but the Senator is about to leave the floor, and he kindly said we could engage in a colloquy.

Mr. STEVENS. I believe that is correct. I believe at the time there was wartime hysteria. I just described before the Senator came out that I remember as a young man coming out of the house at night because all the antiaircraft guns in Los Angeles -- which were near at that time and were shooting at planes that were supposed to be there, and there never were planes there. You talk about hysteria; there was hysteria on the west coast.

Second, there was racial prejudice. It is manifest in this action that was taken at the time by taking these people, rounding them up, turning out the racehorses and putting them in stables and keeping them there for years at a time.

Mr. WARNER. I concede those wrongs, but is the Senator willing to have this Chamber go on record today that that was a "failure of political leadership"?

Mr. STEVENS. I am because I believe the Government was set up as a Government of laws under men who can make mistakes, and mistakes were made.

We already indicated no one argued with the statement of President Ford that there were mistakes made, and when he rejected that Executive order in 1976, he specifically made that finding. He made a finding that there were national mistakes.

National mistakes only come about because of a failure of political leadership. I believe that that statement is correct.

Beyond that, Mr. President, it seems to me -- and I will close, if I may, with my friend unless he has some other questions -- it seems to me that the purpose of the bill is to try and find a way to implement the recognition of a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. We passed a law to authorize this Commission to go into this in depth.

It was a bipartisan Commission of distinguished Americans. They made those findings. The Senator from Virginia asked me if we are supposed to approve this statement. We are approving the statement made in the Commission's report. As a matter of fact, the Commission's report goes a little further, if you really want to know. I would urge Senators to read that report. That Commission made these findings and this bill is a bill to accept those findings and to implement their recommendations. I believe the House has gone on record accepting those findings. To fail to do so now on the floor of the Senate I think would similarly be a problem as far as political leadership is concerned.

Mr. MATSUNAGA addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. I would not want to be part of a group that did not accept the findings of this distinguished Commission, a Commission that was authorized to make these findings and did make them.

Mr. MATSUNAGA addressed the Chair.%

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska has the floor.

Mr. MATSUNAGA addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, in response to the question raised by the Senator from Virginia, who seemed to indicate that we ought to take a little more time in studying this matter before we take any action in the Congress, let me point out that Congress waited 38 years and finally in 1980, because there were those among us here who believed that a study of the entire issue ought to be made, created the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. So the findings of that Commission are what the Congress was seeking, and this bill, S. 1009, is merely to implement the recommendations of that Commission.

The Commission found, I will point out to the Senator from Virginia, by uncovering secret documents in the Archives in 1982, that naval intelligence and the FBI had recommended to the President of the United States that no action be taken with reference to the recommendation of General Dewitt, who was in command of the west coast, who recommended the evacuation and internment of Japanese-Americans and their resident alien parents, because there was no military necessity or any danger to national security. The FBI as well as naval intelligence came out with a report, as was pointed out by the Senator from Alaska, that there was not a single case of sabotage, espionage, fifth column activity before, during or after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it was a finding of the Commission that it was due to war hysteria, racial prejudice, and failure on the part of our political leaders that the mass evacuation and internment took place.

So I appeal to the Senator from Virginia, who incidentally was an original cosponsor of the measure, to read this comprehensive report, which he has in his office, I am sure, titled "Personal Justice Denied," which is the report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and a smaller edition which sets forth the recommendations of that Commission. As the Senator from Virginia well knows, the Commission consisted of a distinguished panel of judges, a former member of the Supreme Court, a former Senator, and a former Congressman.

So that I think the suggestion that action be further delayed until such time as we make further study is not at all warranted.

Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the remarks of the Senator from Virginia were in no way intended to be dilatory or to prolong judgment on these questions. I think it is most appropriate that we are now at this juncture. This [*S4330] Commission has done a very credible job. I do not dispute the facts. I am not prepared to be in any way dilatory today, not to allow this measure to go forward, to be voted upon.

It is just that somehow I feel obligated to rise and in some respects defend the Members of this Chamber, members of the executive branch, and to a certain extent the members of the judicial branch who at that time, in light of the facts, felt they were rendering the best judgment they could on behalf of this Nation. The way these findings are drawn strikes this Senator as a rather severe indictment given the unusual nature of that period, unlike any in the history of this Nation. Therefore, I say Senators should pause to reflect just for a moment on that particular part of the bill that troubles me when that blanket indictment is cast to the political leadership of the United States of America. At that time they perhaps did not have as much opportunity or time to assess all the evidence with respect to these poor people, for whom I have compassion, for whom I join the Senator in saying we should rectify the wrong.

But given the circumstances of our fleet resting on the bottom at Pearl Harbor, Bataan, and other events that preceded some of these judgments, I can see how their time was fully occupied with the more pressing issues of that period.

Mr. President, I have located a copy of the statements made by President Ford on February 19, 1976, together with Proclamation No. 4417, which he issued at that time. I think it would be helpful if I took a few minutes to read them.

REMARKS UPON SIGNING A PROCLAMATION CONCERNING JAPANESE-AMERICAN INTERNMENT DURING WORLD WAR II, FEBRUARY 19, 1976

February 19 is the anniversary of a very, very sad day in American history. It was on that date in 1942 that Executive Order 9066 was issued resulting in the uprooting of many, many loyal Americans. Over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes, detained in special camps, and eventually relocated.

We now know what we should have known then -- not only was that evacution wrong but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans. On the battlefield and at home the names of Japanese-Americans have been and continue to be written in America's history for the sacrifices and the contributions they have made to the well-being and to the security of this, our common Nation.

Executive Order 9066 ceased to be effective at the end of World War II. Because there was no formal statement of its termination, there remains some concern among Japanese-Americans that there yet may be some life in that obsolete document. The proclamation [4417] that I am signing here today should remove all doubt on that matter.

I call upon the American people to affirm with me that unhyphenated American promise that we have learned from the tragedy of that long ago experience -- forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American and resolve that this kind of error shall never be made again.

Mr. President, I certainly agree with every statement made by President Ford in his opening remarks. I likewise agree with every statement made in proclamation, which I shall now read:

THE PRESIDENT: PROCLAMATION 4417, An American Promise by the President of the United States of America

A PROCLAMATION

In this Bicentennial Year, we are commemorating the anniversary dates of many of the great events in American history. An honest reckoning, however, must include a recognition of our national mistakes as well as our national achievements. Learning from our mistakes is not pleasant, but as a great philosopher once admonished, we must do so if we want to avoid repeating them.

February 19th is the anniversary of a sad day in American history. It was on that date in 1942, in the midst of the response to the hostilities that began on December 7, 1941, that Executive Order No. 9066 was issued, subsequently enforced by the criminal penalties of a statute enacted March 21, 1942, resulting in the uprooting of loyal Americans. Over one hundred thousand persons of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes, detained in special camps, and eventually relocated.

The tremendous effort by the War Relocation Authority and concerned Americans for the welfare of these Japanese-Americans may add perspective to that story, but it does not erase the setback to fundamental American principles. Fortunately, the Japanese-American community in Hawaii was spared the indignities suffered by those on our mainland.

We now know what we should have known then -- not only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans. On the battlefield and at home, Japanese-Americans -- names like Hamada, Mitsumori, Marimoto, Noguchi, Yamasaki, Kido, Munemori and Miyamura -- have been and continue to be written in our history for the sacrifices and the contributions they have made to the well-being and security of this, our common Nation.

We have added here today to that list the name of our distinguished colleague, the Senator from Hawaii [Mr. Inouye].

I continue:

The Executive order that was issued on February 19, 1942, was for the sole purpose of prosecuting the war with the Axis Powers, and ceased to be effective with the end of those hostilities. Because there was no formal statement of its termination, however, there is concern among many Japanese-Americans that there may yet be some life in that obsolete document. I think it appropriate, in this our Bicentennial Year, to remove all doubt on that matter, and to make clear our commitment in the future.

Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim that all the authority conferred by Executive Order No. 9066 terminated upon the issuance of Proclamation No. 2714, which formally proclaimed the cessation of the hostilities of World War II on Decmeber 31, 1946.

I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American Promise -- that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day of February in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundredth.

Gerald R. Ford

Mr. President, I agree, as I said, whole-heartedly with every statement that was made in those two documents.

President Ford accurately and fairly set the record straight about this unfortunate period in American history. Nowhere in President Ford's remarks is there any basis for casting a blanket indictment upon the American political leadership of World War II. The documents which I have just read into the record simply do not support that charge. President Ford addressed this problem properly, and he did it in a balanced way.

I say to my distinguished colleague that I respectfully disagree with portions of the bill as written, which state that there was a failure of judgment. Those judgments were made in one of the darkest hours of the history of this country, at a time when the Nation's Capital itself, was darkened by a blackout, for fear of attack.

I think that as we consider this bill today, we should reflect on the judgments of well-intentioned men and women in this Chamber and the Chamber of the House; the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt; members of the Supreme Court, and other judicial officers who had to review those decisions.

Mr. HECHT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I have the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii has the floor.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, in response to the Senator from Virginia, who seems to indicate that this may be an indictment of the executive as well as the legislative branch -- that is, the Congress -- the Senator from Alaska has pointed out that President Ford, in repealing Executive Order 9066, which authorized the evacuation, made a statement that there was a grave national error made. He acknowledged the error on the part of the Executive

Mr. WARNER. I acknowledge the error, Mr. President.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Here we have 73 cosponsors of the Senate. The House has already passed the measure, H.R. 442, given the number of the regimental combat team. So it is a recognition on the part of the House of Representatives that a grave wrong was imposed upon not only the Japanese-Americans but upon the Aleuts, and it is high time some restitution be made.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I agree a great wrong was done. I join the Senator is that. I have made my point and I think I have perhaps said enough.

[*S4331] Mr. REID and Mr. HECHT addressed the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii has the floor.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. HECHT. I thank the Senator. I want to address the crux of my amendment, because we are losing sight of it. What we are doing is debating the wrongs that were committed in 1941, late 1941, 1942, 1943, and 1944.

We are not disputing that in any way. What we are saying is we have a terrible budget deficit. We are scrambling for funds. We are trying to avoid increasing taxes. So far as the Commission, a blue ribbon panel, recommending certain findings, since I have been in the U.S. Senate, now in my sixth year, I have had one panel after another recommending what we should do. We are the elected representatives of our States. We have to look out for the taxpayers of America.

All I am saying is we did commit a wrong. We are apologizing. But after 45 years, it is not necessary to blanket $20,000 tax free to every individual involved.

That is the crux of my amendment. I yield the floor to the Senator from Hawaii.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii has the floor.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, does the Senator from Hawaii still have the floor?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii has the floor. Does the Senator from Hawaii yield the floor?

Mr. MATSUNAGA. I yield the floor.

Mr. REID addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this amendment and in support of the bill. I would like preliminarily to commend a man who has been a prime mover of S. 1009.

This man has been working diligently for many, many years to right what all of us believe is a wrong perpetrated on Japanese-Americans. He is a man who has personally felt the hand of racism and discrimination and really has overcome it, by evidence of his being a Member of this body. He has shown true patriotism and love for this country and what it stands for through his action, not only on the Senate floor but on the battlefield. I am speaking, of course, of Senator Spark Matsunaga.

Senator Matsunaga, along with Senator Inouye, was a member of the highly decorated and honored 442d Regimental Combat Team. Senator Matsunaga, then a first lieutenant and platoon leader, served in combat in North Africa and Europe and was twice wounded in battle.

Among other medals, he received the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the European-African-Middle-Eastern Campaign Medal with four battle stars.

Senator Inouye likewise showed great courage and heroism in combat in defense of this country. In a terrible firefight, in which his arm was literally torn from his body, he refused to be evacuated and continued to direct his men for the final assault on the objective they were given that day. Daniel Inouye received the Distinguished Service Cross, our Nation's second highest award for valor.

This unit, composed of Japanese-Americans, fought valiantly throughout the war, while family and friends were being locked away in internment camps. This internment is a scourge on American history that we would like to put behind us. However, there are many living Americans who cannot forget so easily the burning visions of those internment camps. And no one should forget them. They should stand as an example, at least to this Senator, of how government can get out of hand. They should remind each and every American that our revered Constitution is only a piece of paper without our commitment to uphold its precepts.

I have previously mentioned to my colleagues the case of a fellow Nevadan and friend of mine, Wilson Makabe. He also fought in the 442d and knew firsthand the racism and violation of our basic civil rights during World War II. His case illustrates the personal and constitutional crisis engendered in the internment camps.

Mr. President, from time to time there arise issues which test not only the conscience of a man but that of mankind. They deal, almost always, those great questions, with the rights of an unpopular minority.

The response to that test is the true measure of any nation which has pretentions to civilization. When the roar of the mob provokes a government into curtailing individual rights, then that government has failed in its basic duty.

The Declaration of Independence, as usual, says it best. It is to secure basic rights. The magnificent document tells us that " *** governments are instituted among men."

Our Nation has not, of course, always been successful in securing those rights. Lynch mobs have on occasion prevailed, and for long periods State, local, or Federal governments denied basic rights to segments of our population.

And yet, Mr. President, in the darkest of times, and at the most hysterical of moments, there was always a calm bulwark for our liberties. That rampart was the U.S. Constitution as of course represented by our Supreme Court. Aberrations occurred in our history. There were times when the Supreme Court did not do perhaps what was right.

There was the infamous Dred Scott decision declaring blacks to be noncitizens, and Plessy versus Ferguson which upheld the segregation doctrine. But by and large, the Court could be relied upon to protect the innocent individual or group against the tyranny of the majority.

It could be relied upon; that is, until December 7, 1941. When the air and naval forces of the Japanese empire struck suddently and without warning at Pearl Harbor, our Nation was shocked, outraged, and furious. And rightfully so.

Cries for revenge immediately rang out. Demands were made that Japan be punished for her attack. And rightfully so.

What was not right, what could not be justified, was the wellspring of ugly racism which burst to the surface in the Western United States, and especially in the Western United States. Over 100,000 American citizens of Japanese origin were dragged from their homes by the forces of the Government and interned in concentration camps.

No examination was made of their loyalty; no distinction was invoked between legitimate enemy aliens and innocent citizens. That the action taken was blatantly racist is demonstrated by the fact that the same actions were applied neither to Americans of German origin nor to those whose families came from Itlay.

One wonders if anyone in Government considered the incongruity of applying to citizens of Japanese origin the same tests of parentage and grandparentage that Hitler was applying in his despicable war of extermination against European Jewery.

There stood between those citizens and their oppressors in and out of government only that one bulwark of our liberties: the Supreme court. The Court failed the test miserably. It permitted the forced relocation and internment of American citizens on a purely racial basis over the dissent of only one Justice. That one Justice, Robert Jackson, a man whose name we have probably all forgotten, Robert Jackson, who was later to prosecute war criminals at Nuremberg, demonstrated the importance of one judge as the conscience of a nation.

One of the citizens forced from his home is a friend of mine, Wilson Makabe, who lives in Reno, NV. Wilson's response to that degradation and humiliation was maginificent. He enlisted in the U.S. Army. He enlisted from his new home, which was a concentration camp.

When he went home on leave from his military post, he had to visit his family also not at his home of years gone by, but in a concentration camp. Before that, before Wilson, an American soldier could go home to visit his fathers and sisters in their barracks, he was subjected to searches by fellow GI's who were their guards. Wilson fought along with Senator Matsunaga and Senator Inouye. He fought in Italy. His service on the battlefield was very short lived, less than 30 days before he was so badly shot they literally [*S4332] had to ship him home in a cast. They took his leg off, and eventually sent him home.

He got off the boat and called one of his brothers. That is when he learned he had a welcome home present. The neighbors had set fire to his family's home in California and burned it to the ground.

Mr. President, we, as a Congress, are today considering a piece of legislation to not only apologize but to offer reparations to survivors of this dark chapter in the history of this country. Apologies and reparations, of course, are not enough. They will never be enough, but they are all at this time that we as a civilized nation can do.

I will vote against this amendment. I will vote for this legislation, as I hope the majority of my colleagues will. Before we vote on this legislation, though, I want to say something to my friend Wilson. I want to say, "Thank you, Wilson, and I am sorry."

Mr. President, this legislation acknowledges the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of American citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry.

It makes restitution to these internees and the the Aleut residents whose personal property was taken or destroyed. These people were denied due process of law, being arrested and held without trial, appeal, or legal counsel. They were subject to unlawful searches and seizure, losing their property and jobs, as well as their freedom. They were denied equal protection under the law, being incarcerated strictly on the basis of their race.

This bill would also establish a civil liberties public education fund to sponsor research and educational activities so that the events surrounding the relocation and internment will be remembered, and the causes and circumstances of this event may be understood. The fund will also support comparative studies of similar civil liberties abuses and the effect of racial prejudice embodied by Government action in times of national stress.

It is fitting, when we are celebrating the bicentennial of our Constitution, that we reflect on those times when rights have been violated. Carl Schurz has said, "Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right." This is a case where we can put right an old wrong, and I wholeheartedly support this legislation.

Again, I commend my colleague from the State of Hawaii for his tireless, unceasing efforts to have justice restored.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, will the Senator from Nevada yield?

Mr. REID. I yield.

Mr. MATSUNAGA. Mr. President, I commend the Senator for his excellent statement and thank him for cosponsorship of the measure, as one of the early cosponsors of the measure.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, if I were to make my judgment, when I vote, on the basis of personal affection for the sponsor of any bill, resolution, or amendment, I would be standing foursquare with the Senator from Hawaii, because there is no Member of the Senate for whom I have greater affection, and he knows that. He has been my friend and I have been his since he came to the Senate.

It gives me a great amount of pain to disagree with him on this issue, because I know it is important to him. It is an emotional issue with him. But I am old enough to remember those days immediately preceding Pearl Harbor, and I remember the emotion of that time, too, when the news came on December 7 about the destruction at Pearl Harbor.

I might add that the emotion ran from coast to coast. As a matter of fact, the only time the Rose Bowl football game has not been played in Pasadena, CA, was in January 1942, when it was played in Durham, NC, because the intelligence community of this Government had reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that there were serious risks.

So, like the distinguished Senator from Virginia [Mr. Warner], I regret that part of the legislative proposal before us reflects upon the leaders of our Government at that time.

We all have 20-20 vision on Monday morning. If we had to go over it again, knowing what we know now, there may not have been any internment. I am not sure about that, because a lot of things have been left unsaid by the Commission to which various Senators have alluded that made its findings, which were incorporated into the legislation before us.

There is, for example, a distinguished resident of Hawaii named David Lowman, a former official of the National Security Agency and an acknowledged expert on declassified World War II intelligence material. Mr. Lowman has testified before the House and the Senate on the intelligence background related to the issue now before us. Mr. Lowman also has served as a consultant to the Department of Justice and has testified for that Department in Federal court as an acknowledged expert witness on this issue.

In his statement regarding the relocation, Mr. Lowman stresses that there was a stream of intelligence information being forwarded to President Roosevelt throughout 1941 and 1942. This intelligence warned over and over that Japanese residents on the west coast had been recruited into subversive nets designed to operate in a wartime environment. Mr. Lowman states that "widespread espionage by Japanese residents was reported along with the high possibility of sabotage and fifth column activity."

Let me give an example of some of the intelligence that was in addition to the MAGIC cables during this time -- M-A-G-I-C being the initials of the intelligence effort.

An Office of Naval Intelligence [ONI] December 4, 1941, summary of Japanese intelligence in the United States during 1941 concluded that an "intelligence machine geared for war" had been put into operation utilizing both alien and second-generation Japanese.

Before we begin the process of implicitly or explicitly jumping on a former President of the United States who is no longer here to defend himself, Franklin Roosevelt, let us ask ourselves what we would have done if we had been President and received that intelligence information from our own intelligence community.

So I cannot buy this business of kicking our Government around at a time when horrible destruction had occurred at Pearl Harbor, unprovoked, on a day of infamy, as Roosevelt called it before the Congress of the United States. What would we have done? It is all very well on Monday morning to replay the game of Saturday. But the President of the United States in December 1941 and January 1942, and thereafter, had a responsibility to protect this country as best he could based on the information available to him.

This Office of Naval Intelligence report of December 24, Christmas Eve, 1941, stated: "Although handicapped by the detention of many of its key individuals" -- and they were referring to the FBI sweep of suspects immediately after Pearl Harbor -- "the Japanese Intelligence Network in this hemisphere continues in operation."

What was the President of the United States supposed to do in the face of intelligence information like this? I think he did exactly what any of us would have done had we been sitting at the time in the Oval Office.

Then on February 7, 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence concluded that the continued presence of Japanese residents on Terminal Island, in the Los Angeles harbor, was a hazard to U.S. security because of continuing espionage and that sabotage was a distinct possibility.

Then there is an ONI investigation conducted on and about January 26, 1942. The investigation concerning actual events on the small Hawaiian Island of Niihau during the Pearl Harbor attack led ONI to report to the President of the United States that Japanese residents previously thought loyal might aid Japan if the opportunity arose.

I do not like that kind of suggestion. But bear in mind Pearl Harbor had happened. Our Navy was in disarray. Countless hundreds of American young men lay dead and the President of the United States was convinced that it was his responsibility to protect this country.

Would we have reacted differently?

[*S4333] A G-2 Army report of January 3, 1942, revealed that:

A widespread decentralized system of Japanese "clubs," labor organizations, and legitimate business groups has been converted into an important unit of the central Japanese Intelligence Network. There can be no doubt that most of the leaders have been and continue to function as key operatives for the Japanese Government along the West Coast.

And John J. McCloy, a name that is familiar to all of us, was Assistant Secretary of War under Franklin Roosevelt, and as far as I know, he is the only man alive today from the President's inner circle on the evacuation. I presume that nobody will attack John J. McCloy's character or integrity or his truthfulness. Mr. McCloy testified that these intelligence reports were the reason Roosevelt signed the evacuation order.

Mr. Lowman, of whom I referred at the outset of my remarks, a former official of the National Security Agency, has pointed ot that the FBI had built cases against Japanese-Americans but the Attorney General ordered them not to proceed against citizens. So it was not a willy-nilly thing. It was done with as much consideration as possible but a judgment was made that is regretted today and certainly, a lot of people had their liberties deprived in the process.

The effort to apprehend, indict, and prosecute what appeared to be hundreds of these cases in the midst of wartime without revealing intelligence sources -- at the same time trying to defend the west coast against attack in the face of what was perceived to be ongoing espionage -- was beyond reason. It could not be done. It would not be done today under similar circumstances. And it was in this context that the President of the United States ordered the evacuation as the only effective solution available to him under the circumstances.

Now, I hope that we can proceed and I shall discuss various aspects of this later on in consideration of this measure, but I hope we can proceed with a little more care in terms of outright statements, and I will say to the distinguished Senator from Virginia that I appreciate his comments that I heard earlier.

For example, there was one Senator on this floor this morning, and he is a Senator whom I respect, who said that the program allows individuals to apply for reparations if they think they are entitled to them.

On the contrary. As I read the bill, it places an affirmative duty on the Attorney General of the United States to locate all of these people and make payments to them. Now they can turn them down if they want to.

Then, let us not get carried away, Mr. President, about who is supporting this measure and who is not.

Another distinguished Senator, also my friend, said on this floor yesterday that the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion both support the Japanese-American internment bill, the Civil Liberties Act of