Imagine waking up in the middle of a desert in the country you called home. You sit up on the mattress made of straw, look back at the pillow you were just resting on and see an outline of your head made of dust. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to wake up like that; I know I wouldn’t. This happened to 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry when President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) signed executive order 9066 designating “military areas” from which any or all persons of Japanese ancestry may be excluded and sending them to incarceration camps in the desert.
Minoru “Min” Yasui was an Oregon-born Japanese-American. He went to the University of Oregon Law School to become a lawyer, graduated in 1939, and moved to Chicago. The day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Min returned to his hometown, Hood River. He was 25 at the time. Because Masuo, Min’s father, had been arrested by the FBI as an “enemy alien” immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Min decided to work as an attorney serving Japanese-American immigrants in Oregon. The government ordered a curfew for German and Italian “enemy aliens” and all Americans with Japanese ancestry. On March 28, 1942, Min walked the streets of Portland late at night demanding to be arrested for violating curfew. He did this to test the integrity of a curfew that was applied to citizens of the U.S., like himself. From May 1942 to June 1944, Min was relocated to North Portland Assembly Center, Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho, solitary confinement in Multnomah County Jail for nine months, and then back to Minidoka.
This is relevant today because of the current United States federal administration and its policies on immigration. FDR and the U.S. government forced Japanese-Americans into incarceration camps because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into the Second World War. He practiced social injustice and racial discrimination against the Japanese-American immigrants on the west coast and incarcerated them because of their race and Japanese heritage. The current U.S. administration is reminding us of this horrible period in our history. It is banning entry of whole groups of people because of their religion (Muslim) or their country of origin. It is also refusing to renew the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program or give the DACA kids a path to citizenship because of their country of origin, even though they were brought to this country as children to have a better life. In addition, the administration is deporting immigrants to their home country even if they don’t have a criminal background. Also, when President Trump talked about immigration reform, he called African nations and Haiti a derogatory term that is racist.
Minoru Yasui was not the only person to bring a court case against the U.S. government for its treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu also tested the constitutionality of the curfew order the US administration established for Japanese-Americans on the West Coast. Hirabayashi, a University of Washington student, turned himself in for disobeying the curfew at the FBI’s Seattle office in May of 1942 and announced that he also planned to disobey the impending removal of Japanese-Americans. Korematsu’s Supreme Court case was concerning the constitutionality of the entire Executive Order 9066. For Korematsu’s case, the court noted “... that the need to protect against espionage outweighed the rights of Americans of Japanese descent ...” even though in later years the court found “... that the government had knowingly submitted false information to the Supreme Court that had material effect on the Supreme Court’s decision ...” and “... there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as spies or sending signals to enemy submarines …”
Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Korematsu were all heroes. The courage that they showed should be an example for us today. We should be kind to people who need it. We should defend people that are being discriminated against. We should stand up for people that should have justice but do not. If we do not have the courage to fight ourselves, at the very least, we can support those who do.
We should not let history repeat itself. We learn about the past to make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future. As citizens of this democratic country, we should fight for the rights of undocumented immigrants, those who are documented and are being are discriminated against, and those who want to make a better life for themselves by coming to this country.
Eighth grader Melanie Glatter won the Minoru Yasui essay contest with this essay, which she read at Wednesday’s Minoru Yasui Garden dedication. She is the daughter of Steve Glatter and Janet Hamada.
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