Local efforts to document Japanese American incarceration show history repeating

"Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Executive Order 9066 was issued - the culmination of fomenting anti-Asian sentiment - and President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the removal of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast. This led to the incarceration of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent across 10 "relocation centers" or "internment camps" in remote areas in California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Arkansas."

""One of my primary goals is to communicate that we cannot simply cut ourselves off from that history; it is as real as something that happened last week," Suzuki said in an email interview. "There are people alive who still remember what happened to them and their families, and that matters. Once we grasp that basic fact, we can better understand ourselves and the society we've inherited from previous generations.""

"For those who know about incarceration, the language and attitudes wielded against undocumented immigrants feels starkly similar to those directed at Japanese people during World War II."

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Executive Order 9066 authorized removal of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast and the incarceration of more than 120,000 individuals in ten remote relocation centers across California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Arkansas. The policy rested on wartime fears of espionage that were generally unfounded. Local historians and community activists in Los Gatos and Saratoga revisited that history amid concerns about contemporary immigration and deportation policies. Coalition members recorded Japanese American contributions in west Santa Clara Valley and worked to make local primary sources accessible for high school classrooms, stressing that survivors still remember those events and that confronting that history aids understanding of present society.

Read at The Mercury News