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Originally Posted by Elphaba
Consider a more recent injustice where many of the parties involved are still living. Japanese-American citizens had their property and assests seized and were forced into intern camps during WWII. When the war was over, their homes and businesses were not returned to them.
I believe there is general agreement today that bit of history was a moral low point for our country. Restitution should have occurred 60 years ago.
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The US government offered the 60,000 surviving internees a letter of apology and a one-time payment of $20,000. Most of Grace's family lived in Hawaii, where the Japanese residents were mostly allowed to go free, but also suffered from widespread discrimination.
However, those who did live in the US on the West Coast were forced to sell businesses and homes at a fraction of their value to greedy neighbors who were happy to snap them up at bargain prices. Post war lawsuits declared these sales entirely legal. Some properties were simply abandoned and taken by the state. When the Japanese attempted to get reparations afterwards, get their homes and businesses returnded to them they were denied. Discrimination and resentment towards Japan lingered and made rebuilding from scratch all but impossible for many, and resentment towards Japan that was misplaced onto loyal Japanese-Americans delayed justifialbe reparations for more than 40 years.
Having had their economic base taken from them, not returned, and having been long denied the opportunity to rebuild left many without the ability to build a legacy to hand down to descendants. Those who snapped up thier property at bargain prices had opportunities to parlay their ill-gotten gains.
So here we have assets taken from group A and given to group B at little to no cost, and a system that then favored group B for decades.
$20,000 was a token, not nearly what those people deserved.
We need to remember such things because it helps to prevent them from happening again. So that we don't start rounding up Muslims and locking them in camps to "protect" the rest of us.
Gilda