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Banned
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Originally Posted by jorgelito
Actually, the government has already apologized numerous times and has paid compensation and reparations. Unfortunately, the Japanese government does not reciprocate.
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You seem to be so accepting....bent on externalizing all criticism of the American majority's tragic history of "war" and exclusion of "the other". I see no exhibition in your posts of any of the disappointment, frustration, anger, or outrage that I have no alternative....knowing what I know....but to hold inside me....
It is a part of me.....I didn't ask for it....I don't "want" it....but I cannot live with myself if I don't accept "owning" it..... I can't suggest that the US government's and society's mistreatment and acts of injustice against US born Japanese Americans can be anything that can be put on "the Japanese Government"...and I cannot understand how anybody else can make that transfer....
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http://www.ncdemocracy.org/node/1349
Los Angeles Center Highlights Difficult Process of Democracy
By Mike O'Sullivan
Los Angeles
01 November 2005
O'Sullivan report (Real Media) - Download 726k audio clip
Democracy is achieved through struggle and sacrifice, as well as collaboration. That is the message of a newly opened center in Los Angeles, which is devoted to preserving democratic ideals. The National Center for the Preservation of Democracy takes a realistic look at American history and the difficult process of advancing freedom.
Louis Caldera, former secretary of the Army and now president of the University of New Mexico, says the newly opened center tells a story about the country's diversity.
"It's an educational center that's helping to ask the question who's the 'we' in 'we the people,' and to really help young people from our increasing diverse country to understand that they're the 'we,' that their stories are part of the fabric of our nation, and that they're called to civic action, public service, civic engagement if we're going to keep our democracy vibrant," he said.
Mr. Caldera, the son of Mexican immigrants, helped dedicate the new center, located in the Japanese American National Museum in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. The center's opening exhibition looks at the wide range of ethnic groups that make up the United States. Called "Fighting for Democracy," it tells the story of seven men and women, all members of minority groups who served in the military. There was a Chinese American woman flier, Hazel Ying Lee, and a Hispanic combat surgeon, Hector Garcia. They faced discrimination but still chose to serve their country, fighting in World War II.
Another serviceman featured in the exhibit, Roger Terry, known as "Bill," was a flight instructor and pilot with the famous Tuskegee Airmen, African American flyers who trained at a base in Tuskegee, Alabama.
In 1945, Mr. Terry and some other airmen were transferred to a base called Freeman Field in Indiana. "Well, everything was going all right until we decided we would make sure that we were first-class citizens, and so we had a little demonstration. It was called the Freeman Field mutiny," he said.
It was not really a mutiny, but a protest. The U.S. military at the time was segregated by race. One hundred sixty-two black airmen were arrested for trying to enter whites-only facilities on their base.
Mr. Terry, a second lieutenant, attempted to enter a white officer's club. Military officials let most of the airmen off with a reprimand. But Bill Terry was court-martialed, convicted, and retained a criminal record. That barred him from voting and, after he finished law school, prevented him from working as a lawyer. He carved out a successful career as a criminal investigator, and later served as president of the association of Tuskegee Airmen. Air Force officials finally apologized for their actions in 1995, 50 years after the incident, granting him a pardon and clearing his record.
The exhibit, which tells the story of Mr. Terry and six others, is housed in a one-time Buddhist Temple where Japanese Americans were brought in 1942 to be taken to internment camps. The U.S. government has also apologized for that injustice. But thousands of young Japanese Americans volunteered for war, despite the indignities being suffered by their families. The story of one, George Saito, is featured in the exhibit. He served in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team, known for its heroism and its heavy losses.
Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, also a veteran of the 442nd, was one of the driving forces behind the creation of this center. Mr. Inouye lost his right arm in combat, and later became the first Japanese American member of Congress and the Senate.
At the center's dedication, Mr. Inouye spoke of the role of educators in teaching the ideals of democracy. He recalls a meeting with a teacher when he was 15 years old, a meeting he says changed his life. The teacher handed him a paper that contained key words from the Declaration of Independence.
"The words of [Thomas] Jefferson: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' That's the first time I had read those words. She looked at me and she said, 'that is the essence of democracy,'" he said.
Irene Hirano, the new center's chief executive, says the facility will work with students and teachers to develop curriculum about practical ways to implement democracy.
One program, already under way, is called Democracy in Action.
"The Democracy in Action program brings young people of diverse backgrounds together for six weeks, asks them to research contemporary issues, pick one and determine how they can make a difference, how they can contribute to solving a problem in our community," she said.
Peggy Wong, who is studying political science at the University of California, Berkeley, took part in the program a few months ago, after finishing high school. The students in her group focused on the homeless. She notes Los Angeles has a much larger homeless population than other U.S. cities.
"That was extremely shocking to me. And I thought that a city like Los Angeles, with such a booming economy, it's so rich, why do we have one of the largest homeless populations in this country? It shouldn't be that way," she said.
The students decided to publicize the problem. They sponsored a benefit concert, collecting food and supplies for homeless residents of downtown Los Angeles.
One speaker at the opening of the new center said democracy has a checkered history, replete with instances of intolerance and discrimination. On the other hand, democracy is a process, with expanded freedoms gained through struggle and sacrifice.
Senator Inouye says even Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence that so inspired him as a student, was himself a slave-owner. The words that Jefferson expressed, Mr. Inouye says, are only gradually being realized.
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I'll shoulder the reaction to all of it.... the extermination of the native American population, the intentional near elimination oif the American bison that sustained the plains native population until the 1870's, the provocations against Mexico in the 1830's and 40's that resulted in the forced annexation of the present American soutwestern states, slavery, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Race_Riot">1921 Tulsa Ok, Race War</a>. and the crime of post 1863 emancipation proclamation, 106 additional years of southern states government official enforcement of racial segregation..... and the injustice of 45 million Americans with no medical insurance, and the bottom 150 million Americans owning just 2-1/2 percent of the total American assets....
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http://topics.nytimes.com/top/refere...es&match=exact
WASHINGTON TALK; Pushing to Keep Pledge To Japanese-Americans
Special to The New York Times.
Jul 18, 1989
LEAD: About a year ago, deep in the stacks of the National Archives, Justice Department investigators began poring over dogeared internment rosters to compile a list of the 112,000 Japanese-Americans rounded up in West Coast cities during World War II.
About a year ago, deep in the stacks of the National Archives, Justice Department investigators began poring over dogeared internment rosters to compile a list of the 112,000 Japanese-Americans rounded up in West Coast cities during World War II.
Under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the surviving internees were given a formal apology for the ''grave injustice'' of being forced into camps behind barbed wire. Each is also due $20,000, as redress for the loss of freedom and property, which the internees were forced to sell at huge losses or let go to ruin.
By matching the list against Social Security records and broadcasting an appeal for names, the Office of Redress Administration has identified 55,000 of the 60,000 surviving Americans of Japanese ancestry eligible for benefits. It will soon receive up-to-date addresses from the Department of Motor Vehicles in California, the home of nearly three-fourths of those eligible. The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to forward letters to internees on the tax rolls.
''By the end of August, we'll be ready and waiting for Congress to appropriate the funds,'' said Robert Bratt, head of the redress office established by Congress last year. Differences on Money
It could be quite a wait. In passing the Civil Liberties Act, the lawmakers pledged that restitution would be paid within 10 years. The Justice Department asked President Bush to seek the maximum he could under the act for the next fiscal year: $500 million. That would be enough to make payments to 25,000 of the estimated 60,000 surviving internees.
But Mr. Bush asked Congress for $20 million, enough to pay 1,000 internees, and last Thursday, the Congressional panel that sets aside money for the program recommended $20 million for the first round of payments. Any larger allocation would cut too deeply into other programs, said Representative Neal Smith, an Iowa Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce Justice, State and the Judiciary.
The slow pace frustrates some Japanese-Americans. ''The $20 million is a joke,'' said Cressey Nakagawa, national president of the Japanese-American Citizens League. He urged Congress to provide enough to pay the 16,000 internees who are at least 70 years old. ''They are dying at a rate of 200 a month,'' Mr. Nakagawa said. ''We are going to need at least $320 million to get to these folks before they pass away.'' Trying to Find Heirs
Mr. Bratt says stringing out payments will also mean more administrative costs to locate heirs. Under the act, internees qualify for reparations if they were alive when President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law on Aug. 10, 1988. If they have since died, the redress office must deliver the payment to a spouse, if living, or track down all living children and divide it evenly among them.
''It would be tragic if these people die without receiving compensation,'' said Representative Robert T. Matsui, a California Democrat who was interned with his parents as a child. Japanese-Americans, he said, would view it as another unfulfilled promise.
Mr. Matsui and other redress supporters say their best chance of increasing this year's payments rests with Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat who is the second-ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. ''Senator Inouye has promised to do all he can to get the highest level possible,'' said Gregg Takayama, a spokesman. Promise Is a Symbol
The promise of restitution has become a symbol in the Japanese-American community. The $20,000 payments will not come close to compensating for the loss of property, much less the loss of freedom, say advocates for the internees. They view the payments as a concrete expression of the apology.
When President Reagan signed the bill, it produced ''a wonderful feeling'' among the Japanese-Americans, Mr. Matsui said. ''It lifted the specter of disloyalty that hung over us for 42 years because we were incarcerated. We were made whole again as American citizens.''
Representative Norman Y. Mineta, a California Democrat who was also interned during the war, said Japanese-Americans exhibited great faith in cooperating with the Government when they were interned. ''Now,'' Mr. Mineta said, ''Congress and the President are asking a second faith of those who had been wronged. We have to make sure we don't break faith again.''
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I suspect, jorgelito....within the experience that the limited information written in your posts, suggest to me..... that you cannot react, for example...to the methodical dismantling of the DOJ civil rights enforcement and the voting rights enforcement divisions, with the outrage and the revulsion that plagues me, in reaction to the reporting and to the information from the congressional inquiries.......and maybe, you are better off, than I am....but we all live in an uglier, and less just country, because of it..... |