Travel ban ruling is ‘disappointing’
Japanese-American activists find parallels between incarceration during World War II and restrictions involving predominantly Muslim nations
Larry Oda, who was born in an internment camp during World War II, did not find relief in the Supreme Court repudiating its 1944 decision to uphold the removal and mass incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority opinion in upholding the Trump Administration's ban on travel involving several predominantly Muslim countries, said the court's decision on the Korematsu case “was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and — to be clear — 'has no place in law under the Constitution.'”
But Oda and other Japanese-American activists say there are disturbing parallels between Japanese-American incarceration and the travel ban, and that the current Supreme Court repeated history in making what they feel is a unjust ruling.
“I was really in a state of disbelief,” said Oda, a 73-year-old resident of Monterey, who was born in Crystal City Internment Camp
in Texas in 1945.
Executive Order 9066 issued by President Franklin Roosevelt in February 1942 forced his mother, born in the U.S., and his father, who immigrated from Japan, out of their home in Monterey. As a community leader, his father was taken away to a men’s detention center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, while his mother was sent to Poston Internment Camp in Arizona. They reunited at Crystal City after it was built and were released in 1946.
Oda said he sees similarities in the military necessity used to justify internment and the call for national security justifying the travel ban. Describing the ban as targeting and stereotyping a religious group, he recalled the Commission of the War Relocation Internment Civilians finding Japanese-American incarceration was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”
“We’re seeing that today. The hysteria about terrorists coming into the United States,” Oda said. “That’s the main point that Trump is trying to put across, that these Muslims are terrorists. It’s a broad brush painting all Muslims the same.”
Asian Law Alliance Director Richard Konda, who
helped Japanese-Americans file redress claims with the federal government and celebrated reparations 30 years ago, said he would have preferred the court didn’t speak about the Korematsu case at all in the travel ban decision.
Konda’s parents were incarcerated at camps in Arkansas and Utah. He said Islamophobia is behind the travel ban, and he called the court upholding it a mistake.
“The Supreme Court failed to really carefully review what the government’s decisions were,” Konda said, referring to the 1944 Korematsu decision. “In this instance, they again chose to just defer to the executive branch and not really examine
what was happening. In that sense, it’s the same thing.”
Reading the Supreme Court decision stunned Karen Korematsu, the daughter of Fred Korematsu, a plaintiff in the Supreme Court internment case.
Nine years ago, she founded the national Fred T. Korematsu Institute focusing on civic and civil rights education. She spreads her father’s message: “Don’t be afraid to speak up when you see something wrong.”
“I felt that the court had dishonored my father by making this decision by marginalizing another group of people because of their majority opinion,” Korematsu said. “That’s
not what we wanted or had hoped for. My father was always crisscrossing the United States and speaking up and educating against racism, xenophobia and prejudice.”
San Jose resident Tom Oshidari, 74, called the Supreme Court decision on the travel ban mind-boggling. Born at the internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, in 1943, he said he feels civil rights are regressing under President Trump’s administration.
“It becomes more of a duty to spread the message, be aware and fight discrimination,” Oshidari said. “You feel a certain responsibility because you have the credibility of being among those who lived through the experience (of Japanese-American incarceration).”
Oshidari also serves as a president of the San Jose chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, a civil rights organization with a national membership of 9,000, the majority of which reside in California.
On Thursday, national director David Inoue discussed the next steps at a reception held by Muslim Advocates, a group involved in the travel ban lawsuit. Then he got on a flight to San Francisco for a pilgrimage to the Tule Lake Segregation Center site, where more than 18,000 people, mostly ones considered “disloyal,” were incarcerated.
“They hit us 75 years ago and now it’s coming back around,” Inoue said. “I think that’s what’s most frustrating and disappointing. People aren’t learning from our past history.”
Korematsu also got on the buses for the pilgrimage Friday morning. She looks to support Muslim, Arab, South Asian and Middle Eastern communities affected by the decision and keep doing outreach.
“It just made me more determined to carry on with education for this generation and future generations on so that we don’t keep making the same mistake,” Korematsu said. “We need all to continually fight for our civil liberties in the Constitution on the behalf of everyone, citizens and non-citizens.”