In Remembrance of Executive Order 9066, Register History, not Muslims or Other People Groups.

Last updated on: February 19, 2017 at 9:53 am by Paul Louis Metzger

In Remembrance of Executive Order 9066, Register History, not Muslims or Other People Groups. 2017-02-19T09:53:30-08:00 Paul Louis Metzger

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Do you know what February 19th is famous for in history? On this day in 197, Lucius Septimius Severus’ army defeated Clodius Albinus at Lyon. Perhaps that’s going too far back. Let’s fast-forward in time. On February 19th, 1736, George Frideric Handel’s Alexander’s Feast premiered. On this day in 1807, Aaron Burr (3rd Vice President of the United States) was arrested for treason in Alabama (later he was cleared of the charges). In 1878, Thomas Edison patented the gramophone (phonograph). In 1919, the Pan-African Congress was organized by W.E.B. Du Bois in Paris. Were you familiar with any of these events that occurred on this day? How about the following? On February 19th, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the detention and internment of all Japanese-Americans along the United States’ west coast. His executive order was numbered 9066.

Here is what George Takei, a Japanese American survivor of the internment camps, says of the executive order and its aftermath:

…on February 19, 75 years ago this Sunday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order, No. 9066, which set the internment into motion. On its face, the order was “neutral,” authorizing the military to designate whole swaths of land as military zones, and evacuate any persons from it as they saw fit.

But behind that facade lay a much darker purpose: to tear 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans from their homes along the West Coast and relocate them to 10 prison camps scattered throughout the United States.

It didn’t matter, back then, that most of us were US citizens and had never even been to Japan. We were presumed guilty, and held without charge for four years, simply because we happened to look like the people who had bombed Pearl Harbor. For that crime, we lost our homes, our livelihoods and our freedoms.

The executive order still haunts many Japanese today, as this Smithsonian article discusses. It needs to haunt the rest of us, too, who are Americans, so that we don’t repeat it again. However, as Mr. Takei claims, many young people are not even aware of the edict and its aftermath. Moreover, President Trump, while he was the Republican Presidential frontrunner, did not condemn the internment camp edict, but indicated that he might have supported it. Against this backdrop, it is worth noting that President Ronald Reagan denounced the internment camp edict in 1988. According to TIME,

President Ronald Reagan signed legislation in 1988 apologizing to the more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry, including many Americans, who were placed in U.S. detention camps during World War II. The law also authorized reparations for survivors of the detention. “The internment of the individuals of Japanese ancestry was caused by racial prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership,” the legislation read.

Mr. Takei notes that a Trump advisor informed a horrified Megyn Kelly of Fox News that the Japanese internment camp edict might serve as a “precedent” for registering Muslim-Americans in a database.

As a Christian of Germanic stock, my family never experienced what these Japanese endured during WWII. At worst, on a personal note, I was derogatorily called “Kraut” as a child in post-WWII America. As the Smithsonian article notes, “There was no wholesale incarceration of U.S. residents who traced their ancestry to Germany or Italy, America’s other enemies.” The same article includes the following statements on what ensued with the rescinding of the edict:

The exclusion orders were rescinded in December 1944, after the tides of battle had turned in the Allies’ favor and just as the Supreme Court ruled that such orders were permissible in wartime (with three justices dissenting, bitterly). By then the Army was enlisting nisei soldiers to fight in Africa and Europe. After the war, President Harry Truman told the much-decorated, all-nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team: “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice—and you have won.”

If only: Japanese-Americans met waves of hostility as they tried to resume their former lives. Many found that their properties had been seized for nonpayment of taxes or otherwise appropriated. As they started over, they covered their sense of loss and betrayal with the Japanese phrase Shikata ga nai—It can’t be helped. It was decades before nisei parents could talk to their postwar children about the camps.

It is understandable for a variety of reasons that it was so difficult for Japanese Americans to talk about these events. It is not understandable or excusable, however, if we fail to remember and discuss them, or if we reenact them.

It may appear more difficult for many in our country in the face of fears of terror to empathize with those who are haunted by the past and who fear retaliation in the present based on some mere semblance of ethnic and/or religious associations, however faint, with those who would harm the U.S. However, as a Germanic American whose cousin married a Japanese woman after the war, as one who is married to a Japanese woman, who has Japanese friends who are still haunted by the edict and its aftermath, and who has Muslim friends, I empathize. We need to put ourselves in their shoes, as much as we possibly can. After all, what if we were in their shoes, and we were those fearing internment or registration because of ethnicity or religion? Who knows? That day may still come. As German Pastor Martin wrote in 1945 in reflecting back in remorse for not having done enough to support the victims of the Nazis,

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

All American citizens of good will, whether of Germanic or Japanese or Arab descent, and of Christian, Buddhist, Confucianist, Muslim and Atheist convictions, want to live in safety and promote harmony. Hysteria bound up with sweeping profiles will not help us get there. Due diligence to take each and every person of every tribe and creed on a case-by-case basis, including those of the highest to lowest offices in the land, to see if we do indeed promote safety and harmony for all people is how we should proceed. Register history, not people groups.

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