That it may not happen again

Published 9:00 am Saturday, April 1, 2006

Eloquence, it has been said, is that which leaves us too mute even for applause.

And orators were in fine form at Thursday’s Japanese American internment memorial dedication in Eagledale. Particularly moving were addresses by the Rev. Brooks Andrews and Rabbi Mark Glickman, which readers should look for when the event is broadcast on BITV. Also among the fine commentaries was this by Donna Mohr of the Interfaith Council, who was so kind as to provide the text of her address that we might share it with readers.

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The “Yellow Peril”, according to the fevered imagination of the daily press, like the Los Angeles Times, was ready to devour the livelihood of the white population. Wow! Truly shameful.

When, on Feb 19, 1942, Pres. Franklin Roosevelt signed Exec. Order 9066, the evacuation order commenced the roundup of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to internment camps. The Exec. Order was fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment among farmers who competed against Japanese labor, politicians who sided with anti-Japanese constituencies, and the general public, whose frenzy was heightened by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the media hype. But, underlying all this was something far more insidious.

My husband, Robert, is a first-generation American; both his parents were born in Germany. We know that some Italians, Germans and other Europeans were also interned during World War II. Robert’s father was one of those people. Robert and his mother used to board a train in New Jersey and travel to New York to visit his father on weekends, during the war, where he was interned in the factory he worked in. Robert’s father was still a German citizen and, as a tool and dye maker, he worked on the Norden Bomb Site; but Robert and his mother were free to live at home. Why? Because that underlying insidious thing, quite simply, was racism.

Recently I read something Eleanor Roosevelt wrote after visiting one of the internment camps in 1943: “I can well understand the bitterness of people who have lost loved ones at the hands of the Japanese military authorities, and we know that the totalitarian philosophy, whether it is in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy or in Japan, is one of cruelty and brutality. It is not hard to understand why people living here in hourly anxiety for those they love have difficulty in viewing this problem objectively, but for the honor of our country the rest of us must do so. These understandable feelings are aggravated by the old time economic fear on the West Coast and the unreasoning racial feeling which certain people, through ignorance, have always had whenever they came in contact with people who are different from themselves. We have no common race in this country, but we have an ideal to which all of us are loyal: we cannot progress if we look down upon any group of people amongst us because of race or religion. Every citizen in this country has a right to our basic freedoms, to justice and to equality of opportunity. We retain the right to lead our individual lives as we please, but we can only do so if we grant to others the freedoms that we wish for ourselves.”

From the diary of Koichiro Miyazaki: “Rain. I haven’t seen rain for a long time. As I look into the birch forest it is shrouded with a gentle spring rain. It is all very dream-like. My diaries, which were confiscated, were returned cut up and censored. It is just an internee’s diary. Do they have the right to do such things? At least they should give some reasons. They can confiscate my diaries but the facts of my life will not disappear.”

This memorial helps all of us to ensure that the facts of the individual lives of the Bainbridge Islanders who were taken away on this day, over 60 years ago, will not disappear.

And so may it be.

– Donna Larkin Mohr,

Bainbridge Island and North Kitsap