How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Later in December the administration gave each family a Christmas tree hauled in from the Sierras. A new director had been appointed and this was his gesture of apology for all the difficulties that led up to the riot, a promise of better treatment and better times to come. (1.11.3)
We doubt a Christmas tree comforted that many internees after the December Riot, but… well… maybe it's a start. And it is true that in the second year camp life improves. But how do you apologize for the greater injustice of mass internment? What would be a proper apology exactly?
Quote #8
In the first, Gordon Hirabayashi, a Nisei student from the University of Washington, challenged the evacuation order. He had also violated the army's curfew, imposed early in 1942 on all west-coast Japanese. He challenged the racial bias of these actions and the abuse of his civil rights. The court avoided the issue of the evacuation itself by ruling on the curfew. It upheld the army's decision to limit the movements of a racially select group of citizens. The reasoning: wartime necessity. (2.16.2)
The court here is the Supreme Court case Hirabayashi v. United States (1943). As for "wartime necessity," does that judicial reasoning sound familiar? (Hint: think post-9/11.)
Quote #9
In the second case, the issue was the exclusion orders that removed us from our homes and sent us inland. Fred Korematsu, a young Nisei living in Oakland, had ignored the evacuation to stay with his Caucasian girlfriend. He had plastic surgery done on his face, he changed his name, and was posing as a Spanish Hawaiian when the FBI caught up with him. In court, the racial bias was challenged again. Why were no German Americans evacuated, it was asked, or Americans of Italian descent? Weren't these nations our enemies too? Due process had been violated, Korematsu claimed, along with other constitutional rights. But the army's decision to evacuate was also upheld by the Supreme Court. (2.16.3)
If this case makes you a little angry, you're not alone. Korematsu's case ought to have been a slam dunk, but what can you do when the country is bent on seeing Japanese-Americans as fundamentally non-American and therefore undeserving of their constitutional rights? The bright side: the Court was split on this decision, with a dissenting judge noting the racism of the evacuation order.