Subject: Crystal City - Latin American Nikkei
Below is a recent clipping from the LA Times which may be of interest.
The part about Crystal City is news to me. I did not know that
some JAs were kept interned for two years after the end of
World War II. Anyone know why?
Los Angeles Times
Friday, January 7, 2000
LITIGATION
Six Sue U.S., Seek Redress for WWII Internment
By: JESSICA GARRISON
They contend that they should be compensated as have most
Japanese Americans who were held in camps.
Jane Yano was born in an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas, in
early 1947 and, along with her family, remained behind barbed wire
until August 1947, two full years after the war with Japan ended.
So when the U.S. government offered a formal apology and $20,000 each
in compensation to the more than 80,000 Japanese Americans who were
rounded up from their homes and shipped to camps across the country
during World War II, Yano assumed that she too would get a letter and
a check.
But officials told her that because she was born after August 1946,
by which time most of the camps had closed, she was ineligible for
reparations.
Yano is one of six former internees who filed a lawsuit against the
government Thursday seeking redress.
The six were found ineligible by government officials for different
reasons, but all say the government is hiding behind legal
technicalities to deny them what they are owed.
The lawsuit seeks $10 million per person, but attorney Paul Mills said
his clients would settle for the $20,000 given to other internees.
Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles,
said the office had not had time to review the lawsuit and so could not
comment on it.
"It's hard to believe our government would be so callous," said Rep.
Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles). He said he plans to introduce
legislation in Congress that would cut the red tape for Yano and those
like her. Four of the six are people of Japanese descent from Latin
America who were taken into custody by U.S. soldiers and forcibly
shipped to a camp in the United States and then deported to Japan
after the war.
The government told them that because they entered the country under
U.S. soldiers' guns, they are not legal U.S. residents and therefore
not eligible under the law.
The sixth plaintiff is Kay Kato, 91, who came to the United States from
Japan in 1937 on a merchant visa, and has been in this country since
then. He was put in an internment camp from 1941 to 1945. Because of a
law prohibiting Japanese from naturalizing during the 1930s, he did not
become a legal permanent resident until 1958. Because he had not been a
legal resident during World War II, he was considered ineligible for
redress by the government.
The Civil Liberties Act, which provided for redress for those interned
during World War II, had "very specific criteria about who was eligible
and who was not," said Chris Komai, spokesman for the Japanese American
National Museum in Los Angeles.
Historians are still trying to piece together why some Japanese
Americans, such as Yano, were detained beyond the end of the war at
Crystal City, Komai said. Other internment camps were closed in 1944 and
1945. But Crystal City remained open, and in some cases, Komai said,
people were sent from other camps to Crystal City.
Subject: Crystal City - Latin American Nikkei
> The part about Crystal City is news to me. I did not know
> that some JAs were kept interned for two years after the end
> of World War II. Anyone know why?
Thanks for this posting. The information is very timely
since many communities will be doing Day of Remembrance
programs within the next month.
I have heard some people say they are tired of hearing about
the internment period but there is so much more information
out there that we are not aware of. The public should know about
the injustice of stories like this ... especially JAs.
There are many more stories out there and it
is like peeling an onion to get at the core truth.
Subject: Crystal City - Latin American Nikkei
More about Latin American Nikkei in another recent article from
the LA Times:
Los Angeles Times
Sunday, August 9, 1998
RIGHTS
The Battle Rages On
By: K. CONNIE KANG, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Activist worked hard to get reparations for Japanese Latin American
internees, but now faults notification effort and government's
different treatment of U.S. residents.
For human rights activist Grace Shimizu, it was the 1990
reunion of Peruvian Japanese internees in
San Francisco that sparked what has become an eight-year
"labor of love" to win justice for them.
Her passion has turned a good portion of her El Cerritos home,
which she shares with her aging parents, into an office.
Since July, the 45-year-old Japanese American has traveled to
three continents, held numerous press
conferences and continued her frequent trips to Los Angeles,
headquarters for the redress campaign
for Japanese Latin Americans interned in this country during
World War II.
The last three weeks have been especially hectic, as she
rushes to help Japanese Latin American
internees meet Monday's deadline for redress applications.
In June, President Clinton issued an official apology, and
the government pledged $5,000 to each of
the estimated 2,200 Japanese Latin American internees as part
of the effort to make amends for the
relocations.
"We recognize the wrongs of the past and offer our profound
regret to those who endured such grave
injustice," Clinton said. "We understand that our nation's
actions were rooted in racial prejudice and
wartime hysteria, and we must learn from the past and
dedicate ourselves as a nation to renewing and
strengthening equality, justice and freedom."
Shimizu's 91-year-old Japanese Peruvian father was among the
2,264 women, men and children from
13 Latin American countries forcibly interned in the United
States. What she has learned during her
meetings with people in Hawaii, Japan and Peru is how dismal
the federal government's notification process has been, she said.
Lengthy legal notices in Spanish and English have gone to
internees in Japan who cannot read either
language, said Shimizu, founder of the Los Angeles-based
Campaign for Justice. She returned
Wednesday from an 18-day, seven-city trip to brief internees
and help them make informed decisions
about the applications. She visited Honolulu, Tokyo, Osaka,
Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Naha and Lima,
cities with sizable numbers of Japanese Latin American internees.
She said some have received several notices, while others
have received none. Some got notices in Japanese that angered them
because they found the content "offensive," she said.
"Why isn't there a better translation?" Shimizu asked. "How
much trouble is it to send letters [to each person] in three languages
[Japanese, Spanish and English]?"
A representative of the U.S. Justice Department said Friday
that the government, in accordance with a
court order, had mailed an eight-page legal notice packet to
more than 600 former internees and their
heirs in the language in which their initial claims were filed.
*
"We've done everything required under the court order -- and
more," the representative said.
Shimizu and other advocates fear that as many as 600 more
eligible people may not apply by the
Monday deadline because they don't know about the offer.
About 80% of the former internees were Peruvians of Japanese ancestry.
Many, like Shimizu's father, Susumu, were prosperous entrepreneurs in Lima.
The elder Shimizu was first taken to Panama for hard labor,
then held inside a Crystal City internment camp in Texas.
His first wife died there. After the war, the
once successful charcoal merchant started
rebuilding his life in California as a gardener.
The episode was such a painful chapter of his life that he
didn't talk about it -- not even to his only child.
After years of pleas, the U.S. government formally apologized
for the internment of Japanese
Americans in 1988 and offered payments to survivors under the
Civil Liberties Act. Under this
measure, the government has paid more than 81,000 Japanese
Americans $20,000 each.
When Japanese Latin Americans applied for redress under the
act, however, most were told they
were ineligible because they were not legal U.S. residents
when they were brought to the United
States against their will.
It took a lawsuit, spearheaded by Shimizu's group in 1996, to
get the government to admit to the
injustice inflicted on Japanese Latin Americans.
Shimizu's persistent efforts have brought recognition to
Japanese Latin Americans and brought them
into the mainstream of the Japanese American community,
community watchers say.
"Even though she lived in the Bay Area, she kept calling me,"
said Kay Ochi, vice president of the Los Angeles chapter
of the National Coalition for Redress/Reparations,
recalling her first contact with Shimizu in the early 1990s.
"At a time when a lot of redress activists were starting to
slow down, Grace would come in like a
dynamo and always advocate for Japanese Latin Americans," Ochi said.
She said Shimizu sought to have Japanese Latin Americans included
in the Day of Remembrance observances, marking the anniversary of
the signing of Executive Order 9066, which sent Japanese Americans
to camps. And she often sought to make sure that her group had a table
or a speaker at a Japanese American community function in Los Angeles.
"She did not want to compromise any of the Japanese Latin
Americans," Ochi said.
"We call Grace the moral barometer of the campaign," said
Julie Small, a core member of the
Campaign for Justice.
"Where other people tend to say, 'What can we do?' 'What's
practical, what's feasible?' Grace seeks
what should happen," Small said.
Still, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, there is a
clear distinction between Japanese
American internees and Japanese Latin American internees,
said Mitsuaki Oyama, a former internee
who now lives in Tokyo.
"Japanese American internees are given $20,000 but we are
eligible for only $5,000," Oyama said
from Tokyo.
Furthermore, whereas Japanese Americans had 10 years to file
their applications (from the enactment
of the Civil Liberties Act in Aug. 10, 1988 to Monday),
Japanese Latin Americans were given only
two months, he complained. Also, Japanese Latin Americans
should have been given more time
because they are scattered all over the world, he added.
The deadline may be Monday, but Shimizu sees a longer fight ahead.
"Many consider what our families went through -- forced
deportation, hard labor and civilians thrust in
war zones with hostage exchanges -- crimes against humanity,"
Shimizu said.
Researchers say more than 500 Japanese Peruvians were
included in the two prisoner of war
exchanges in 1942 and 1943. Some were forced to do hard
labor, and 1,400 were confined to
internment camps for the duration of the war.
For the federal government to treat the internees differently
means that it has not internalized the Civil Liberties Act, she said.
"Is this the best the U.S. government can do?" Shimizu asked.
"Is this the standard of justice and
redress that should be promoted to the rest of the world?"
Subject: Crystal City - Latin American Nikkei
DAY OF REMEMBRANCE 2000
Common History, Shared Struggles: Celebrating the Struggle of Japanese
Latin Americans
NCRR to Honor Japanese Latin American Redress Leaders
with Fighting Spirit Award to former internees
Carmen Mochizuki and Alice Nishimoto
Day of Remembrance (DOR) 2000, which will take place on Saturday, February
19, features the redress campaign for Japanese Latin Americans. Sponsored by
the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (NCRR) and the Japanese
American National Museum, NCRR President Richard Katsuda states, "This Day
of Remembrance is especially important, for the story of what happened to
Japanese Latin Americans (JLAs) during World War 11 must not be lost, and
the campaign for redress equity for JLAs must not lose continuity or
momentum."
The story of the Japanese Latin Americans was largely unknown until the
early 1990s, when JLAs were denied redress by the Department of Justice's
Office of Redress Administration. JLAs, who had been abducted from their
homes in Latin America and incarcerated in internment camps, were denied
redress because the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 stipulated that recipients
must have been citizens or permanent resident aliens during the War. JLAs,
having been uprooted from their communities, were further injured when the
U.S. government deemed them "illegal" immigrants. After the War, JLAs became
"stateless" persons, as the U.S. government failed to adjust their
immigration status or to take any responsibility for their plight with a
most uncertain future. Furthermore their former Latin American countries
refused to allow most of them back. Many were therefore forced to go to
Japan, where their future was no less insecure. After all that tremendous
suffering, they were thus dealt a final crushing blow when they were told
they were ineligible for redress.
In 1996, several organizations--Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project,
NCRR, Japanese American Citizens League, and American Civil Liberties
Union--joined to form the Campaign for Justice with the mission to seek
redress for JLAs. In August 1996, a class action lawsuit, Mochizuki v. US.,
was filed an behalf of JLAs by legal counsel Robin Tomia, Fred Okrand, and
Paul Mills, arguing that JLAs were entitled to receive redress just as
Japanese Americans had. In June 1998, a settlement with the Department of
Justice was reached, wherein JLAs, including those forced to go to Japan and
those who were able to return to Latin America, were to receive a
presidential apology and $5,000 monetary compensation per individual.
Just as with the redress movement of the 1980s, organizing and mobilizing
grassroots action for JLA redress was critical. At the same time, certain
people were needed to "step up to the plate" and make the call for action
within the community. NCRR has sought to properly recognize such people,
who, in seeking justice, have exemplified the "guts" to challenge the powers
that be. During each DOR, NCRR presents certain individuals with its
Fighting Spirit Award. NCRR seeks to honor them and to acknowledge that
stepping forward often demands tremendous personal sacrifice of time and
energy and taking great risks. Such has been the case in the tight for
redress for JLAs.
Two of this year's Fighting Spirit Award honorees are Carmen
Mochizuki and Alice Nishimoto, who, having suffered the degradation and
uprooting of family along with 2,262 other JLAs, took a huge step forward to
challenge and sue the U.S. government for what it had done to their
community.
Mochizuki and Nishimoto were asked in 1996 whether they might represent the
JLAs as named plaintiffs in the lawsuit that became Mochizuki v. U.S.
Neither Mochizuk! nor Nishimoto had ever ventured into community organizing,
let alone acting as community spokespersons. As the very soft-spoken
Mochizuki states, "When I received the questionnaire asking whether I would
like to participate, I thought I would be with a lot of people as
plaintiffs. But when I found out only three of us said yes, I was very
nervous. Then I thought, 'In two years, the Civil Liberties Act will sunset,
so I must try.' I was really happy to try because, if we don't try, then we
would never know if we could get redress."
Carmen Mochizuki was eleven years old when her family, which had moved from
Okinawa and settled in Peru in 1913, was forced to board a ship on March 1,
1944, bound for a destination unknown. Before their removal, her father had
heard that people were being taken away by government agents, and so he hid
out for one year. As time went on and pressures mounted, Mochizuki's
godparents persuaded her father to give himself in sometime in February
1944. As Mochizuki recalls, "Agents would search our house looking for him.
My parents had done nothing wrong. Nothing."
As she, her parents her brother, and one sister left their home, Mochizuki
was "so frightened. We didn't know where we were being taken or what they
were going to do to us. It was just frightening."
It took the ship about three weeks to reach New Orleans, then two days by
train to reach Crystal City, the Department of Justice internment camp,
which would be home for her family until December 1, 1945. Her family was
then forced to move to Miyazaki, Japan, for six months and then finally went
to Okinawa.
Alice Nishimoto was nine when her family was picked up in 1944. Her family
had a huge house on a cotton plantation that her father owned. Her uncle,
Mr. Okada, was a very successful and prominent member of the community,
which made him a prime target in the uprooting of JLAs. He was picked up and
sent to Camp in 1942. After that, Nishimoto's father hid out for almost two
years. Nishimoto recalls, "Men that we thought were government agents would
follow us around and ask, 'Where's your father?' We couldn't go to school
after my uncle got picked up. We had to have our own tutors."
As her family was being picked up, "We were lost. We didn't know what was
happening. People said things like 'They're going to take you to the jungle
and shoot you.' My mother was expecting with my little sister. All they said
was "Be ready."'
The family boarded a ship at the port of Callao. Nishimoto remembers, "My
older sister said it was an American ship with U.S. officials on board. They
treated us like prisoners, Whenever the ship stopped at a port, they closed
the windows and we couldn't look outside. they even threw a lot of our
family pictures and other belongings into the ocean."
Her family stayed in Crystal City from March 1944 to December 1945. Amidst
all the bad experiences, Nishimoto fondly remembers that it was there that
she met Mochizuki, who lived dose by. They often played together.
Over fifty years later Carmen Mochizuki and Alice Nishimoto would
be together again, suing the U.S. government for what it had done to their
families and their community.
Regarding the Mochizuki settlement, Mochizuki states, '"When we were able to
settle the lawsuit by getting everybody to receive redress, including the
people in Japan and Latin America, I was so happy. As Japanese Latin
Americans, we all went *through the same suffering, so we should all get
redress."
Nishimoto comments on the settlement, "it was a big relief, but I was also
really disappointed about the amount of reparations. It was hard, I wanted
people like my parents' friends, who are in their 80s and 90s, to be able to
receive redress now or else they maybe would never see it. Of course, I
regret that my parents did not live to see this settlement. If this were my
personal lawsuit, I would not have accepted the settlement and would have
kept fighting. But this lawsuit involved a lot of people in Japan and Latin
America as well as here in the U.S. So I felt we had to accept the
settlement."
With regard to the disparity between reparations given to Japanese Americans
and that given to JLAs, Nishimoto offers, "it really wasn't about the money.
It was important to get the acknowledgement that what the government did was
very wrong and made us suffer so much. But if we were to receive equal
justice with Japanese Americans, then we should have gotten the same amount
of monetary compensation. Maybe we Japanese Latin Americans were not
'citizens,' but we were in the same camp with Japanese Americans. This is
about the violation of human rights, so we should all be treated the same."
DOR 2000 will take place at 2 PM at the Aratani Central Hall of the Japanese
American National Museum. Nishimoto will be the keynote speaker and will
inform the audience about current efforts to seek redress equity for
Japanese Latin Americans. A reception will follow the program. Admission is
free, but please call for reservations at 213 625-0414. For more information
about DOR, please call 213 680-3484.
Last updated 24 February 2000