Forgotten Japanese Latin-American Internees: The Long Reach of Justice

Today is the anniversary of a shameful event in US history: the 1942 signing of Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of German-, Italian- and Japanese-Americans during World War II. Two House Representatives from California, Xavier Becerra and Dan Lundgren are today introducing a bill in Congress to bring attention and some small amount of justice to the survivors of a group of Latin American Japanese who were also detained by under that Order. I was completely unaware of this stunning aspect of the internment programs of the US government — which included forcible removals of nationals and residents of Latin American countries to internment camps in the US. As Becerra and Lundgren explain in today’s WaPo:

Art Shibayama is an American who served in the Army during the Korean War. Like many veterans, Cpl. Shibayama was not born in the United States. He was born in Lima, Peru, to Japanese Peruvian parents. Until 1942, Shibayama, his two brothers and three sisters lived comfortably with their parents and grandparents, all of whom had thriving businesses. However, after America entered World War II, his family was forcibly removed from Peru, transported to the United States and held in a government-run internment camp in Crystal City, Tex.

Like many Japanese American families, Shibayama’s family lost everything they owned. But the greater injustice occurred when his grandparents were sent to Japan in exchange for American prisoners of war. Their family never saw them again.

Shibayama and his family were among the estimated 2,300 people of Japanese descent from 13 Latin American countries who were taken from their homes and forcibly transported to the Crystal City camp during World War II. The U.S. government orchestrated and financed the deportation of Japanese Latin Americans for use in prisoner-of-war exchanges with Japan. Eight hundred people were sent across the Pacific, while the remaining Japanese Latin Americans were held in camps without due process

This article by Roger Daniel provides an excellent summary of the social history of Exec Order 9066.

As with the dark history of Exec Order 9066, it may take time and distance from the events before we have the complete story of what has been done and is being done with respect to detainees in the GWOT. But it is a relatively safe bet that the full arc of the redress narrative — law suits, official acknowledgment, political apology, compensation — will eventually emerge. The current extraordinary rendition case against CIA officials in Italy and the well-publicized apology and compensation recently paid by Canada to Maher Arar (wrongfully detained and sent by the US to Syria where he was tortured) suggests that the process has now gone transnational, and considerable pressure will be brought from outside the US for some amount of redress to begin.