Why should Japanese Americans get involved in responding to Trump’s plans to conduct mass detention and deportation of immigrants?

Our WWII Japanese American incarceration history is directly related to President Trump’s promise to conduct mass detention and deportation of immigrants as the first priority of his administration. The “camp” experience is a foundational part of Japanese American history and community.

When we meet each other, the question is often raised, “What camp was your family in?”

At the start of his 2017 presidency, Donald Trump, fueled hatred and suspicion regarding specific communities of color. He referred to people seeking asylum at the southern border as “criminals and rapists.” He called for a Muslim registration and ban to stem the tide of so-called 911 “terrorists.” He claimed that the “kung flu” (coronavirus) was transmitted by the Chinese, unleashing rampant anti-Asian hate incidents that continue today. The demonizing and targeting of communities of color, is not unlike the pre-WWII indiscriminate antipathy of government officials, journalists, and wealthy industrialists targeting Japanese immigrants and their citizen children as “unassimilable” and “threats to national security.”

Sowing seeds of fear by those in power creates a heightened sense of societal anxiety leading to collective pressure to do something to eliminate the fear. For us, the government’s expedient solution, in clear violation of civil and human rights, was the removal and incarceration of over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Only now are we learning the true depth of the traumatic loss of our freedoms. The impact of our forced removal and incarceration on our grandparents, parents, our children of the camps; and the transmission of that trauma on our children and our grandchildren is a testament to the suffering our community has endured across generations.

How was it possible, in 1942, that Executive Order 9066 could be issued, and thousands of people, guilty only by ancestry, could summarily be rounded up and imprisoned indefinitely?

That executive order was possible because of the existence of historic legislation passed in 1798. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, is a wartime act that grants the president sweeping power to detain and deport foreign nationals of an enemy nation. During WWII it permitted the president to target foreign nationals from Germany, Italy, and Japan, to be detained without a hearing, based solely on their country of birth. The frenzy of wartime fear and hateful racism made it possible for authorities not only to round up and detain our Issei immigrants, but turning a blind eye, included the mass removal of American citizens of Japanese ancestry.

In his recent inaugural address, Trump declared he would immediately round up and deport millions of immigrants by invoking the Alien Enemies Act — the very law that provided the legal basis for the incarceration of our families without warrants or formal charges. Although the law was enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law (www.brennancenter.org) reports, “…it can and likely will, be used against immigrants who have done nothing wrong, have evinced no signs of disloyalty, and are lawfully present in the U.S.” As was the case for us Japanese Americans, it is an overbroad authority that is subject to the staggering abuse of human and constitutional rights.

As we face the reality of actions being taken today, many of us may experience distress and anxiety as images of FBI agents knocking on doors, with or without warrants, forcing themselves into our homes to rifle through our belongings, remind us of our own experience when we helplessly witnessed a family member being arrested and disappeared. As further promises of the use of military forces to implement orders for mass removal, stark images of soldiers with bayoneted rifles who appeared in our neighborhoods in 1941 may startlingly come to mind. Though we are not the targeted people today, you may feel immobilized, fearful for neighbors, and anxious about the state of our country and our neighborhoods as once again we watch farm laborers, construction workers, restaurant and hotel servers disappear from their places of employment, along with children and college students disappearing from classrooms.

Strikingly, while thousands of us were being removed, there was no organized action against our disappearance. No one marched, no one protested, there was no outrage. Silence filled the empty spaces of our invisibility. Silence was the scourge of our trauma.

Today we must not be silent.

As Japanese American survivors and descendants of mass detention and deportation resulting from racism and the failure of political leadership, we are being called upon to use our moral authority to speak up and show up for the people who are being targeted today.

Please join us in solidarity with San Francisco Bay Area community leaders and grassroots organizers to learn and discuss ways YOU can help stop the repetition of our history:

Organizing Committee for “Stop Repeating History!”
Jon Osaki, Japanese Community Youth Council
Satsuki Ina, Tsuru for Solidarity
KC Mukai, Tsuru for Solidarity
Keiko Kubo, Tsuru for Solidarity
Dean Ito Taylor, API Legal Outreach
Jeff Matsuoka, Bay Area Day of Remembrance
Susie Kagami, KOHO
Judy Hamaguchi, JACL SF Chapter

“Stop Repeating History!” SAVE THE DATE — PROGRAM INFORMATION TO FOLLOW.
Location: KOHO Creative Hub (Japan Center East Mall, SF Japantown, above Daiso)
Date: Sunday, March 23, 2025
Time: 2-4 p.m.
Questions: satsukina44@gmail.com

The views expressed in the preceding commentary are not necessarily those of the Nichi Bei News.