When I was in fourth grade, my class took a field trip to the American History Museum in Washington, D.C. Walking through an exhibit on the interment of Japanese Americans during World War II, I spotted a familiar face. Among the pictures of prominent Japanese Americans, who had been deprived of their freedom during the war, was a large photo of Masuo Yasui. I became excited beyond all reason. \I know him!"" I shrieked jumping up and down, ""I'm RELATED to him ... he's my, uh, great granddad or uncle ... or something?"" I started to falter, having just gotten everyone's attention. My classmates stared at me like I was nuts. ""You don't look Japanese,"" one of them said.
In fact I'm not, but at 10 I was at a loss for the correct term for ""the father of the guy who married my grandmother's sister.""
Even now when I tell people that I'm related, by marriage, to a family that experienced the internment, they look at me skeptically and say ""Really? You don't look Japanese."" This confusion tells me that interracial couples are probably still less common than many of us would assume. However, if such relationships are unusual now, they were almost unthinkable in the 1950s when my grandmother's sister, Phyllis, married Robert Yasui, Masuo Yasui's son and a surgeon at the hospital where she worked.
Robert's family was still going through a terrible ordeal when he and my great aunt met. In the spring of 1942 more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry (many of whom were native-born citizens) were forcibly removed from their homes by the U.S. Army and segregated into camps until the end of World War II. The detainees lived in cramped, poorly heated cabins surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. A few men who tried to escape were shot. Others were forced to work as unpaid farm laborers. Before the internment, all were stripped of their homes and other property. Most never regained it.
The internment didn't mark the beginning of the harassment suffered by Japanese Americans during the war, nor did the closing of the camps signify its end. In 1941, the U.S. government began to compile a list of all Japanese-Americans. An incremental series of policies followed, each slowly whittling away at (perhaps so as not to spark resistance) their rights and liberties. Curfews were imposed and FBI agents started ransacking homes looking for ""contraband."" People were arrested without cause and interrogated. Japan was, of course, not the only country at war with the United States, but Americans of Japanese descent were the only people who suffered such treatment at the hands of their government. The Yasui family was eventually released, but they'd lost their home and the orchard that was their livelihood. A few years later, Masuo committed suicide.
I heard this story as a kid, and it made a powerful impression on me. I hope, though, that anyone would have been horrified by what I found when I opened the New York Times on Jan. 28. Buried on page 13 was a short piece noting that the FBI has directed its offices to start compiling counts of all Muslims living in their districts. This follows a rash of similar policies. Non-citizen men from Muslim countries were required to register with federal authorities last month, and hundreds who showed up to do so were arrested and interrogated. Colleges have been asked to divulge detailed personal information on foreign-born students and faculty. The Bush administration is pushing for the right to hold deportation trials in secret, and a federal court has given government investigators permission to perform surveillance on any U.S. citizen without probable cause.
I can't describe how I feel reading these things. As a child I wondered how so many Americans could have passively watched, and even supported, the harassment and then mass arrests of their friends and neighbors. With something very much like it seemingly beginning all over again, I can only hope we don't stand by and do the same.
