{"id":31803,"date":"2016-02-24T10:48:41","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T16:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=31803"},"modified":"2016-02-24T10:48:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T16:48:41","slug":"japanese-americans-commemorate-the-74th-anniversary-of-world-war-ii-internment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/japanese-americans-commemorate-the-74th-anniversary-of-world-war-ii-internment\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Americans commemorate the 74th anniversary of World War II internment"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jenny G. Zhang<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jean Mishima was 6 years old when she and her family were forced to leave their home in California and relocate to an internment camp 600 miles away in Gila River, Arizona.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents, they lost everything,\u201d Mishima recalled.<\/p>\n

Their five acres of farmland, their livelihoods, their dignity \u2013 all of it vanished when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and issued Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, authorizing the deportation of Japanese Americans to so-called \u201crelocation centers\u201d around the country in response to Japan\u2019s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mishima, 79, was one of approximately 120,000 people \u2013 including individuals of Japanese descent and a smaller number of Italians and Germans \u2013 on the Pacific Coast who were rounded up and incarcerated during World War II under the guise of national security.<\/p>\n

The Gila River camp, Mishima remembered, was surrounded by a desert crawling with scorpions and rattlesnakes. Only the latrines, mess hall and laundry room had running water. Quarters were small; privacy was nonexistent. While adults mourned the loss of everything they had known, children played outside and ate together in the mess hall, any semblance of a family structure destroyed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realize we were incarcerated or imprisoned until I was a young adult,\u201d said Mishima, who now serves as the president of the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society. \u201cMy parents never talked about it at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mass incarceration was later revealed to have been the product of \u201crace prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,\u201d<\/a> as admitted in the the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.<\/p>\n

The legislation, which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan and granted reparations to the surviving incarcerees, was the result of years of lobbying and activism by Japanese Americans.<\/p>\n

\"japanese
Mishima and her family moved to Chicago after they were released from the internment camp in 1944. Her father, whose self-worth was shattered by the experience, later left the family and moved back to California. (Jenny G. Zhang\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, 74 years after the signing of Executive Order 9066, Japanese Americans continue to celebrate their redress movement\u2019s unique victory on the Day of Remembrance, an annual event that has commemorated Japanese American internment since its creation during the redress movement in 1978.<\/p>\n

\u201cDay of Remembrance is an opportunity to educate others on the fragility of civil liberties in a time of crisis, and the importance of remaining vigilant and protecting the rights of all,\u201d said Rebecca Ozaki, a member of the Chicago chapters of the Japanese American Citizens League and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, during Chicago\u2019s Day of Remembrance on February 21.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, in our country, we have many individuals who, because of the color of their skin, because of the country of their origin, because of the god they choose to worship, because of the person whom they choose to love, face discrimination and justice,\u201d said keynote speaker Mitchell T. Maki, who co-authored Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ozaki, Maki and event organizer Ryan Yokota pointed out parallels between the widespread suspicion of Japanese Americans during World War II and the discrimination that Muslims, Sikhs, Arabs and other Americans face today.<\/p>\n

The responsibility of the Japanese American community, Maki said, is to find ways to take their stories and their experiences and transfer them in meaningful ways to other marginalized groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were denied our rights as American citizens,\u201d said Mishima, who volunteered at this year\u2019s Day of Remembrance, as she does every year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to learn about the past so that we don\u2019t repeat it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo at top: A photo of Jean Mishima taken in 1943, and her report card from the elementary school in the Gila River internment camp. (Jenny G. Zhang\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jenny G. Zhang Jean Mishima was 6 years old when she and her family were forced to leave their home in California and relocate to an internment camp 600 miles away in Gila River, Arizona. \u201cMy parents, they lost everything,\u201d Mishima recalled. Their five acres of farmland, their livelihoods, their dignity \u2013 all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":31807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,675,585],"tags":[1631,1630,1628,621,1629,623],"class_list":["post-31803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interest","category-social-justice","category-winter-2016","tag-day-of-remembrance","tag-internment","tag-internment-camp","tag-japan","tag-japanese-american","tag-world-war-ii"],"yoast_head":"\nJapanese Americans commemorate the 74th anniversary of World War II internment - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/japanese-americans-commemorate-the-74th-anniversary-of-world-war-ii-internment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Japanese Americans commemorate the 74th anniversary of World War II internment - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Jenny G. Zhang Jean Mishima was 6 years old when she and her family were forced to leave their home in California and relocate to an internment camp 600 miles away in Gila River, Arizona. \u201cMy parents, they lost everything,\u201d Mishima recalled. 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