visas & virtue

[Alan Kita]

Dear Ms. Kellner:

I don't have the exact references, but the New York papers had covered
what would have been a growing controversy between some Jewish groups in
New York and officials of the Japanese American National Museum
regarding the use of the word "concentration camp" for the 10 centers
established in the United States.

As I said before, the name "Concentration Camp" remains as it was done
in Los Angeles and Honolulu, and the exhibition opened that way on Ellis
Island earlier this month.  The added element at Ellis Island was a
definition of concentration as used by the State Department.

It is too bad for anyone today to be shocked when told of concentration
camps in the U.S.  No they were not death camps.  But, euphemisms were
abound for a place fenced with barbwire and 24-hour security, where
permission had to be asked to leave, and usualy to serve as manual labor
for the farm fields vacated by the farmers' boys who fighting the war in
Asia and Europe in name of freedom.

As I said earlier, the United States had won the war.  The United States
did not have to negotiate an existence.  The prevailing theory was that
in case the Japanese had come closer to the U.S. mainland, or that
American prisoners were abound, the U.S. government was going to trade
its citizenry (probably strip them as such) who were residing in these
concentration camps.

The Japanese Americans had a matter of days "to evacuate" their homes. 
Sure, they made of sold their property...but most of it dirt cheap to
enterprising white families who thought they were doing a good deed by
buying cheaply from these poor souls whom they thought they'd never see
again.  Warehouses in which families had stored their belongings were
burglarized.  A poignat scene was made in Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's
film, "Farewell to Manzanar," in which the mother of the family would
rather brake her prized chinaware then sell it cheaply.  She threw each
of her plates out the door.

They were boarded on to busses and onto trains with darkened windows;
never told of their destinations, to places hardly hospitable.

It would seem like a concentration camp.  Be shocked.  Yes America had
concentration camps.  True genocide didn't happen - but then the WWII
veterans of the 442nd, the highest decorated unit in the U.S. Army, many
of them joined directly out of camps, their mothers, sisters, were left
behind barbed wire...they were out there fighting for the cause...and as
in all other ethnic divisions, black, hispanic, Native Americans, they
were sent out to the frontline first --- they proved themselves to be
Americans, yet their own mothers were kept behind barbed wire.

Why wouldn't they be released?  Probably because the U.S. was stretched
between the two oceans to notice their 120,000 lives living in harsh
desert conditions.

It was a good thing for the folks behind barbed wire, the U.S. had won
the war.  There wasn't anybody protecting them from fellow Americans had
Japan been victorious.

But it is reactions that come from people like you, Ms. Kellner, that
make people like Chris Tashima continual to speak out at every chance to
talk about America's concentration camps...

We should be fortunately to be shocked...so that it won't happen again.

Alan Kita