Japanese Americans angry that former WWII incarceration site will be used to detain immigrant children

ASAM NEWS & VIEWS FROM THE EDGE

The Trump administration's plan to turn a former site to incarcerate Japanese Americans during WWII to a detention center for immigrant children is like "a gut punch," say Japanese American activists.

Health and Human Services has decided to send immigrant children in their custody to an army base in Oklahoma because it is running out of room at government shelters, Time reports. The children will be detained at Fort Sill, a 150-year-old army base that once served as a incarceration center for Japanese Americans during WWII.

The Obama administration also used the base to temporarily detain immigrant children for four months in 2014.

“The Trump administration’s decision to use a military base that once housed Japanese Americans during internment is fundamentally wrong and tone-deaf,” Rep. Doris Matsui, a California Democrat who was born in the Poston War Relocation Center internment camp in Poston, Arizona, told The Daily Beast. “With this recent action, I fear that the Trump administration is ignoring a painful moment of our past.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Fort Sill will be used as “a temporary emergency influx shelter.” The influx comes as the HHS prepares to detain a record number of immigrant children. According to Time, the Trump administration has detained 40,900 children through April 30, a 57% increase from last year. The administration is on track to surpass the record-breaking 59,171 children it detained in 2016.

The Trump administration also considered using two other bases in Georgia and Montana to detain immigrant children in their custody, The Hill reports. However, the HHS says those two bases are no longer being considered as possible detainment sites.

The Trump Administration will detain 1,400 unaccompanied children at Fort Sill. They will be detained until they can be given to an adult relative.

The decision to use the site of an internment camp as an emergency detention facility highlights parallels that have been made between the Trump administration and the incarcerationt of Japanese Americans during World War II.

While campaigning in 2015, according to Rolling Stone, Trump said that he might have supported internment of Japanese Americans. “I would have had to be there at the time to tell you, to give you a proper answer,” he said. “I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer.”

“That our country is once again incarcerating children in facilities used previously to incarcerate Japanese Americans is like a gut punch to the Japanese American community, many of whom continue to feel the effects of the inter-generational trauma inflicted from their families' incarceration experiences,” David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, told The Daily Beast. “The damage being done to these children is immoral.”

“Families like mine still bear the scars from the suffering they underwent when they were held in Japanese internment camps during World War II. It is shameful and immoral for our government to be holding immigrant children seeking asylum in those very same facilities that caused so much suffering," said Rep. Mark Takano, D-CA.  'Military bases, makeshift camps, and federal prison cells are not appropriate places to house people who are coming to this country seeking asylum, especially children. 

"The inhumanity we are witnessing, and the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers has become a humanitarian crisis that must be addressed. We must restore humanity into our immigration process and fix our broken immigration system to keep families together and support those seeking refuge in America.”

UPDATED June 17, to include remarks of Rep. Mark Takano.

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