Showing posts with label Japanese Americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japanese Americans. Show all posts

Saturday, December 6, 2025

Rachel Maddow's podcast uses Japanese American incarceration as a lesson versus today's Trump policies


Japanese American groups, remembering their own history of unjust mass incarceration during WWII were among the first to condemn  the Trump administration's immigration policies, viewing similarities in rhetoric and actions, particularly mass detention and family separation, as echoing past injustices to their families.

The similarities between their incarceration and this administration's attitudes toward immigrants is largely unknown by most Americans. All that may change as their struggle is the subject of a podcast by progressive media host Rachel Maddow.

 "Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order" is a new, six-episode narrative podcast that tells the story of the executive order that authorized the roundup and incarceration of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II. The podcast was released on December 1, 2025.

"Rachel Maddow’s new series lays bare one of the most shocking decisions in American history," posts the Manzanar Committee on social media. "It’s a story that reveals how an executive order authorizing the mass roundup of innocent Japanese Americans came to be, the powerful players who engineered it, and the burn order that tried to erase it from history."

SCREEN CAPTURE / CBS
Japanese Americans were among the first to protest Donald Trump's immigration policies.

The series investigates one of the most shocking decisions in American history, focusing on the powerful figures who engineered the policy, those who tried to stop it, and a "burn order" that attempted to erase the official report from history. A copy of the crucial government memo was discovered decades later, despite orders for its destruction.

"I'm angry, I'm angry," said 81-year-old Satsuki Ina to CBS. "It's frightening. It's terrifying that this is happening again."

"It is a replication of our own history," explains Inak, a survivor of the Tule Lake Ssegregation Center. "They're using the same legal false justification, removing people without due process."

Rachel Maddow
Maddow is arguably the most in-fluential voice in progressive media. She is the highest paid host on MSNBC, now rebranded as MS NOW. Maddow has approximately 9.4 million followers across her primary social media accounts, with nearly 9.4 million on X (formerly Twitter) and 2.5 million on the Facebook page for The Rachel Maddow Show. Her podcasts are highly popular, often reaching number one on the Apple Podcasts charts.
    In her podcast Burn Order, Maddow draws several parallels to today's political climate beyond mass detentions. The podcast focuses on the manipulation of information, government accountability, and the targeting of groups.
      FYI: Listen to the podcast on various platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and MSNBC's website 
    The key parallels Maddow highlights are:
  • Targeting of "the Other": The government used "brazen lies and stereotypes" to turn the public against a whole group of people. This can be seen today with the divisive political rhetoric labeling certain groups as a threat.
  • Lack of Accountability for Influential Figures: Maddow points to figures operating without accountability. This can be seen as a parallel to situations where powerful individuals seem untouchable and operate outside public scrutiny.
    Attempts to Suppress Truth: The podcast is titled after a "burn order"—a deliberate attempt to destroy documents and suppress the truth. This can be compared to modern discussions about mishandled records, government cover-ups, and the fight for transparency.
    Public Indifference: Maddow suggests the public back then was "determined to look the other way". Today, with a constant stream of news, there is a danger of public fatigue and indifference, potentially allowing those in power to act unchecked.
    Abuse of Power: The historical event involved the abuse of executive power and the stripping of citizens' rights through an unconstitutional executive order. This serves as a warning about unchecked power and the importance of constitutional checks and balances.
    It's amazing how many Americans have never heard of this shameful chapter of US  history. Even less known is how Japanese Americans fought for the federal government to admit any wrongdoing.

    The podcast also explores how the persistence of the Japanese American community was able to get the federal government to issue an apologizy to Japanese Americans for the wartime internment through the Civil Liberties Act of 198..The apology not only acknowledged that the incarceration was based on "racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership," it also provided a $20,000 cash payment to each eligible survivor.

    Maddow will host a live event in Los Angeles tied to Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order sponsored by MS NOW. It will take place at 5 p.m. PT on Dec. 14 at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles. The event also will air as a MSNOW primetime special on Dec. 29. Tickets for the event are available for purchase via Ticketmaster.


    Japanese Americans, informed by its painful history, largely reacted with alarm and opposition to Trump's immigration crackdowns, advocating for compassion and constitutional rights for all immigrants. Their perspective matters.

    “Doing the right thing doesn't always pay off in the short run, but your country will ultimately get this right,” Maddow tells Time magazine. “The good guys will be rewarded and the bad guys will be punished or forgotten. Having faith in those kinds of moral outcomes is really a nice guiding light to have in dark times like these.”

    EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X, BlueSky or at the blog Views From the Edge. 

Friday, August 11, 2023

California att'y general issues formal apology to Japanese Americans' incarceration

California Attorney General Rob Bonta



On the 35th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a formal apology acknowledging the role played by the California Attorney General’s Office in unjustly depriving Japanese Americans’ civil rights and civil liberties during and after World War II.

“Today, my office formally apologizes for its past use of legal tools to deprive a generation of Japanese Californians of their liberty and financial security during the World War II era,” said Attorney General Bonta Thursday, Aug. 10.

“The forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese American citizens remains among the darkest periods of our history, and the suffering it caused Japanese American families across California is incalculable. While we can never erase the horrors of the past, we must take steps to atone for past wrongs by answering the call for accountability, truth and reconciliation, racial healing and transformation.

"The California Attorney General’s Office deeply regrets its past complicity in these heinous violations of civil rights, and with this apology, recommits to its mission of protecting and defending civil liberties for all Americans,” stated Bonta, the first Filipino American to occupy the office.
FYI: The formal statement of apology can be found here.
In 2020, the state's lawmakers issued a formal apology for incarcerating people of Japanese descent during WWII.

In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which targeted and imprisoned more than 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who primarily lived on the West Coast. 

Former California Attorney General Earl Warren testified before Congress in support of this order and enforced the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which took possession of agricultural land owned by Japanese American families. 

In 1943, California Attorney General Robert Walker Kenny formed a special unit within the Attorney General's Office to enforce the California Alien Land Law. The California Alien Land Law prohibited Asian immigrants from purchasing or leasing land until 1952, when the California Supreme Court declared the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1944, the California Attorney General's Office joined the states of Washington and Oregon in submitting an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States, supporting the imprisonment of Fred Korematsu — a national civil rights hero who fought against the wrongful incarceration of Japanese Americans — despite the lack of any evidence that he posed a security threat. The Attorney General's Office recognizes today that this was unequivocally incorrect.

As racism, fear, and xenophobia continue to threaten fundamental freedoms, Bonta remains fully committed to fighting for the civil rights of all of California’s diverse communities, evidenced by: 

Saturday, February 19, 2022

Day of Remembrance: JACL marks the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066

Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942.

On the anniversary of Executive Order 9066, the Japanese Americans mark Feb. 19, 1942 as their own "day of infamy."

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, initiating a controversial World War II policy, with lasting consequences to this day for Japanese Americans. The document ordered the forced removal of resident "enemy aliens" from parts of the West vaguely identified as military areas.

Japanese immigrants and their descendants, regardless of American citizenship status or length of residence, were systematically rounded up, forced to sell their homes, farms and businesses and with only the clothes they were able to carry, they were transported to faraway prison camps.

The imprisonment of these Americans of Japanese descent is widely condemned as one of the most shameful episodes of American history.

With the hope that the US never descends to the hysteria and racism that prompted the mass incarceration, the few remaining survivors of the prison camps and their descendants are determined to never let America forget the racism inherent in EO 9066, pushing that the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent is not whitewashed in U.S. history and allying themselves with other groups who are victims of injustice or bigotry.

Executive Order 9066 marked a shameful chapter in American history.

On this Day of Remembrance, Feb. 19, 2022, the Japanese American Citizens League, issued the following statement marking the 80th anniversary of President Roosevelt signing Executive Oder 9066:

Eighty years ago on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 after growing pressure from the Department of War, Navy, and the general public in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entrance into World War II. The order, though never explicitly stating any racial or ethnic group, gave the Army and Navy the power to prescribe military zones within the United States and to exclude any and all persons deemed necessary. Today, we remember EO 9066 as the order that gave way to the forced removal and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry. All without due process, trial, or even evidence. 

This piece of paper and the subsequent events that followed forever changed the course of the Japanese American community. Those 120,000 people lost their livelihoods, their homes, countless personal belongings, millions of dollars in lost revenue and savings, and most of all their dignity. From living in modified horse stalls, whitewashed with mud, hair, and the lingering scent of manure, to the barren desert camps and tar-papered barracks where dust seeped into everything, the toilets and showers gave no privacy, and the machine guns were pointed inwards. It is hard to fathom the feelings and emotions all those who lived through this experience must have felt. 

We saw our community torn apart when their loyalty was questioned even further by being forced to fill out the infamous “loyalty questionnaire.” It asked all incarcerees, regardless of age, gender, or citizenship if they would serve the United States on combat duty and if they would forswear any and all allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. Families, siblings, friends, loved ones, all were forced to take sides, and in many instances were torn apart by the decision to answer “yes, yes” or “no, no.” Both sides believed that in taking a stance they would be proving their loyalty and would be on the right side in the pages of history, and they were both correct. 

On the one hand, there were the exploits of Japanese American service members who joined the fight against oppression and tyranny while their families were locked away back home. The members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, 100th Infantry Battalion, and Military Intelligence Service were not only the most highly decorated unit for their size and duration in all of US Military history but they were also credited with helping to shorten the war through their missions in Europe and the Pacific. 

On the other, there were those whose resistance was their fight against tyranny from their own government. Whether it was all the way to the Supreme Court in the cases of Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, Fred Korematsu, and Mitsuye Endo. Or in the individual and collective resistance of those who were removed to Tule Lake segregation center, or those who resisted the draft and spent time in federal penitentiary. Or even those who’d faced enough humiliation and asked to be repatriated to Japan, a distant memory that some had never even seen before. 

We also remember the generation after camp who, along with their parents and grandparents, fought to right the wrongs their country committed in the halls of Congress. When the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed, it was a commitment from the government, finally acknowledging what our community had known all along, that we had done nothing wrong and that the incarceration had been caused by, “war hysteria, racial prejudice, and a failure of political leadership.” While it would never make up for the monetary losses and the years of trauma, the redress era put our community and our nation on a path of healing and using the story of the incarceration to make change today. 

So here we stand, 80 years later, in remembrance of the event that forever changed our community. But we also celebrate achievements that have come in its aftermath, such as the recent passage of the Amache National Historic Site Act to bring Amache into the National Parks Service. Yet, we also look forward to new challenges, such as supporting the African American community in their campaign for redress that too is long overdue. This year, we should remember all of this history in order to work better as a nation to make a change and to continue righting wrongs for other communities who are victimized by injustice and bigotry.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.


Monday, February 3, 2020

Asian Americans denounce expansion of the Muslim ban

SAALT

ASAM NEWS


Both South Asian American and Japanese American groups are condemning Donald Trump’s decision Jan. 31 to expand his Muslim travel ban to six more countries.


“Like each previous version of the Muslim ban, this new ban is rooted in the Trump administration’s bigotry and xenophobia, including the president’s well-known belief that Black immigrants come from “sh*thole countries,” said Mike Ishii, Co-Director of Tsuru for Solidarity, a group of Japanese Americans dedicated to ending detention of refugees and immigrants at detention centers.

The ban now includes Myanmar, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Eritrea, Sudan and Tanzania.

“One thing is clear, the Muslim Ban was this administration’s first family separation policy just days after the presidential inauguration in 2017, and it has served as the foundational policy for targeting communities of color ever since,” said Lakshmi Sridaran, South Asian Americans Leading Together’s Interim Executive Director. “Since then, we have seen attacks on DACA, TPS, diversity lottery, green cards, public benefits, refugees, asylum seekers, pregnant women, and more to institutionalize a white supremacist agenda.”

The issue is one close to the heart of many Japanese Americans.

“We recognize this kind of bigotry; it is what politicians used during World War II to justify rounding up our families and throwing us into American concentration camps,” Ishii explained.


It is apparent that in including Myanmar, formerly Burma, the Trump administration is targeting the Rohingya Muslims fleeing government-approved persecution.

“For decades, the minority Rohingya Muslims of Burma have been exposed to human rights violations. Now, those who reside in the United States are living in fear of being seperateded from their family due to Trump’s expansion of the Muslim ban. Anything that tears apart our families threatens our nation," said Henny Ohr, executive director at Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resource Center in Iowa in a statement.

"That’s why today, immigrant families in Iowa and throughout our nation affirm our belief that having family values means keeping families together no matter their creed or where they were born.” 


SAALT is calling for the passage of the No Ban Act. The Act calls for the immediately rescission of the Muslim Ban and would limit the president’s power to exercise such authority.

"From scapegoating Muslims with the Muslim Ban to now expanding the same restrictions to other immigrant communities of color, the Trump administration continues to weaponize immigration law in order to advance its xenophobic agenda," said Javeria Jamil, a lawyer at the National Security & Civil Rights of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus.

'Trump’s extended un-American travel ban undermines our nation’s core values. It is clearly driven by hate, not security," tweeted California Sen. Kamala Harris.

Views From the Edge contributed to this report.

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Japanese American researcher whose work led to reparations dies, age 93

LEGACY
AIKO HERZIG-YOSHINAGA, 1925-2018

ASAM NEWS

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, the Japanese American activist whose research resulted in the financial and symbolic reparations to Japanese incarceration camp survivors, died in Torrance, California at the age of 93.

Herzig-Yoshinaga is notable for uncovering evidence that proved that the U.S. government’s decision to force Japanese Americans behind barbed wire during World War II was driven by racist intent rather than the protection of national security.

“Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga was the quintessential example that one person can change the course of history,” Mitch Maki, president of the nonprofit Go For Broke National Education Center, states. “As a self-trained researcher and archivist, she had the keen ability to identify key documents and draw the connections between them” — reports the Huffington Post.

Growing up in California, she recalled the hostility she faced by authorities after former President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1942 forcing Japanese Americans into camps. According to the New York Times, she vividly remembers the time when her high school principal assembled the 15 Japanese students in her graduating class to tell them that “You don’t deserve to get your high school diplomas because your people bombed Pearl Harbor”.

At the age of 17, Herzig-Yoshinaga, alongside 120,000 other Japanese Americans, were evicted from their homes and forced to relocate to the prisons. After residing in the Manzanar prison camp in California, she was eventually relocated to those in Arkansas: Jerome and subsequently, Rohwer.

Herzig-Yoshinaga recollects the squalid living conditions. Receiving the bare minimum, she spent her war days in cramped quarters, sleeping on metal beds where her mattress was a bag stuffed with hay.

According to the Huffington Post, Herzig-Yoshinaga described, in an NPR interview, having “No chest of drawers, no nothing, no curtains on the windows. It was the barest of the bare.”

As much as Herzig-Yoshinaga wanted to forget her war years, her political involvement with various anti-war organizations inspired her to delve back into her past. Moving to Washington D.C. with her third-husband John Herzig in 1978, she dedicated her days scouring the National Archives to research the executive order.

It wasn’t until the 1980s when she finally made a breakthrough. Sitting on an archivist’s table was a red bound volume that held the original draft, supposedly the last copy in existence, of a 1943 government report — according to the Washington Post.

The report debunked the Pentagon’s claim that imprisonment was a “military necessity”. The report, written by Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, states that incarceration wasn’t because the separation of the “good” Japanese Americans from the “bad” ones was time-costly, but because “an exact separation of the ‘sheep from the goats’ was unfeasible” — reports the Washington Post. In other words, the document indicates a perceived deficiency in the Japanese race.

Her findings were instrumental to Congress’s decision to pass the 1988 Civil Liberties Act. This federal law granted $20,000 in reparations to every survivor from the camps and an official apology from former President Ronald Reagan — according to the NY Times.

Herzig-Yoshinaga, with her research partner and lawyer Peter H. Irons, also discovered a certificate stating that all copies of the report were burned. This document, alongside a 467-page report — written by lawyer Angus C. Macbeth– that consisted of Herzig-Yoshinaga’s research, was later on utilized to repeal the conviction of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American who was arrested in 1942 for refusing to live in a camp. Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui, additional challengers to wartime policies, also had their convictions overturned.

Despite Herzig-Yoshinaga’s significant discoveries that made achieving social justice for the Japanese American community a reality, she remained humble in her accomplishments.

“She never sought public recognition,” Lorraine Bannai, a law professor who worked on the Korematsu case states. “She would say, “It’s all these young people who did all of this work, and I’m privileged to be a part of it” — reports the LA Times.
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Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Families of Asian American pioneers come to the defense of Muslims

LIA CHANG
Fred Korematsu

ASAM NEWS


THE FAMILIES of Gordon Hirayabashi, Minoru Yasui and Fred Korematsu are carrying on the legacies of these courageous Japanese American pioneers.

All three men challenged the constitutionality of the evacuation orders that lead to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

All three men paid a personal price for their activism.

Now their children are speaking out against the Muslim travel ban, drawing parallels between incarceration camps and the travel ban today.

They’ve filed amicus briefs opposing the executive order in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case was scheduled to be heard today, but was cancelled.

“I haven’t given up hope,” Karen Korematsu, 67, said to USA Today. “My father waited 40 years for justice.”

More than 40 years after World War II, the criminal records of all three men were thrown out after it became known the government withheld evidence that contradicted their rational that the camps were needed for national security.

According to the International Examiner, the briefs state

“Rather than repeat the injustices of the past,” the Court “should heed the lessons of Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui: Blind deference to the Executive Branch … is incompatible with the protection of fundamental freedoms.”

“Clearly it was an issue of ‘racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a failure of political leadership,’” Holly Yasui said. “We haven’t learned the lesson that the Japanese American internment gave to us.”
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Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Proposed fence divides people at Tule Lake internment camp

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
During World War II, the Tule Lake internment camp housed almost 20,000 people, the vast majority of whom were Americans of Japanese descent.

ASAM NEWS

A PLAN to fence off Tule Lake, the involuntary home of nearly 19,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned during WWII has raised fears the historical site will be endangered. 
The Herald and News reports Modoc County in California has proposed building a 16,000 feet, eight-feet tall perimeter around the nearby airport to keep wildlife off the runway. In so doing, the fence partitions off part of the former internment camp, which has been designated a California Historic Landmark and a National Historic Landmark.
 
“The fence is a desecration of a site we feel is spiritual, a site where people go to mourn, a site that is for remembrance,” said Barbara Takei, CFO of the Tule Lake Committee, said to the Sacramento Bee. “With the fence, we will be shut out from where our families lived and permanently reminded of the racism and hostility that put us there in the first place.”
 
Negotiations around the fence lasted 18 months and ended with no agreement. The county is currently seeking public comment and those interested have until October 10 to submit those comments.

More information about how to send in your opinions can be found on Facebook.

“I think there’s a need for everyone to come to the table and see how we can move forward,” said Mike Ishi, another member of the Tule Lake Committee. “We’re not trying to destroy people’s livelihoods. I try to stay very open and sensitive to the local perspective. But this is a site that has international importance. People come from all over the world to see that site.”
 
Both sides criticize the other for inferring that racist motives are behind their respective positions for and against the fence. 
 
“We’re not trying to keep people out. We’re trying to keep people safe,” said Nick Macy of Macy’s Flying Service.
 
If approved, the earliest the fence would be built is October 2019.
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Thursday, November 17, 2016

Trump surrogate says WWII interment camps set 'precedent' for Muslim registry

Ronald Reagan Library
Ronald Reagan signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that apologized for the internment of Japanese citizens and permanent residents during World War II. 
I THOUGHT we all agreed that the internment camps that placed thousands of Japanese/Americans behind barbed wire was a mistake and illegal.

I distinctly remember President Ronald Reagan issuing a formal apology and reparations were paid for the unjust incarceration of U.S. citizens.

That dark chapter in American history has apparently been forgotten by the incoming Trump administration.

Carl Higbie, a prominent surrogate of President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday (Oct. 16) used the example of the WWII internment camps as precedent for creating a registry for Muslim immigrants. This comes less than a week after the Kansas secretary of state told Reuters that Trump's team might reprise a post-Sept. 11 national registry of immigrants from countries regarded as havens for "extremist activity." 

The idea is so far out there even Fox News host Meghan Kelly expressed disbelief.
Kelly: You know better than to suggest that. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that gets people scared, Carl.

Higbie: Right. I'm not saying I agree with it, but in this case I absolutely believe that a regional-based ...

Kelly: You can't be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the president-elect is gonna do.

Higbie: Look, the president needs to protect America first, and if that means having people that are not protected under our Constitution have some sort of registry so we can understand, until we can identify the true threat and where it's coming from, I support it."

Higgle later clarified to the New York Times that he was not a constitutional lawyer and was working from a layman’s understanding of the 1944 Supreme Court ruling that the order for internment camps was constitutional. He told the NYTimes he hoped to be involved in the Trump administration but had engaged in no “formal conversations” with the president-elect’s team.

Meghan Kelly interviewed Trump adviser Carl Higbie.
Democratic Rep. Judy Chu of California denounced Higbie's comments.

"Any proposal to force American Muslims to register with the federal government, and to use Japanese imprisonment during World War II as precedent, is abhorrent and has no place in our society," Chu said. "These ideas are based on tactics of fear, division, and hate that we must condemn."

“The imprisonment of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II, including my parents and grandparents, is widely understood to be one of the darkest chapters in American history,” Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said in a statement Thursday.

“I am horrified that people connected to the incoming administration are using my family’s experience as a precedent for what President-elect Donald Trump could do,” added Takano, who supported Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

“These comments confirm many Americans’ worst fears about the Trump administration, and they reflect an alarming resurgence of racism and xenophobia in our political discourse.”



Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) called the remarks "outrageous, unacceptable and reckless" in a statement.

"The unjust internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a painful period during our history, but we have taken great strides as a country to heal those wounds and move forward."

Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is campaigning to become the Chair of the Democratic National Party, said that if the Trump administration "moves forward with the racist and divisive policies his team have been advocating for, we will be the first ones to sand up to him. We will be the first ones to tell him, 'No.' "

"Higbie’s attempt to cite Japanese American incarceration as a precedent for this type of action is frightening and wrong. It’s a statement intended to lay a marker for a misguided belief that ignores the true lessons of Japanese American incarceration.," cited a statement of the Japanese American Citizens League. "This lesson was captured in the words of a federal commission that said, '…The broad historical causes which shaped these decisions (to incarcerate Japanese Americans) were race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.'

"JACL believes that some of these same conditions exist today, where Muslim Americans are being singled out and unfairly targeted, and where the voices of leadership that should be speaking out against unfair treatment are not.

"We must not misinterpret our history by believing the Japanese American incarceration was justified as a precedent for similar actions today, and further, we must not use the wrongdoing perpetrated against Japanese Americans during World War II as a justification for the mistreatment of Muslim Americans."

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