Apologizing for Mistakes of the Past

It was an overwhelming mistake during World War II that strangely mimicked the powers we claimed to be fighting in 1942: the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in urging President F.D. Roosevelt to proceed in putting Japanese Americans into internment camps.

The Board at the time claimed the move was made because it was “difficult if not impossible to distinguish between loyal and disloyal Japanese aliens.” The Board’s urging became a reality with Executive Order 9066 and, in February of 1942, 120,000 people of Japanese descent were carted into camps for up to three years, an estimated one-third of them being from L.A. County alone.

The overwhelming proportion of those interned — some 62% — were legal and proper American citizens, effectively staining our history with one of the most egregious violations of constitutional rights inflicted upon our citizens. Even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt opposed the order, though she was unable to convince her husband to abandon it.

The Board’s decision at the time turned what Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called “public hysteria into public policy,” prompting a media frenzy and public outcry that was not only unjustified but driven by paranoia.

The Los Angeles Times, in a piece written by W.H. Anderson on February 2 of 1942 entitled “The Question of Japanese-Americans,” coldly stated: “Perhaps the most difficult and delicate question that confronts our powers that be is the handling–the safe and proper treatment–of our American-born Japanese, our Japanese-American citizens by the accident of birth. But who are Japanese nevertheless. A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched.” Fletcher Browon, mayor of Los Angeles at the time, declared that Abraham Lincoln would “intern Japs” is he were in office at the time while U.S. Representative Leland Ford said he wanted “all coast Japs in camps.”

On June 6, Ridley-Thomas put forth a motion to repeal the resolution the Board of 1942 passed in support of the internment. That motion was unanimously passed, acting as not only an official apology but a reminder that it is never too late to reflect upon and act upon past mistakes.

Watch Star Trek actor George Tekei below, recalling his experiences and memories being interned, at the Board’s meeting last Tuesday: