Little Tokyo Community Candlelight Vigil

Please join us to reflect on the tragic events on September 11th in remembrance of the victims of the tragedy. We would also like to remember the Japanese American wartime experience as our civil rights were violated and would like to encourage everyone to focus on justice, not revenge and to not stereotype or scapegoat people of Arab American or Muslim American heritage. JOIN US.

Date: Friday, September 28, 2001

Time: 6:30 pm

Place: corner of First and Alameda Streets in Little Tokyo.

Bring your own candles (a limited number will be provided by NCRR)

Sponsored by the Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress

Japanese American Citizens

Little Tokyo Service Center CDC

For more information, call NCRR at (323) 680-3484

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Article from LA Times...

Reaction Reopens Wounds of WWII for Japanese Americans

Citing internment camps, civil rights groups plan a candlelight vigil in support of Muslims and Arab Americans.

By MARTHA GROVES and ERIKA HAYASAKI

Times Staff Writers

September 26 2001

Rui Satamura's high school yearbooks evoke bitter memories--of being called a "Jap" and spending two years in an Arizona

internment camp. She once had two sets of yearbooks. She kept the pair created for students at camp but tossed out the ones from Los Angeles High School, symbolically banishing the pain.

Now, since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people have

vandalized Islamic institutions, and Arab Americans have

complained that men of Middle Eastern appearance have been

taken off airplanes for questioning.

The FBI, meanwhile, is investigating the fatal shooting of a

Pakistani grocer in Dallas, and Arizona authorities said

racial hatred triggered the killing of a Sikh gas station

attendant in Mesa. In those two cases, the victims were

neither Muslim nor Arab.

"If they look like they are people from the Middle East, they are targeted," said Satamura, 78. For Satamura and other older Japanese Americans, the scattered assaults on Arab Americans and Muslims are opening afresh a wound that never completely healed.

Even as they join in the nation's mass grieving and decry the terrorists' deeds, they are reliving their own experiences of being shunned by neighbors and carted off to internment camps after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. No one has called for detaining Arab Americans en masse, and,

unlike 1942, many political leaders and clergy are urging

tolerance.

With some law enforcement agencies advocating the use of

racial profiling as they seek out suspected terrorists,

Japanese Americans are eagerly sharing their wartime

recollections and saying that what happened to them must not

happen again. To show support for Arab Americans and Muslims, two Japanese American civil rights organizations plan a candlelight vigil in Little Tokyo Friday evening.

"There was a rush to judgment about us during World War II,"

said John Tateishi, national executive director of the

Japanese American Citizens League. "As angered as we all are

by this dastardly act, it's really important we maintain our

protections and sense of democracy and fair play."

A sense of fair play was a quick casualty once the United

States entered the war, said Jim Hirabayashi, a retired

anthropologist from San Francisco State University.

"If the rights that you have aren't any good during times of

crisis, they're not very good at all," said Hirabayashi, 74. "If you erode away your rights at any time, then it's an

erosion of the basic American democracy."

In 1942, Hirabayashi's large family was forced to move from a small rural enclave in Washington state to Tule Lake

Segregation Center, the benign official name of a remote

outpost on the California-Oregon border.

His brother Gordon, now in his 80s, was one of a few who

defied the infamous Executive Order 9066, which led to the

internment of about 112,000 residents of Japanese descent,

two-thirds of whom were American citizens. Gordon, a Quaker

pacifist who was in his senior year at the University of

Washington, violated curfew orders aimed primarily at Japanese Americans and then refused to serve in the military. He spent two years in jail.

Gordon Hirabayashi challenged the curfew order and another

order requiring the banishment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. He pushed his court battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him. More than 40 years later, in 1987, a federal appeals court threw out his conviction after government documents were unearthed that showed the military knew Japanese Americans posed no threat during the war.

But at the time, many people perceived Japanese Americans as a threat.

Mary Hatate, who like Satamura lives in the Keiro Retirement

Home in Los Angeles, was 12 when the Japanese pounded Pearl

Harbor. For a long time after, she said, she felt as if she

wanted to disappear whenever anyone mentioned "the enemy."

The bombing occurred on a Sunday, and children reported back

to school Monday, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Date of Infamy" speech was broadcast.

"I remember, I wanted to crouch down in my seat," Hatate said. "I don't know if it was because I was frightened or

embarrassed. I just remember trying to hide."

Keiro resident Grace Morikawa, 75, recalled that the abuse

continued even at war's end. After she was released from camp, she returned to Eagle Rock and put an ad in the newspaper soliciting work. The hate calls started soon after. One day someone planted a sign on the front lawn that said "Here Lives a Jap."

Many Japanese Americans doubt that today's society would

tolerate another roundup of people based on ancestry. "I think there are too many people willing to stand up against

that," Tateishi said. "There are too many political leaders in the Congress who would oppose it."

One key difference between World War II and now is the nearly instantaneous flow of news today. In 1942, when Japanese Americans were rounded up, many people east of the Rockies knew nothing about it, Tateishi said.

At the Keiro nursing home, the thoughts of many residents turn to Arab American children. Morikawa remembers the day after Pearl Harbor, when her teacher explained that Japanese

Americans shouldn't be confused with people in Japan. "The

teacher was trying to do a good thing, but I was embarrassed," she said.

Aiko O. King, 74, grimaced at the thought of young Arab

Americans facing taunts at school.

"I can tell how they feel," King said. "I don't want this to

happen to another innocent group. We were guilty until proven innocent."