I'd like to note that the bill I'm about to sign also provides funds for members of the Aleut community who were evacuated from the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands after a Japanese attack in 1942. For here we admit a wrong here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law. So, what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor.
Yet no payment can make up for those lost years. The legislation that I am about to sign provides for a restitution payment to each of the 60,000 surviving Japanese-Americans of the 120,000 who were relocated or detained. We were then moved to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, where our entire family lived in one small room of a rude tar paper barrack.'' Like so many tens of thousands of others, the members of the Mineta family lived in those conditions not for a matter of weeks or months but for 3 long years. Some families lived in converted stables, others in hastily thrown together barracks. In the Congressman's words: `` My own family was sent first to Santa Anita Racetrack. Yet back at home, the soldiers' families were being denied the very freedom for which so many of the soldiers themselves were laying down their lives.Ĭongressman Norman Mineta, with us today, was 10 years old when his family was interned. The 442d Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of Japanese-Americans, served with immense distinction to defend this nation, their nation. Indeed, scores of Japanese-Americans volunteered for our Armed Forces, many stepping forward in the internment camps themselves. For throughout the war, Japanese-Americans in the tens of thousands remained utterly loyal to the United States. Yet we must recognize that the internment of Japanese-Americans was just that: a mistake. Yes, the Nation was then at war, struggling for its survival, and it's not for us today to pass judgment upon those who may have made mistakes while engaged in that great struggle. It was based solely on race, for these 120,000 were Americans of Japanese descent. This action was taken without trial, without jury. More than 40 years ago, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps. The Members of Congress and distinguished guests, my fellow Americans, we gather here today to right a grave wrong.
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