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U.S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. POW compounds to two key factors: a Japanese reluctance to surrender and a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman' and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to POWs."
World War II saw the forced internment of about 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast — an estimated 62 percent of whom were U.S. citizens — in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the Vietnam War, refugees from Southeast Asia faced routine discrimination and hate, including attacks by Ku Klux Klan members on shrimpers in Texas.
The voice of young Japanese Americans became codified within the JACL, and the organization adopted the issue of reparations as a priority [in 1978].
In the face of rising anti-Asian racist actions – now at about 100 reported cases per day – Yang implores Asian Americans to “wear red, white, and blue” in their efforts to combat the virus.
By the fall of 1942, all Japanese Americans had been evicted from California and relocated to one of ten concentration camps built to imprison them. Prohibited from taking more than they could carry into the camps, many people lost their property and assets as it was sold, confiscated or destroyed in government storage.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Kochiyama and other Japanese American activists denounced the mistreatment of Muslim and Arab Americans and warned that the World War II injustice was being repeated.
In 1990, the U.S. government began mailing out envelopes, each containing a presidential letter of apology and a $20,000 check from the Treasury, to more than 82,000 Japanese Americans who,...
