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More WWII atrocities come to light

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  • More WWII atrocities come to light

    Sen. Dan Inouye introduced a bill in the Senate last week on the anniversary of the issuing of Executive Order 9066, which forced almost 120,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps. It turns out that not only were Japanese living on the West Coast of the US put into internment camp simply because of their ethnicity, but Japanese living in Latin America were also seized and shipped to the same internment camps. Their captivity was even more sinister than that of the Japanese living in the US: they were used as US bargaining chips in a prisoner exchange with the Japanese!

    "Between the years 1941 and 1945, our government, with the help of Latin American officials, arbitrarily arrested persons of Japanese descent from streets, homes and workplaces and brought approximately 2,300 undocumented persons to campsites in the United States, where they were held under armed watch, then used for prisoner exchange (with Japan)," he said.

    "Those used in an exchange were sent to Japan, a foreign country that many had never set foot in," he said.

    By the end of the war, those not used for prisoner exchange were subject to deportation proceedings, but some had to remain in the United States because their country of origin refused them re-entry because they had no passport, Inouye said.

    "When I first learned of the wartime experiences of Japanese Latin Americans, it seemed unfathomable," he said, "but it happened. It is a part of our national history, and it is a part of the living histories of the many families whose lives are forever tied to internment camps in our country."

    Inouye's bill hopes to investigate the incidents more carefully and to see if reparations and formal apologies also have to be made to the families of the Latin American Japanese.

    Miulang
    "Americans believe in three freedoms. Freedom of speech; freedom of religion; and the freedom to deny the other two to folks they don`t like.” --Mark Twain
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