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WWII internmentSACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The CaliforniaAssembly on Tuesday soundly rejected a proposal which urged schools to teach that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was a military necessity.The resolution, introduced by a legislator whoserved in the Marines, maintained it’s wrong to teach that Japanese-Americans were put in “concentration camps.” It portrayed the “relocation,” as it was called at the time, as a reasonable reaction of people frightened by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.The measure was intended to counteract another non-binding resolution approved by the state Legislature last year that called the wartime detentions a human rights violation driven in part by racism.The new resolution was rejected by the Assmebly 60-4. Only the author, Republican Assemblyman Gil Ferguson, a retired Marine spoke in favor of it. Eleven lawmakers opposed it with emotional and anecdotal speeches.“It unnecessarily reopens wounds that should and must be allowed to heal,” Minority Leader Ross Johnson, a Republican, said in leading the bipartisan opposition.Ferguson’s measure was aimed at one by Democratic Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, that the Legislature passed last year.Speier’s measure, which isn’t a law but an expression of the Legislature’s opinion, urged the state and its school districts to use textbooks that show the internment of Japanese-Americans was “a violation of human rights rather than an act of military necessity.”Speier’s resolution noted a conclusion of the federal Commission on Wartime Relocations and Internment of Civilians about internment of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans in fenced,guarded camps. The internment, the commission said,“was notjustified by military necessity and the decisions which followed from it — detention, ending detention and ending exclusion — were not driven by analysis of military conditions.”Speier’s resolution added that, “The broad historical causes which shaped these decisions were raceprejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”Ferguson’s resolution urged the state and school districts “to adopt a broad range of instructional materials that discuss and reference these events and facts ...so as tooffer California students an honest, objective and balanced education concerning this period in our history.”Ferguson’s proposal stated, “It is simply untrue that Japanese-Americans were interned in concentration camps during World War II.”“The people of California and the designated war zone areas had good reason to fear an invasion attempt after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as Japanese submarines cruised ofTour coast, barrage balloons flew over our harbor areas and great parts of the zone existed under blackout conditions,” the resolution said.It also said any history that “omits the attack on Pearl Harbor and the war as a major factor in our nation’s relocation policy unfairly denigrates the character of a generation of Americans, including all who fought in that war or who merely were aliveat the time.”Ferguson said Speier was trying to rewrite history.“For the First time in the history of America, a bunch of politicians are acting as they do in Russia or China and revising history and telling teachers how they should teach,” Ferguson said.“I admire and respect Japanese-Americans,” he said. “I agree it was a tragic period in our history. I’m sure there was racism in American, just as there is now and is in every country in the world.”Arguing against the measure, Johnson said: “What happened was wrong if even one U.S. citizen was denied his or her constitutional rights or freedom not because of what they did but because of who they were. It should never have happened. It must never be allowed to happen again.”“This measure (Ferguson’s resolution) says somehow if you’re really upset and really concerned, it’s OK to violate your civil rights,” added Republican Assemblyman Charles Quackenbush.
Newspaper Details
Clovis News Journal
Clovis, New Mexico, US
Fri, Aug 31, 1990
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
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USA 25 Aug 2019
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