The Trail

Issue date: 2/23/07 Section: News

Cranes attached to the trees in memory of the Japanese students

It was more than just a day for Japanese-Americans. As a crowd gathered in the Rotunda on Monday, Feb. 19 to listen to speaker Roger Daniels and his lecture, titled "Incarceration of Japanese Americans, 1942-2007" and commemorate the Japanese-Americans that were placed in internment camps during the World War II era, Daniels urged all Americans to remember that day.

"It is a day that all Americans should remember because it commemorates a day of one of the biggest violations in civil liberties since slavery," Daniels said.

Daniels urged for a remembrance of Feb. 19, because sixty-five years ago on that day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan.

The order focused on the removal of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast of the United States, placing them in internment camps throughout the country.

Daniel's speech was introduced by English Professor Tamiko Nimura, whose family was affected by the incarceration of Japanese-Americans.

"It is safe to say that I would not be here, as Puget Sound's first professor of Asian-American literature, without this early knowledge of my family's direct connection to internment history," Nimura said. "It encouraged my interest in Japanese-American culture, it enlivened,my love of Asian-American literature [and] it energized my passion for issues of social justice and advocacy."

Daniels, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Cincinnati and an acclaimed Organization of American Historians lecturer, then spoke on the effects of the executive order on Japanese-Americans, its violation of civil rights and how it continues to impact civil rights policies in the United States.

Locally, the 1,052 Japanese-American residents living outside of Pierce County were rounded up on May 16, 1942, and driven to a fairground near Puyallup where they were incarcerated.
In Tacoma, Japanese-American citizens were sent to Pinedale, Calif., outside of Fresno, two days later. They took with them only what they could carry.

Daniels continued to explain the conditions of the interned citizens, many of whom were housed in small confinements and cattle barns under the supervision of military guards.

Continued...

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