Today, we shed light on one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history. Eighty years ago, the United States began removing 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and forcing them into internment camps.
We must remind ourselves of the constant need to ensure the freedoms and rights of every American. We commemorate the brave men, women, and children who were unconscionably mistreated by the country they called home, and we renew our commitment to preventing such abuses.
We cannot erase our past, but we can strive to acknowledge, protect, and defend the rights of those facing injustice and discrimination, and ensure history does not repeat itself.
Based on then flimsy, and now fully disproved, claims of national security, the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans is now fully recognized for the racism that served as the foundation for the policy and has been repudiated by our government in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
A decision motivated by discrimination and xenophobia, the internment of Japanese Americans was a betrayal of our most sacred values as a nation that we must never repeat. This stain on our history should remind us to always stand up for our fellow Americans, regardless of their national origin or immigration status, and protect the civil rights and liberties that we hold dear.
While we remember February 19 as the point in time when EO9066 was signed, we acknowledge that this was one point in a stream of policies intended to oppress and exploit minority communities.
Despite these experiences, thousands of young Japanese-American men enlisted in the U.S. armed forces, bravely fighting to defend the nation that was abridging their own freedoms at home.
Nowhere was this better evidenced than with the exploits and wartime achievements of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, 100th Infantry Battalion, and Military Intelligence Service. Victory in the war would have likely been significantly delayed without the participation of Japanese Americans in the war effort.
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.
We honor their sacrifice, as well as the resilience that made it possible for thousands of Japanese-American families to reclaim and rebuild their lives after the war.
We also remember our government’s capacity to apologize and seek to right a wrong. The passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 acknowledged the wrong and sought to provide reparations.
While no amount of money would truly and fully compensate incarcerees for their economic losses nor the emotional scars of trauma upon them and their families, the cost to the country affirmed the deep recognition that we as a nation had to share some of the pain that the Japanese American community had felt, to take responsibility.
In addition, San Andreas itself was home to one of the most infamous of ten internment camps for Japanese Americans, Manzanar. It was also the first of all the camps to be established.
Located 230 miles north of where we stand, the first detainees to be placed in the camp were the very Japanese Americans who had been made to help build the camp itself. Ninety percent of those incarcerated there were from Little Tokyo, Los Santos.
Those detained endured subhuman conditions and treatment, simply for their heritage, and Little Tokyo as it was known shrank considerably during this time. Even gaining the nickname of “the Tokyo Strip†as it did so.
Even post-internment, as Japanese Americans returned to the city, many were unable to find employment or rebuild their lives. The stain of persecution lingered, leading many to homelessness and poverty.
The effect of these times continues to this day, and while we also celebrate our success in rebuilding a path to equality, much more work needs to be done.
A disproportionate amount of Japanese Americans still live below the poverty line, struggling with housing and equal opportunity in our city.
It is with this sense of recognizing our wrongs and seeking to make them right that we as citizens of Los Santos might continue to aspire to the formation of a more perfect union.
Therefore on this day, we ask that all Citizens of Los Santos join us in solemn remembrance of the issuance of Executive Order 9066 in 1942. We similarly ask that all the people commemorate the rescission of Executive Order 9066 by President Gerald R. Ford on this day in 1976.
While the gathering included the remembrance of the legacy of Japanese American victims, not all was too gloomy. In fact, local Japanese Americans embraced this date with integrity and were more than happy to demonstrate what modern Little Tokyo has to offer in terms of the vast assortment of prospering businesses.
The City's gratitude goes towards the Japanese American Association as none of this would have occurred if it weren't for their contribution and the passion that they share in seeing improvements for Japanese American people that reside inside Los Santos. Unpretentiously, our gratitude also goes to all of those who came to show their support on the 19th of February. And together we hope to one day fully heal the scars left behind from darker times.
