NBC News' Emilie Ikeda On Family's Japanese Internment Camps Story
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • one month ago • 75 commentsBy: Scott Stump (TODAY. com)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
This weekend marks 81 years since more than 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S. were ordered into internment camps during World War II, and the emotions have reverberated through the generations for Emilie Ikeda.
The NBC News correspondent paid a moving visit to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles this week, exploring her personal connection to a shameful chapter in U.S. history.
For the first time, researchers have compiled all of the names of the Japanese Americans who were affected by Executive Order 9066 in 1942.
A 25-pound, 1,000-page book, known as the Ireicho, lists all 125,284 names, which include Emilie's grandparents. She wiped away tears on TODAY Feb. 17 as she marked the name of her grandfather, Bunji Albert Ikeda.
"He's since passed, so it's so meaningful to get to stamp his name," she said.
Emilie Ikeda's late grandfather, Bunji Albert Ikeda, was taken to a camp in Arizona with his family when he was just 7 years old.TODAY
Issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the executive order placed West Coast residents of Japanese descent, regardless of citizenship, into incarceration camps while the U.S. fought Japan and the Axis powers during World War II.
Emilie's grandparents, who were 7 years old at the time, were among those sent to the camps. She shared an old interview she conducted with her grandfather for a school project about his time in the Poston camp in Arizona.
"I always questioned why I was in this internment camp," he said. "We had these canvas cots, we had to fill these bags with hay, and that's what we slept on."
Emilie's grandfather recounted his time in the internment camp in an old interview she conducted for a school project.TODAY
Emilie also met a survivor of the internment camps during her visit to the museum. Reiko Iwanaga, 84, was moved to tears when she saw her own name in the Ireicho.
"It's all very concrete to see it like this," she said on TODAY."It's an acknowledgement of what happened."
University of Southern California professor Duncan Ryuken Williams spent the past three years working to compile the book. Before now, it was not known exactly how many Japanese Americans were ripped from their homes and taken from their businesses and sent to the camps.
"The idea of giving back people's names, giving them individuality, again, in a way that their personhood wasn't acknowledged by the U.S. government back in World War II," Williams said on TODAY about his inspiration for the project.
The museum sits on the very site where many Japanese Americans were put on buses headed to the camps 81 years ago.
"JANM is one of those ground zero points in the civil rights history of this country," museum president and CEO Ann Burroughs said on TODAY. "So there's enormous power of place to have this book here."
The Japanese American National Museum contains jars filled with soil from all of the camps where Japanese Americans were held against their will during World War II.TODAY
The museum also contains small jars filled with soil from all of the different internment camps, which were spread out between California, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Arkansas and Wyoming, according to the National Archives.
The Ireicho is on display in Los Angeles until October, and anyone is welcome to stamp the book. The urgency to remember has only intensified as many of the first-hand survivors are dwindling now that they are in their 80s and 90s.
Iwanaga was accompanied on her visit to the museum by her daughter, Maya, who stressed why it's so important to never forget.
"So it doesn't happen again," she said. "So many people don't know this happened."
Scott Stump
Scott Stump is a staff reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing news stories and features across the trending, pop culture, sports, parents, pets, health, style, food and TMRW verticals.
Article is LOCKED by moderator [Perrie Halpern R.A.]
another in a long list of regrettable instances in our collective american history that has yet to be rectified.
A chapter in our history of which we should be ashamed.
"Ashamed" is one thing.... "Obsessing" About ..... is quite another long sorted story !
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Who's obsessing?
Quite a few folks in this countrydo. Look at the "Woke" type Crowds, that will never conceed that things have actually changed.
Just look at what the article is speaking of:
Maya, who stressed why it's so important to never forget.
"So it doesn't happen again,"
When's the last time this ever happened ?
[deleted]
Your bar for "obsession" is very low.
78 or so Years ago (1942-1945), and others still stress/obsess in 2023 about it ?
Museums have been built about it since.
Remind me what "LOW" is supposed to be again ?
These people are still alive. They have a right to grieve. They lost their homes and their money. They were treated differently because they looked different. No one did this to American Nazis here in the US.
That has nada to do with being woke. It has to do with being treated sub-human.
Sure they were..... But haven't they "Moved On" and are better since then ?
Doesn't that make them "Strong" in your mind ?
No one did this to American Nazis here in the US.
Sure we did !
Internment of German Americans
With the US entry into World War I after Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, German nationals were automatically classified as "enemy aliens". Two of the four main World War I-era internment camps were located in Hot Springs, North Carolina, and Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.[2] Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer wrote that "All aliens interned by the government are regarded as enemies, and their property is treated accordingly."
They have moved on, but they also don't want this event to be forgotten. Should the Jews forget the Holocaust?
Who has actually "Forgotten" what happened ?
The Uneducated these days ?
You might have wanted to include this part of from your article. I will bold the important parts:
As opposed to the entire Japanese American community, 125,284 of them.
The completion and public presentation of The Ireicho, the official and complete "Book of Names", listing all of the Japanese Americans illegally imprisoned in American internment camps during the Second World War at The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles was kind of a BIG DEAL. It is incomprehensible why anyone would feel compelled to ridicule and belittle this current news story...
Ask a young adult. Most do not remember.
That has nothing to do for what You claimed and I responded to !
2.1.6 seeder pending Perrie Halpern R.A. replied to magicschoolbusdropout @2.1.2
"No one did this to American Nazis here in the US."
Stop Moving the Goal Posts !
What's concidered an "Adult" these days .... is very, very, very Low on the actual Adult pole !
Nobody has been imprisoned in any of the various Nazi concentration camps for the same amount of time. Should Auschwitz not have been made a museum? Is it "woke" for the experiences of the Jewish people (among others) to have been memorialized?
You seem to be equating "stressing" education about history with "stressing over" history. This is an instance of a common English word having more than one usage, and you are choosing the wrong one. Many history classes glossed over the Japanese internment, if they even covered it at all. I found out about it not through a school history class, but from a book in our town's public library written by a woman who had been interned as a child. Had I not read that book, I likely would have known nothing about it until high school.
This is being "stressed" in the same way we are slowly trying to hold accountable those who kidnapped and, in many cases, killed Native American children in boarding schools. And in the same way the Magdelene Laundries in (primarily) Ireland have been called to account for their imprisoning and abuse of women and children for decades, along with adopting out (for money, of course) children without the consent of their mothers.
It's not an obsession. It's a call to acknowledge a wrong, and to avoid committing it again.
You know, a call for people to act like decent human beings.
I am not moving goal posts. The ones they got were actual American Nazis, as in enemies of war. The Japanese were just gathered up because they were Japanese.
Still "Americans" non-the-less !
Where did I EVER say ANY Museums showing any atrocities, internments, or wrongdoings, shouldn't have happened ?
They were enemies of the country. That makes them criminals, in case you didn't know. And you are trying to make a minor point into a bigger one to diminish my point. My point is that these people were ALL GATHERED INTO CAMPS FOR BEING NOTHING MORE THAN JAPANESE.
Well, had you actually read the article, that is all this is.
You equated building museums with obsessing.
It's like you don't know what I already accomplished.
I read it just fine.
I also "Read" much more than what is provided here.
Do You ?
Search the Compensation and Reparations for the Evacuation, Relocation, and Internment Index (Redress Case Files) | National Archives
In order to have been eligible for restitution, an applicant had to have been:
Among the estimated 82,219 individuals paid, 189 were Japanese Latin American claimants eligible for the full $20,000 in redress compensation under the Act because they had the required permanent residency status or U.S. citizenship during the defined war period. In addition, ORA paid $5,000 to 145 Japanese Latin Americans who were deported from their homes in Latin America during WWII and held in internment camps in the U.S. These payments stem from an agreement resolving a 1996 civil suit filed by four Japanese Latin Americans. The agreement, which settles the so-called Mochizuki case, calls for all qualified class members to receive a presidential apology letter and $5,000 in compensation, to the extent that funds were remaining under the Act.
Did no such thing !
i noted that monuments (museums) to what happened are out there.
nothing more, nothing less.
What you read into as to my comment, seems to be YOUR issue, not mine.
See comment 2.1.22, as relates to MORE than a museum being installed, that Japanses "Americans" recieved.
If one want's MORE.... That's what Obsessing is all about !
Japanese..... Japan ....... Hirohito, etc, etc, ......Whom we were at "WAR" with after the Pearl Harbor Massacre !
Yes I know about the small compensation they got. They never got back their homes, property, business... lives wasted in the camps.
The Germans said they were sorry, too. They also paid reparations. Big deal. You can't make up with money for lives lost.
None of this has to do with remembering what happened though.
These people were not on Japan's side. They were Americans.
And we remember Pearl Harbor.
This should be remembered too.
Like I said before in a comment.... Whom is it that has "Forgotten ?
"YOUNG" Adults ?
Seems to be a dig on education on your part, if that's what you are using as the Important Whoms.
I learned about all things wrong in this country... AND OTHERS .......back in 8th grade, including about Serfdom outside this country (was assigned to do a report on it) of mine , and yours, and the bad effects of slavery all over the planet. We were also taught that this country wasn't the only country on this planet that had slaves and treated them badly.
I also did an in depth report on Booker T. Washington in 9th grade, as my chosen subject based on what we were being taught.
What are they teaching "American" kids these days ?
Lopsided History ?
Who is it that's forgotten Pearl harbor ?
I never learned about the Japanese internment camps when I was in school, over 50 years ago.
In fact, it wasn't even recognized until Reagan.
On the 100th Anniversary of The Tulsa Race Riot / Massacre most Oklahomans had never even heard of or learned about it...
I learned about this internment, and other bad things going on, on this planet, back 54 years ago, including the "Native American" treatment in this countries expansion.
Nothing was withheld in our classrooms, and nothing was exaggerated or left out.
Learned about the reparations given to those Japanese that were actually "Living", 35 Years Ago.
Guess I went to and had a "Good" school I was able to attend back then.
"St. Rose of Lima" (Miami) Private School.
I was even an altar boy at the church that had the school where I learned about all this bad stuff [Deleted]
School taught me .... I can't change History ...... but they did teach me to "Learn" from it... to Not "perpetuate" it or make it out like it's "New" in this day and age.
Well, I never learned about any of this and I want to a great school. There is nothing woke about knowing our history and if your Catholic school taught this, then they were woke.
There is nothing there to perpetuate. Just remember. Like at Holocaust museums, or are they woke, too?
When we forget our history, we are doomed to repeat it. Here is what Hitler said about the Armenian Genocide:
And with that I am done discussing this with you. You obviously don't get why it is important to remember, and I can't change that.
Apparently Not.
There is nothing woke about knowing our history and if your Catholic school taught this, then they were woke.
Nope... Woke is nothing more than about just chaos this day and age.
Teaching ALL of what actually went on in History, isn't woke. Making up Stories for a "Narrative" to make money off of..... is "WOKE"
When we forget our history, we are doomed to repeat it.
Whom is it YOU said has forgotten or not been taught actual History Again ?
hmmmm... was it our new and so-called improved "Young Adults" ?
I just gotta ask, what was your major in college? I ask because you seem to have a lot to say about what should be taught in schools but I get the feeling that you know very little about the subject matter of ANY classes taught in school.
[Deleted]
Sure, sure.
Nobody, nor did Perrie say they had. We memorialize that attack. Does that mean we're obsessed with it?
I rest my case...
I read America’s Concentration Camps in 1970 when I was 16. I was shocked and deeply moved since I knew about the war record of our 442nd Infantry Regiment The most decorated in US military history and as a fighting unit composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry.
We were talking about internment of American citizens of Japanese decent in WWII
There were no "Nazis" in WWI...
Talk about moving the goal posts and not realizing you just did it.
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Something else we have yet to really acknowledge.
In law school we learned that to seek equity, one must come with clean hands. IMO that same adage should be applied elsewhere, such as that one should not criticize other governments for doing what one did themselves. But the hypocrisy of some members on this site proves that what is similar to the adage about clean hands is often ignored. Think of the line from Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A'changing': "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, And don't criticize what you can't understand"
The Japanese internment camps weren't set up because of "racism," they were set up because America was attacked by Japan.
There is a moral to this story:
Don't blame an entire group for what a government or a segment of the group does.
They were all held to be potentially guilty and were punished due solely to their race. That's the very definition of racism.
Advice our government should have taken, but didn't, in regards to those of Japanese origin living in the US during WWII. Odd, they didn't see a need to intern all people of German origin. I wonder what the difference could possibly have been?
I think that's a stretch Sandy.
Odd, they didn't see a need to intern all people of German origin. I wonder what the difference could possibly have been?
The entire German population was held responsible for the Holocaust. Therefore, Sandy, nobody should be able to cry "victim,"
I don't see how you could possibly defend that statement.
The Jews living in Germany were held accountable for the Holocaust? Or were they not part of the German population? Or do you want to rethink that statement?
It's fairly straightforward. The reason, not a good reason, was simply because Japan attacked the US. BTW Germany did not attack the US and defeating Germany was FDR's top priority.
Veiled usage of the race card already today...................???
Sandy, you are better than that.
Were the German people as an entire national group held accountable for that or not?
No, they just declared war on us. Totally ok.
Already today? Have you seen how old this article is?
You tell us why those whose origins were Japan were interned wholesale, and those whose origins were German and Italian were not, Jim.
No, they were not.
The German population contained Jews, Gypsies, and quite a few people who sheltered those who would have been sent to concentration camps, at risk of their own lives.
The portion of the German population who didn't stand up to Hitler have been blamed.
Those who opposed him were not.
It's a pretty simple concept.
May I?
Japan attacked us. Germany & Italy did not.
Germany and Italy declared war on us, Vic. Should all Italians have been suspected of treason and interned?
That is simply not true. I grew up in the shadow of WWII and nobody ever gave the German people any such consideration. As a matter of fact there were many killed after the war was over:
"In Western Europe it was really just a case of restoring law and order. There were a lot of people who wanted revenge and retribution for what they had been through; a lot of others who used the chaos as a cover for criminal activities; and some large Communist movements whose members were agitating for revolution, often against the wishes of their leaders."
There is a difference between a declaration of war and a surprise attack.
Should all Italians have been suspected of treason and interned?
Where did I say that Japanese Americans should have been interned?
German Jews were blamed for being put in concentration camps?
Or are you excluding German Jews from being Germans?
You conveniently missed these paragraphs in your link.
So, in a link meant to support a complaint that Germans were being killed after the war, you neglected to read the paragraphs that stated that Germans making those complaints were exaggerating.
Same with French collaborators and Italian Fascists.
You should really read your links more thoroughly.
You can do better than that.
Or are you excluding German Jews from being Germans?
You know better.
You conveniently missed these paragraphs in your link.
Innocent Germans paid for what the Nazi's did. You have no empathy for them. Thus you may not claim victimhood for Japanese, Muslims or anyone else, That is my standard.
PS. The war that Japan started with the US was not based on race.
To be fair, you didn't. But you have defended treating them worse than those from other countries who declared war on us.
You declare it's not racism to hold all of a particular race accountable for the wartime actions of those of their race, from another country. But you turn right around and defend not doing the same to Caucasians from European countries who went to war against us.
They all declared war against us, Vic.
Now, this being the United States of America, we shouldn't have detained anybody without probable cause to suspect that they had actually committed a crime. But we did, in the case of Japanese citizens, and that's a black mark on our history. And there is no reasonable way to argue that it wasn't race-based. That's racism. Refusal to acknowledge blatant racism is defense of racism.
hell yes, most of those sheep herding olive pickers hadn't gotten off the boat more than 25 years before... /s
No, Vic, you're moving goalposts. These were your words:
The "entire German population" included quite a few people who were victims of the Holocaust. So, no, the "entire German population" were not held accountable for the Holocaust.
Very presumptuous, and a personal insult.
Straw man. Nobody ever said it was. The internment of Japanese Americans was decidedly based on race.
No, that was not the point. You seem to think they were interned because of race. I never thought they should have been interned, but I am pointing out that it was because of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Now, this being the United States of America, we shouldn't have detained anybody without probable cause to suspect that they had actually committed a crime.
Agreed.
But we did, in the case of Japanese citizens, and that's a black mark on our history. And there is no reasonable way to argue that it wasn't race-based.
I believe I just did.
Refusal to acknowledge blatant racism is defense of racism.
I'll ignore that Sandy.
Have a good day.
Most unsuccessfully.
"Taunting" ?