[sept11info] learning from our past

[Gila Jones <gilajones@home.com>]

My father was about 19 at the time of Pearl Harbor. He lived
in Berkeley, California and belonged to an Episcopal Church. One of
the social concerns taken on by his church was to help the
Japanese-Americans of Berkeley get themselves organized for the
trips to their "relocation centers."

My dad talks about this experience sometimes. To this day
he's flabbergasted that it never occurred to him or any of his
friends to SPEAK OUT against what was happening to their Japanese
American neighbors. All they could think to do was to help them
disassemble their lives with a little dignity.

As a native Californian, over my lifetime I've known many people
who lived in the relocation centers. A couple of years ago I worked
for a man who had almost certainly been in one. He and I "talked
around" the issue many times and I'm pretty sure he also lived in
Berkeley when my father did. I often think about how he and my father
may well have crossed paths as the ethnic Japanese were being
relocated. The circle of life can be joyous but it can also be tragic
and ironic.

As I say, my father sometimes talks about his experience in Berkeley
in 1942 and he's amazed at how (at the time) relocating the ethnic
Japanese simply seemed like "the thing to do."

Yesterday I had an inkling of what that was like. In a flash I
could see the fear and mistrust that caused our countrymen to isolate
the ethnic Japanese in WW II. I didn't feel compelled to take action
against any Muslims or ethnic Arabs, but I very clearly UNDERSTOOD
the feeling in a way I'd never understood it before.

I think the rest of America learned a lesson from what we did to the
Japanese Americans in WW II. We learned that we incarcerated and
otherwise harmed a lot of decent, innocent people because of an
accident of their birth. I think that in the heat of this moment a
lot of us have forgotten that lesson, but I believe it will be
remembered again fairly soon.