February 18, 2003
Day of Remembrance 2003
Wednesday is the anniversary of Executive Order No. 9066, through which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt provided the authority under which Japanese-Americans were placed into internment camps during World War II.
You can learn more about these internments from an event website in San Francisco, a commemorative site in King County, Washington, and a library collection from the University of Arizona.
You can also read a message from the Portland Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League on the anniversary. They also provide a list of historical resources.
Portland itself is home to a Japanese American Historical Plaza, about which you can learn much more, through both words and photographs. It was not a proud time for our city:
As in other West Coast cities, the 3,676 Nikkei-jin from Portland, Oregon's Willamette Valley and Washington's Yakima Valley were deemed (despite the lack of evidence) a risk to national security by the U.S. government and were rounded up after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. They were kept in animal pens at the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Hall in preparation for transfer to the internment camps. A 29 April 1942 headline in The Oregonian newspaper proclaimed that Portland would be the first U.S. city to rid itself of Japanese Americans.
To my knowledge (and I've been making telephone calls), there are no local events scheduled specifically for Feburary 19 itself. The local JACL held a commemoration this past Saturday.
Personally, I'll be making a visit to the Historical Plaza sometime tomorrow afternoon.
Comments (1)
Annie on 18 Feb 2003
Funny, not ha ha, I was just using this example when talking to coworkers about the evils we have enforced on our own people to counter the argument that Hussien should be taken out because he had hurt his own people. One of the guys said, and I nearly quote, 'Well, they weren't REAL Americans in their hearts." He is Hispanic born and raised here. I have just been knocked down by the only slightly buried prejudices that prince b's war games have brought out in people. Somehow it is ok to take out Iraqis, they aren't REAL people after all.