Statement delivered in Little Tokyo (Candlelight Vigil)

Sept. 28, 2001
Lillian Nakano
courtesy of NCRR

The horrendous tragedy of the 11th was so shocking in its scale and depth that we're all still in utter disbelief at what happened. So many lives have been lost, and still so many lives of families and friends of the victims are affected forever and our hearts go out to all of them.

At the same time, it is sad to see that so much of the sorrow turned to anger out of the tragedy and is directed at people of Middle Eastern descent and Arab & Muslim Americans. As Japanese American, it's an all too familiar scene. Sixty years ago, when Pearl Harbor was bombed and WWII began, l20,000 on the West Coast and some 2,000 from Hawai'i were unjustly uprooted from our homes and occupations and herded off to 10 concentration camps for three to four years, all on the basis of our skin color--that we looked the "enemy."

The government was ill-prepared to create those camps fast enough to get rid of us; temporary assembly centers were installed at horse race tracks like Santa Anita, Tanforan and other State Fair sites. Horse stalls became living quarters - can you imagine that!! The camps which followed were in the most desolate swamplands in the South and further West, in the high desert country in harsh weather and barren lands with only rows and rows of tar-papered barracks surrounded by barbed-wire fence and guard towers. After camps, for the adult members of each family, picking up the pieces of their lives meant more hardship. I was in my teens then and for us, the psychological scars were more deeply ingrained in our psyche. I recall the first shock which came when a bunch of us girls went out on a one-day pass to a town called Cody in Wyoming from our Heart Mountain camp. We were excited about having a real ice cream soda in a drug store like other normal teenagers on the outside. But to our shock, there was a written notice in the booth saying "We don't serve Japs". On the bus on our way back to camp, we sat in stone silence only to laugh in pain because I think we would've cried otherwise.

I feel badly for the Middle Eastern people of our communities who are now the target of the same kind of hatred and violence as a result of the tragic event. Sixty years ago, we heard very little if nothing from our government leaders or the general public to caution against that. But perhaps, because of what happened 60 years ago, today there seems to be

more concern voiced against hate crimes and the scapegoating of Arab and Muslim Americans. One of the important points during our struggle for redress and reparations from the US government was to make sure 'it never happens again' to any group of people. But as we see a similar rise in incidents targeting a particular sector of our community, I believe that as Jas who experienced that hatred and incarceration, we have a responsibility to speak out against it at every opportunity. By doing so, I believe we can help to make our country and our government more sensitive and responsive in the treatment of Arab and Muslin Americans, and for that matter, to any group of people who may be singled out unjustly because of their skin color or religious belief.

Lil