70 years from internment of Japanese Americans
A ceremony has been held in California to mark 70 years since a presidential order was issued for forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
Following the 1941 attacks on Pearl Harbor by Japan, President Franklin Roosevelt issued the order to detain Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast.
About 120,000 people of Japanese descent were interned for four years.
On the 70th anniversary this year, about 1,500 people took part in a commemorative event on Saturday at the site where the Manzanar camp used to be. The event is held each year for those who died in internment camps and to pass on information about internees' hardships.
California State University Professor Mitchell Maki said to participants that the United States is still not free from racial and religious discrimination. He added that stories of the hardship of former Japanese-American internees should be passed on to future generations.
An 83-year-old former internee said he was discriminated against just because he was a Japanese American although he was born in the United States, and that a similar incident should not happen again.
The United States is tasked with how to hand down the internment story to future generations as Japanese Americans are aging.
The US government officially apologized for the internment in 1988 and 1992. Payment of a total of 1.6 billion dollars in reparations was completed in 1999 to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their descendants.
Sunday, April 29, 2012 13:29 +0900 (JST)
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120429_11.html
KawamotoDragon.com
Sunday, April 29, 2012
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