When the government froze our bank accounts, restricted our travel, and put a curfew upon our community, it only reinforced existing public sentiment against us. You can’t win with that kind of perverse logic. When it was clear that there had been no acts of sabotage on the West Coast, he insinuated publicly that was just further evidence that a big attack by the Japanese in America was imminent. Supreme Court-singled us out ruthlessly for his own political gain. The government perpetuated prejudice and hatred toward us as official policy.įor example, the California Attorney General at the time, Earl Warren-who went on to become governor and then Chief Justice of the U.S. We were blamed for the attack, called Fifth Columnists, even suspected of plotting sabotage that had not yet occurred. The attack by Imperial Japan upon Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941-a “day that will live in infamy”-made most Americans look upon anyone with a Japanese name or face as the enemy.
I didn’t know it at the time, but when I was a child my entire community became scapegoats.
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