Nidato Nai Yoni — Let it not happen again

Sixty-four years ago today, 277 residents of Bainbridge Island, where I grew up, were taken from their homes and sent to camps, staying away for over three years. Among them were some of the most important citizens of the island, and a girl who would later become my fifth grade teacher. Their crime? They, or their parents, were born in Japan. There were no trials, no judges or juries, merely paranoia and suspicions. They were the first of thousands to be treated like criminals and locked away simply for their ancestry. Many of them, particularly the children, were American citizens and had never even been to Japan. The same happened to those of Japanese ancestry in British Columbia as well, and even some Latin American countries sent their Japanese citizens to be held in the United States during the war. (Ironically, nobody of Japanese ancestry was held in Hawai'i, the location of Pearl Harbor.)

We want to think that this could never happen again. Yet look at what's happening to anyone suspected of being a terrorist. There are people being held at Guantanamo Bay merely for wearing the wrong brand of watch or other spurious reasons, and they have been there for years now with no charges filed against them and no legal representation or recourse. As happened forty-six years ago, these people were the "wrong" people at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that is enough to lock them up. Does our Constitution and what America stands for mean so little in the face of fear? Or are we ever going to be big enough to look past the fear and say, "What we have and believe for ourselves also applies to other people, including those we fear and do not yet understand."

Nidato Nai Yoni — Let it not happen again.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the article in The Seattle Times about the anniversary, and the memorial that's in the works.