Students Speak: Innocent and imprisoned in the US

To celebrate our first 50 years at The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law, we’ve asked our students to revisit historical and noteworthy cases.

The silenced history of those imprisoned after the bombing of Pearl Harbor is eerily similar to the separated families at the U.S. border today.

America has a dark history with internment camps that dates back to the 1940s when innocent people of Japanese descent were forced to relocate and subsequently placed in concentration camps. How do those atrocious events compare to what’s occurring to separated families at the U.S. border today?

THE INITIAL ORDERS

1942: Executive Order #9066

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the lives of Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants dramatically changed forever. On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order #9066 based on alleged national security concerns. The order forced the relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese residents on the West Coast and subsequently placed those individuals in concentration camps without due process.

Families were forced to abandon their homes, careers, livelihoods, and all real and personal property due to the inhumane evacuation order. It took four prolonged years for the relocation camps to close. It took another 40 years for the U.S. government to apologize and offer reparations to Japanese American families for the painful and traumatic experience of living incarcerated.

2018: “Zero Tolerance” Policy

On May 7, 2018, the Department of Justice implemented a “Zero Tolerance” policy prosecuting all undocumented immigrants and harshly separating them from their children.

The main objective of the Zero Tolerance policy is to deter asylum seekers from coming to the United States. These cruel deterrent tactics come at a high cost. Children are dying inside these camps due to a lack of proper medical attention (in one year alone, seven children have died in U.S. custody), families are torn apart, and the overwhelming signs of trauma are severely damaging children and their families.

FAMILIES IN CUSTODY

1942-1946: Families together

Those of Japanese descent were placed in the concentration camps together with their families.  Children, though incarcerated, were surrounded by those familiar to them. Forced relocation into internment camps is inherently a devastating and stressful experience, yet those confined during World War II had their families by their side during the traumatic experience.

2018: Families separated

Unlike the Japanese American internment camps in which families were kept together, the current administration has opted to rip families apart. The “Zero Tolerance” policy forces thousands of children to separate from their families while they are placed in military camps in the U.S. without a concrete plan for reunification. Separated children are sent to 121 different detention centers in 17 states.

In order to reunite some of these families, on June 26, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw issued a preliminary injunction that ordered the government to return all children under 5 years old to their parents within 14 days and within 30 days for older children.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration stated it will need more time to reunite the families because it lost track of 38 parents. The government has since provided the court with shocking data that indicates at least 2,654 immigrant children were forcibly separated from their parents or caregivers and detained as a result of the Trump administration policies.

LIFE INCARCERATED

1942-1946: Life in a WWII Japanese Internment Camp

The conditions at the Japanese concentration camps were far from decent. Mary Tsukamoto recounts her fear of walking into the gates of the internment camps because she understood she would lose her freedom, and life would never be the same. “We saw all these people behind the fence, looking out, hanging onto the wire. I will never forget the shocking feeling that human beings were behind these fences like animals [crying].”

Matsuda Gruenwald depicts her living space in the internment camp as “a bare 20 foot by 24-foot room, the size of a storage room. No running water, storage space, nothing to prepare a meal.  Only a single, bare light bulb screwed into a ceramic socket.” Gruenwald also shares with detail the sounds she encountered inside the camp. “We could hear family quarrels, babies crying, laughter, snoring, and grinding teeth. I was mortified as I gradually realized that nighttime moans, sighs, and repetitious thumps meant that some couple was having sexual intercourse.”

The experience of confinement in the camps was similar to that of a prisoner. Guards with machine guns watched internees at all times. It was impossible to have a private conversation since even the most intimate moments were public. While Japanese Americans felt humiliated and depressed in these camps, the U.S. government portrayed the transition as a happy situation, in which the “Japanese cheerfully handled the enormous paperwork involved in the migration.” There was nothing cheerful about the forced imprisonment. Detainees were immensely anguished, filled with unanswered questions, and reasonably feared for their lives as they lived under horrific conditions.

2018: Dangerous conditions

Rep. Mark Takano describes the conditions for children in 2018. “The American government is tearing apart families and placing sobbing children into prison camp-like conditions. These are not conditions similar to ‘summer camps,’ as some have dishonestly claimed. These children are living in cage conditions. American parents would not accept this horrific treatment for his or her child.”

Photos issued by the U.S. government have revealed “rows of cage-like steel wire enclosure for the detained children.” The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, details how the camps are overcrowded and children are forced to sleep on the hard floor. These children do not have acceptable health care or food and they are required to live in poor sanitary conditions.

Dr. Sara Goza highlights the pungent smell of sweat, urine, and feces when she toured two migrant detention centers. “These living conditions are cruel, inhumane and a living nightmare.” Congresswoman Jackie Spier depicts her experience visiting a detention center: “The only sounds we could hear were the cries of small children and babies…Lights shine overhead 24 hours a day.”

Having the lights on 24 hours a day is a torture tactic used by governments to punish criminals or prisoners of war. Nevertheless, the United States government fails to understand that these are children; they are not criminals or prisoners of war. When the children arrive at the border, they don’t bring weapons; they simply bring dreams and hopes for a better tomorrow.

RECOGNITION AND REPARATIONS

1988: America’s first apology

Japanese internees not only lost their freedom; their health suffered due to the forced imprisonment. A 1977 study revealed that “internees had a rate of cardiovascular disease twice that of Japanese Americans who lived outside of the concentration camps.” Flashbacks were extremely common for internees, and most if not all experienced the long-lasting effects of PTSD because of the cruel and unusual experiences suffered at the camps.

It wasn’t until 40 years after the forced evacuations and relocation of Japanese internees that Congress produced a report concluding that the relocation and internment of Japanese American citizens and permanent residents in WWII amounted to a “grave injustice.” A few years later, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This granted reparations to Japanese Americans who the U.S. government interned during the war. Surviving internees received a letter of apology from the president and compensation of $20,000.

President Reagan said, “We must recognize that the internment of Japanese Americans was just that, a mistake.” Based on his public apology, it appeared as if the U.S. had learned its lesson regarding the shameful history of caging people based on race. Nearly 30 years after President Reagan’s apology, we are now faced with the caging of migrant children who

are experiencing similar cruel and inhumane conditions as the Japanese Americans did 77 years ago.

2019: Will America apologize again?

When President Reagan formally apologized to Japanese Americans, it seemed as though America had learned the lessons of this mistake. Nevertheless, the mistake of placing innocent people in concentration camps continues with no sign of remorse.

It took 40 years for our nation to finally acknowledge the horrors it inflicted on innocent people of Japanese descent through internment, and the wounds of those policies linger today. We shouldn’t wait another 40 years to address the horrors happening on our border today. We have a moral obligation to do what it is right, to fight for justice irrespective of political preferences and policy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Bridget Rodriguez is a faith-driven mother, wife, journalist and now a 4L at the Santa Barbara and Ventura Colleges of Law.  Giving back to the community by assisting others in need of excellent legal representation is her ultimate goal.  In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, walking on the beach, and eating a bowl of ice cream is always a plus!

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