Posted on: Thursday, October 4, 2001

Editorial
Japanese internment: a chapter not closed

The Supreme Court this week turned down an appeal in a Japanese American internment reparations case. But there is still an opportunity for Congress to do right by these plaintiffs.

The U.S. government has made payments of $20,000 to some 81,000 Japanese Americans whose land was taken or who were forced into internment camps during World War II, one of the darkest stains on this nation's honor.

The case rejected by the Supreme Court involved a lawsuit filed by six people who were denied reparations. Two were Japanese Americans with links to the camps and four are members of an Okinawan family who were taken from their homes in Peru in 1943 and 1944 and brought to U.S. internment camps. There were some 2,200 Latin Americans, most of Japanese ancestry and a majority from Peru, who were rounded up and brought to the United States in hopes of exchanging them with Japan for American prisoners of war.

The Supreme Court had no choice in turning down the appeal. The suits were filed too late: The statute of limitations had run out.

But Congress has a choice. The clock is still running on America's responsibility to make up for its wrongs.

Nothing was right about what happened to interned AJAs. But the case of the 2,200 Latin American internees is particularly egregious. These people were essentially kidnapped and held hostage in another country, violating both U.S. and international law.

It's been almost 60 years since this shameful chapter in our history began to unfold. The United States has apologized to those who were wronged in this country, and most have received recompense.

But, sadly, the United States is long overdue on what must be nothing less than a total commitment to fully live up to its responsibility. One would have hoped that by now this chapter could have been closed — but never forgotten — with proper redress to all those who were grievously wronged.

This shouldn't drag on any longer. Now that these people to whom we owe so much have no redress in the courts, Congress must act quickly to make amends.