Japanese-Latin Americans seek redress for internment
The Canadian Press reports on the how Japanese-Latin Americans who were interned in the United States during World War II are now seeking redress from the U.S. government.
The article focuses on Augusto Kague, who was 12 when his family was forced out of their home in Peru in 1942 and imprisoned in America. Kague is seeking a settlement equal to what the United States paid former Japanese-American internees in 1988:
Kague’s father, a Japanese immigrant in Peru, was whisked away by security agents, one of 2,264 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry arrested in Latin America and shipped off to U.S. camps. They were interned under the guise of securing Western Hemisphere interests, including the Panama Canal. About 800 were used in prisoner swaps with Japan, turned over to a country that some – as Latin American-born descendants of Japanese immigrants – had never seen.
Now, 20 years after Japanese-Americans won redress for their imprisonment, a small community of Peruvians continues to seek justice with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and a grassroots activist effort based in Northern California.
The group thought it had a breakthrough when a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee set a July 31 hearing on a bill that would mandate an investigation into the internment of Japanese-Latin Americans and propose remedies.
But the hearing has been cancelled, and a spokesman for U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), the bill’s sponsor, said it’s unclear when it would be rescheduled.
“This was a big violation of human rights and they don’t want to recognize that,” said Kague, now 78. “We just have to keep waiting. I’ve been waiting a long time already.”
The hearing would have been just one step in a decades-long battle. The U.S. government didn’t include Japanese-Latin Americans when agreeing in 1988 to apologize and pay $20,000 to interned Japanese-Americans. The government offered $5,000 and an apology 10 years ago as part of a settlement agreement for a lawsuit filed on behalf of Japanese-Latin Americans.
While some took the settlement, Kague was one of hundreds who refused it as unfair. His youngest brother, who was born in a Texas internment camp, got $20,000 as an American citizen.
