Japanese American organizations and xem phim khiêu danleaders are condemning Republican presidential nominee Donald Tump’s comparison of the treatment received by Japanese American incarcerees during World War II to those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
On Oct. 15 in an online interview with political commentator Dan Bongino, Trump said of the rioters, “Why are they still being held? Nobody’s ever been treated like this. Maybe the Japanese during the Second World War, frankly. They were held, too.”
Over 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot, over 950 of them have pleaded guilty, and over 200 have been convicted after trial.
The Japanese American Citizens League said in a statement, “The JACL vehemently decries the former president’s statement equating the treatment of the imprisoned Jan. 6 rioters to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Japanese Americans were not afforded due process, were held for years without respect to their constitutional rights, and had their loyalty to the United States questioned purely on the basis of their race.
“Those arrested following Jan. 6 were indicted and convicted for their committed crimes, which serves as the reason for why they remain in prison.”
In a statement to The Washington Post, JACL Executive Director David Inoue stated, “It’s flat-out offensive. It’s a night-and-day difference what happened. Japanese Americans’ whole families were incarcerated without any sort of trial — their only crime was they were of Japanese descent. For these Jan. 6 people, they have had their day in court, they’ve either been indicted or convicted of crimes, and that is why they’re being incarcerated.”
The JACL added, “The remarks are especially offensive coming on the heels of former President Trump’s assertion that he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act to initiate his mass incarceration and deportation program, Operation Aurora. The Alien Enemies Act served as the legal basis for the incarceration of not only people of Japanese ancestry but also German and Italians during World War II.
“The insinuation that the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 are in any way comparable to Japanese American incarceration is ahistorical. It is insulting to all 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated and their descendants. This revision of recent history serves only to misinform the public and downplay the violence incited by former President Trump at the cost of the memory of Japanese Americans who were denied their constitutional rights.”
“We must set the record straight: This is an egregiously inaccurate and flawed historical analogy,” said Ann Burroughs, president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. “There is no comparison between the treatment received by the Jan. 6 rioters and Japanese Americans who were denied due process when they were forcibly removed from their homes, systematically dispossessed and incarcerated for the duration of the war.
“Now more than ever, the lessons from the Japanese American incarceration must never be forgotten, ignored, minimized, or erased. As long as diversity, individual dignity, and social justice continue to be undermined, they will continue to be urgent and relevant today.”
“Japanese Americans are not and should not be compared to insurrectionists who committed major crimes and in which people were hurt and killed,” filmmaker and Rafu Shimpocolumnist Sharon Yamato, whose parents were incarcerated, told the Associated Press. “And I think that that is just so horrible to try to even make that comparison or allege that there’s any similarities between the two.”
Phil Tajitsu Nash, who teaches in the Asian American Studies Program at University of Maryland, College Park, posted on social media, “On Jan. 6, 2021, it is well documented that 45 incited a mob to attack the Capitol, break windows, assault law enforcement officers, and leave feces on the walls and trash all over the sacred home of our democracy. Now he is saying that the hundreds of violent, democracy-hating insurrectionists who are convicted and in jail are being treated worse than anyone but the Japanese Americans wrongfully imprisoned in internment camps during World War II.
“Excuse me, but that comparison is a major dishonor to my mother, grandparents, and 120,000 other Japanese Americans, whose only ‘crime’ was having Japanese heritage, even though two-thirds were Americans by birth and the rest could not become naturalized citizens by law. Please leave us out of any comparisons to the hateful insurrectionist behavior of 45’s followers.
“I have often thought about how my Japanese American grandparents would never have allowed me to act in public like 45 — so mean, condescending, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant and more. Frankly, even my Nash grandparents — New England church-going Republicans (as in the original radical Republicans who opposed slavery) — would never have voted for a man as divisive, selfish and dishonorable as 45.”