Memo to AARC: U.S. Internment of Japanese Families Is Not Equal to Treatment of Muslim Terrorists

Pomona College's AARC (Asian American Resource Center) is sponsoring a pilgrimage to Manzanar, one of the Japanese internment camps during WWII with the Manzanar Committee. Though it is unclear at this moment as to whether or not the flyer was written by AARC or simply sponsored by them, it is the group that dispensed this flyer.

In the event's promotional material, it is suggested that the round up and forced relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals is somehow comparable with the imprisonment of 1,200 men of Middle Eastern decent who have been interned since 9-11.
The flyer reads,

World War II: 120,000 Individuals of Japanese Descent Sent to Internment Camps

2001: 1,200 Men Perceived to Be of Middle Eastern Descent Detained and Jailed

History Repeats Itself.

Get Informed.

Get Involved.

Manzanar Pilgrimage.

Manzanar was one of the Japanese relocation camps during WWII. There will be a day-long event remembering Manzanar and its legacy, and also discussing current parallels in American policy.

Sponsored by the AARC [CJ note: Pomona’s Asian American Resource Center]

FMI: [email protected]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0627-03.htm

http://www.manzanarcommittee.org/manzhistory.html

As if the entire forced relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans and nationals within the United States isn't disgusting enough, Pomona's AARC suggests that the there are "current parallels in American policy" in the U.S. detention of an estimated 1200 men of "middle Eastern descent." (Where they get the number of 1200 men is anyone's guess...)

In so doing, AARC implies that the detention of men picked up on the battlefield is one in the same with the detention of whole families by the U.S. military during the Second World War.

This comparison is not entirely new. As early as 2003, Bush administration opponents cited the case of terrorist, Yaser Esam Hamdi, a former U.S. citizen who was picked up fighting against U.S. and Afghan Northern Alliance forces in days following 9/11 in the same breath as the Japanese internment.

Sue Embrey, 79, who lived in the Manzanar camp with her family for 17 months and is chairwoman of the Manzanar Committee is quoted in that very Boston Globe article. Even she concedes, "You can't say it's exactly what happened to us, but it's wrong."

But that doesn’t stop her promotional material from saying “history repeats itself.” (I guess when you need to bring tourists on their “pilgrimage” you bend the truth.) What a pity.

The Americans of Japanese descent and peaceful Japanese nationals deserve better than half truths about an ugly chapter in the West Coast's history. Claremont students deserve better than the politicization of American history.