As I See It – Internment Camps As Precedent

AS I SEE IT BY Frances Kakugawa

A Caucasian woman approached me in Sacramento. “You’re a writer,” she said. “You need to respond to this article in today’s Sacramento Bee. Tell the Sansei and Yonsei to stand up and question this. They are the only remaining voices.” I promised her I would.

She was referring to Carl Higbie, the former Navy SEAL and spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America political action committee, who said the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a “precedent” for the then-president-elect’s plans to create a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries. “We’ve done it with Iran back a while ago; we did it during World War II with the Japanese,” he is quoted as having said. (Sacramento Bee, Nov. 18, 2016)