Photo: Randall Benton/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty
The 78th anniversary of a dark chapter in American history is being remembered on Wednesday.
This resulted in nearly 120,000 people of Japanese descent, many of them American citizens, being forcibly removed from their homes and jobs and incarcerated in 10 barbed-wire camps throughoutCalifornia, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Arkansas and Idaho.
“They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not,” John DeWitt, Army commanding general of the Western Defense Command, said at the time of people with Japanese backgrounds.
“I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp,” echoedColonel Karl Bendetsen, then the Administrator of Wartime Civil Control Administration.
Thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to these camps as racial tensions permeated throughout the country. But Sacramento farmer Bob Fletcher did not give in to anti-Japanese sentiment, and instead came to the aid of his neighbors when they were forced from their homes.
For his efforts, Fletcher — who tended to a total of 90 acres over three farms — only took half of the profits from the crops, and turned over the rest when the families returned home three years later in 1945.
“I did know a few of them pretty well and never agreed with the evacuation,” Fletcher told theSacramento Beein 2010, according to theLos Angeles Times. “They were the same as anybody else. It was obvious they had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.”
The first group of 82 Japanese-Americans arrive at the Manzanar internment camp.
Fletcher — along with his wife of 67 years,Teresa— lived in the Sacramento area until his death on May 23, 2013. He was 101.
“He saved us,” Doris Taketa, who was 12 when Fletcher took over her family’s farm, told theNew York Times.
“Few people in history exemplify the best ideals the way that Bob did,” added Marielle Tsukamoto, who was 5 when her family was interned, to theL.A.Times. “He was honest and hardworking and had integrity. Whenever you asked him about it, he just said, ‘It was the right thing to do.’ ”
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This week, California is expected to pass a resolution tooffer a formal apology for its part in the internment camps.
“It’s nice, okay, but it was almost 80 years ago and most of us that were there are dead,” Paul Tomita, who was about 3 years old when his family was placed in an internment camp, told theNew York Timesof the pending resolution.
“Those that were really affected,” he added, “like my grandparents and parents who lost everything, their businesses, their houses, everything — they’re dead.”
source: people.com
