President Joe Biden has signed a new law calling for $10 million in federal funding to educate a new generation about the World War II-era internment of 120,000 Japanese American citizens, including Dennis Ogawa, 79, who was born in a concentration camp in Manzanar, Calif.
Ogawa, who retired in September after 53 years as a professor in intercultural and Japanese American studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, called the confinement suffered by him, his parents and his grandparents a step toward preventing a repeat of history.
“The stories that are being told about the camps need to be told, but there’s more to the story,” Ogawa told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Wednesday.
Co-authored by U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, the new law funds the preservation of the Japanese American internment camps including Hono‘uli‘uli, which housed over 2,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry. Former President Barack Obama in 2015 named Hono‘uli‘uli a national monument by presidential proclamation.
The bill that Schatz co-authored was named after the late U.S. Rep. Norman Mineta of California, who was interned as a boy at Heart Mountain. He went on to become the U.S. secretary of commerce under Bill Clinton’s presidency, and later became the U.S. transportation secretary under then-President George W. Bush.
Then-President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which acknowledged the injustices and internment of Japanese Americans. Bush later signed letters of apology and redress payments of $20,000 to approximately 60,000 survivors.
“The internment of Japanese American citizens remains one of the darkest and most shameful periods in our history,” Schatz said in a statement Wednesday. “The stories of so many who unjustly lost their freedom, lost property, and were forcibly uprooted from their homes should be a constant reminder of our duty to uphold the rights of every American.”
Hono‘uli‘uli opened in March 1943 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. It was the largest and longest-used internment site in Hawaii.
“Preserving these locations is crucial for anyone to visit such a historical location. It really transports the visitor and provides a level of connection,” Minda Yamaga, president of the Japanese American Citizens League, Honolulu Chapter, told the Star-Advertiser on Wednesday. “That cannot be captured by learning through a book or even films. These visitors really imagine and feel on a deeper level.”
Teaching the general public and the younger generation about the internment helps prevent similar events from happening again, said Bill Kaneko, past president at Honolulu JACL.
“It is glossed over in our educational system,” Kaneko said. “You know, we learn about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and all of that, but something like this was one of the most egregious violations of civil rights in our nation’s history.”
Kanzo Nara, president of the United Japanese Society of Hawaii, said that more modern media may be necessary to engage younger audiences.
“We should go in a more new approach, not just plaques or some mentions in textbooks, but more in popular media as that is where young people learned about what happened during World War II, injustices and social movements of the ’60s and ’70s,” Nara said. “If it’s introduced in modern media, younger people will be more interested.”
Ogawa emphasized the importance of visiting sights such as Hono‘uli‘uli, Manzanar and other internment camps on the mainland.
“UH-Manoa was the first university to bring the students all the way from Hawaii to Manzanar, and my students will always remember that tour and history because they physically experienced the site,” Ogawa said.
Ogawa only spent two years in Manzanar, but the experience and the stories from his parents have lasted a lifetime.
“One thing my dad and mom always said was that I made grandpa, grandma and all the other elders in the camp very happy,” Ogawa said. “And that comment stayed with me, but it also made me think more about how the first generation, who went through a lot, how they could be so happy that an offspring was born.”
Correction: Norman Mineta was interned as a boy at Heart Mountain,Wyoming, not at Manzanar, Calif., as was reported in an earlier version of this story. Also, the spelling of Bill Kaneko’s last name has been corrected.
