House OKs funds to preserve California WWII internment camps

House OKs funds to preserve WWII internment camps
'A great people can make mistakes,' bill's backer says

Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Thursday, November 17, 2005

Washington -- The House adopted legislation Wednesday aimed at ensuring the country never forgets the bitter lessons of the World War II internment of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans, many of whom were from California.

The bill, passed by voice vote after a brief but poignant debate, authorized up to $38 million in federal funds to preserve and restore 10 internment camps, including Tule Lake near the California-Oregon border and Manzanar in the stark eastern Sierra. The bill also includes the preservation of 17 assembly centers in places such as San Bruno, Sacramento, Salinas and Stockton. Nonprofit groups and local, state and tribal governments would have to come up with 75 percent of the money for projects.

"A great people -- and the American people are a great people -- can make mistakes. What you need to do is admit it and don't make it again," said the bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, his voice quivering with emotion.

Most of the sites are crumbling and need work soon to prevent them from disappearing.

"It is essential that the internment camps and sites be preserved and maintained. In protecting them, we are reaffirming our belief in the Constitution and the rights and protections it guarantees for each and every American," said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento. She was born in the Poston internment camp in Arizona, and her late husband, Rep. Robert Matsui, was sent as an infant to the Tule Lake camp with his parents.

Thomas, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has adopted the issue because of friends who were interned under Executive Order 9066, which then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued not long after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, authorizing the roundup of American citizens of Japanese descent. The order subsequently survived a legal challenge brought by Fred Korematsu, who died March 30, that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Congress in 1988 approved legislation, signed by former President Ronald Reagan, providing an apology and $20,000 to each of the 45,000 to 60,000 Japanese Americans surviving at that time from the estimated 120,000 sent to the camps.

Thomas served in the state Legislature during the 1970s with Democrat Floyd Mori. The two, who remain friends, were roommates in Sacramento, and Thomas learned how Japanese Americans such as Mori and then-San Jose Mayor Norman Mineta surmounted a childhood in which their homeland had literally taken everything away from their families. Mineta, now U.S. secretary of transportation, became a longtime Democratic congressman and co-sponsored the 1988 legislation.

"This bill provides a closing note on what was my upbringing in California in the 1940s and '50s," said Thomas, a graduate of what is now San Francisco State University. The camps and the memories are "rapidly slipping away" as the World War II generation dies, adding urgency to the preservation effort, he said.

For Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, who spent his early childhood in a Colorado camp with his family, the bill is an extension of his efforts as a state legislator to create a California grant program to pay for educational efforts about the internments.

"This will have a deep impact on our abilities to make the stories real for future generations," said Honda.

The National Park Service now operates a visitors' center at the Manzanar site along Highway 395, which draws about 80,000 people a year. Park service officials opposed Thomas' legislation because they said the agency didn't have the money to implement it.

Park service officials reiterated that opposition Wednesday and noted that even though the House had authorized $38 million, Congress still must come up with the money through the appropriations process.

Thomas' sponsorship means it could be easier to get the money, which could go to buy property that since the war has passed into private hands and to build museums or visitors' centers.

In the Senate, identical legislation has been introduced by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, a Medal of Honor recipient who during World War II fought in Italy and France with the Army 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit made up of Japanese Americans whose families were interned by the same government they served in combat. Wounded, Inouye lost his right arm and spent 20 months recovering in an Army hospital.

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