A Passion for Justice Remembered

04 January 2005 |permalink | email article

Rep. Robert Matsui (Sacramento), 63, died last Saturday in Washington. He was a man for all seasons, a man I knew and respected. Sen. Dianne Feinstein described him as “one of the greatest in public service in California.” But Matsui, a third-generation Japanese American, will always be remembered for leading the successful battle for World War II compensation for survivors of 120,000 Japanese Americans sent to squalid internment camps when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the infamous Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. Roosevelt signed major legislation protecting all Americans, notably Social Security. By inking the executive order aimed at all persons of Japanese ancestory, the president dishonored his vaunted reputation as a believer in equal justice for every citizen. It took President Reagan in 1988 to say that he was moving “to right a grave wrong.” Matsui was less than a year old when he was interned and stayed in the camps until he was almost four. It is not surprising that Matsui broke into sobs during a House hearing as he described the years he and his family spent under armed guard. I have known dozens of internees who 50 years later are remain unable to speak about the horrors they experienced. The wartime contributions of Japanese Americans allowed to leave the camps to serve in the U.S. Army’s 100th Battalion and 442nd Combat Infantry group was without equal. These units fought in eight major campaigns in Italy and France, suffered an unprecedented casualty rate of 314 percent and received over 18,000 individual decorations. The 442nd was the most decorated combat unit of its size in the history of the U.S. Army.

 

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