Stones
Kenge Kobayashi, of Eugene, Oregon, who was interned at Tule Lake camp in northern California with his family, has drawn from his experience to depict the concepts of Justice, Perseverance, and Honor, in three bronze panels that are embedded in stone monuments.
Justice
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Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui challenged the constitutionality of imprisoning 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in 1942. Executive Order 9066, issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt, set the process in motion even though Japanese Americans had already been cleared of suspicion as subversives by the government. Yasui, born in Oregon, Korematsu, born in California, and Hirabayashi, born in Washington, were in fact arrested by authorities simply for insisting on their rights as Americans. The cases against them were overturned much later in a 1972 court action which led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Minoru Yasui graduated from the University of Oregon Law School in 1939.
Click here for what Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui each protested. |
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Perseverance
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Beginning in 1942, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, both immigrants and their American-born children, were confined in ten inland War Relocation Authority (WRA) internment camps surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed sentries in watchtowers. Their community leaders were arrested separately by the FBI and imprisoned in 13 different Department of Justice detention centers. Most lost possessions, homes and property. The thousands who languished in the hostile climes where these camps were located supported America's war effort even in their imprisonment, working in the fields during times of harvest, sending their sons into military service, and buying war bonds. In 1988 the living survivors of the camps belatedly received reparation payments and a letter of apology signed by the President of the United States under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
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Honor
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Young Nisei men — second-generation Japanese Americans — volunteered by the thousands from the internment camps and Hawai'i when the opportunity to serve their country in WWII opened up in 1943. The all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) fought in Europe, and its men became known as the best combat troops in the European Theater of Operations. They never failed to take an assigned objective, and the 100th/442nd RCT emerged as the most decorated unit in U.S. military history. One Medal of Honor was bestowed as a battlefield award for valor during the war. Twenty more Medals of Honor were awarded in June 2000. The Military Intelligence Service — top secret until declassified in 1972 — served with high distinction in the Pacific theater as interpreters for captured POWs, translating intercepted documents and radio transmissions, and the highly dangerous task of entering caves to talk Japanese, Okinawans, and Japanese soldiers into surrendering to U.S. forces. They were assigned white soldiers as guards because they were as much in danger of being shot by American troops as by the Japanese. Nisei soldiers contributed greatly to protecting American freedoms, with unsurpassed valor and honor.
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