Sad Chapter

The day 10-year-old Norman Mineta boarded the railroad car that carried his family away from their San Jose home to a World War II internment camp, he wore his Cub Scout uniform as a show of patriotism. The day the House of Representatives voted, 257 to 156, to apologize to him and other Japanese-American survivors of those camps for a “monumental injustice,” a grown-up Mineta--now a seven-term congressman from San Jose--presided as Speaker pro tem. As the presiding officer, Mineta signed the redress bill, which also provides a $20,000 tax-free payment to each of the 60,000 survivors, and sent it on to the White House.

Obviously the Democratic leadership of the House wanted to capitalize on the symbolism of putting an American of Japanese ancestry in charge, even temporarily, on such a historic occasion. But Mineta’s presence, though staged, is testimony of how far this nation has come since the dark months of 1942, when the federal government reacted to Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by hastily incarcerating 120,000 men, women and children because all of them supposedly posed a threat to national security. Forty-six years is a long time to wait for vindication. It took that long to persuade a majority of both houses that the executive order issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the product of wartime hysteria and racial prejudice and that, as a special commission concluded in 1980, any doubts about the loyaltyof Japanese-Americans were totally unjustified.

The redress law settles some old debts with people whose lives and livelihoods were forever changed by years of unjust imprisonment. As President Reagan said in announcing his intention to sign the bill despite some advice to the contrary from his aides, the law will “end a sad chapter in American history in a way that reaffirms America’s commitment to the preservation of liberty and justice for all.”

And, yet, it might be wiser to avoid too much self-congratulation. Racial attitudes have clearly changed, but bias toward Asian-Americans still lingers in this society. Often the current targets of violence are newer immigrants from Indochina and South Korea, though even more established Asian ethnic groups also find themselves resented for their economic and academic success, shut out of clubs and the upper ranks of corporations and treated as outsiders.

Could there ever be a repetition of 1942? As Mineta noted, the redress measure raises questions “at the very core of our nation: Does our Constitution indeed protect all of us regardless of race or culture? Do our rights remain inalienable even in times of stress, and especially in times of stress?” The passage of the bill, in his view, answers these questions with a resounding yes. We hope that he is right, and that the proper lessons have been learned.