They Called Us Enemy Quotes

“In the meantime, we, the people, are already prepared for action.”

That same day the president signed a proclamation declaring that every adult Japanese citizen inside the U.S. was now an “alien enemy” and must follow strict regulations.

In California at that time, the single most popular political position was “lock up the Japs.” The attorney general of California, Earl Warren, decided to get in front of that issue.

He wanted to run for governor... and would do anything to get that office. He saw the division his rhetoric caused.

He knew that he was talking about a hundred thousand people who had not been charged with any crime. But he made an amazing statement for not just any lawyer... but the top lawyer of the state.

On February 19, 1942, seventy-four days after Pearl Harbor... he issued Executive Order 9066.

The order never used the words “Japanese” or “camps”—it authorized the military to declare areas “from which any or all persons may be excluded,” and to provide “transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations” from persons excluded from these areas.

Each family was assigned a horse stall still pungent with the stink of manure. As a kid, I couldn’t grasp the injustice of the situation.

But for my parents, it was a devastating blow. They had worked so hard to buy a two-bedroom house and raise a family in Los Angeles... now we were crammed into a single, smelly horse stall. It was a degrading, humiliating, painful experience.

As a teenager, I had many after-dinner discussions with my father... discussing everything from the government’s forced incarcerations of Japanese Americans... to politics.

He taught me the power of American democracy—the people’s democracy.

“People can do great things, George. They can come up with noble, shining ideals.

“But people are also fallible human beings, and we know they made a terrible mistake.”

Memory is a wily keeper of the past... usually dependable, but at times, deceptive.

Childhood memories are especially slippery.

Sweet and so full of joy, they can often be a misrendering of the truth.

For a child, that sweetness... out of context and intensely subjective... remains forever real.

I know that I will always be haunted by the larger, vaguely remembered reality of the circumstances surrounding my childhood.

Mama began the impossible work of making a home for us out of the rough-hewn single room.

She ran up curtains made from government surplus fabrics.

Using strips of discarded rags, she braided together colorful floor mats.

About the only thing Mama didn’t have to do was cook.

But to her it was no relief. The kitchen was just one more aspect of caring for her family that she was denied.

One more loss. I realize that besides comforting us... perhaps everything she did was also her own statement of defiance.

There were fishermen and farmers, shopkeepers and professionals. We were so diverse, all so different. And yet, we were the same. We were all Japanese Americans and we were all in Block 6 at Camp Rohwer. That was our common denominator. Daddy felt keenly that we needed to forge a community together.

“Die, you Japanese cowards! Bang bang bang!”

“He got me! I’m dead!”

“Gotcha again! America wins the war!”

“Let’s play again, but this time I’ll be American.”

The older boys would play “war.”

“Nuh-uh, you be Japanese. I’m American.”

“No fair! You’re always American!”

It was like cowboys and Indians, but with Japanese and Americans instead.

Childhood memories come rich with sensations...

... Fragrances, sounds, colors, and especially temperatures. That golden afternoon when Daddy took the family on that wonderful jeep ride...

... Is a fond memory that glows radiantly with warmth.

From the moment the war began, our loyalty as Americans was constantly under suspicion.

General John L. DeWitt, the commanding general of the western theater of operation:

“A Jap is a Jap... It makes no difference whether he is theoretically an American citizen, he is still a Japanese.”

Senator Tom Stewart (D-TN):

“They cannot be assimilated. There is not a single Japanese in this country who would not stab you in the back.”

Never mind that in the early days of the war, Japanese Americans showed up in great numbers to register for military service.

This was an act of patriotism, but it was met with a slap in the face. They were denied military service and categorized as 4-C: enemy aliens.

Question 27 wanted us to pledge our lives for a country that had upended our families and put us behind barbed-wire fences.

Question 28 rested on a false premise: that we all had a racial allegiance to the emperor of Japan. To answer “yes” would be to agree that we had such a loyalty to give up. Yes or no, either response would be used to justify our wrongful imprisonment—as if they’d been right to call us “enemy aliens” and lock us up in the first place.

As President Clinton said that day, “Rarely has a nation been so well-served by a people it has so ill-treated.” These brave soldiers clung to their belief in the shining ideals of their country.

Though they responded in different ways—caring for their families...

Fighting on the battlefield...

Or serving time for their principles—all these Japanese Americans showed incredible courage and heroism.

They proved that being American is not just for some people. They all made difficult choices to demonstrate their patriotism to this country even when it rejected them.

It was there I discovered the power of movies. I remember Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame most vividly.

I empathized with this love-starved character whom people scorned.

That movie was a transporting experience. Old Paris was fascinating.

Other nights the movies were Japanese, and often missing the audio track.

Daddy explained to me how a benshi provided the soundtrack for the film.

I was mesmerized by the benshi—how he could be so many voices from one.

In the days of silent movies, Daddy said, benshi were considered artists, similar to actors.

During out after-dinner discussions, Daddy would reveal more details about that time in our lives... filling in some of the gaps that escaped me.

“It was a demonstration in protest of the arrest of a man accused of being a radical.”

“Was he?”

“No! But regardless of whether he was or not... it was important to exercise our right to assemble. Send a message that we were united as a group and opposed to their actions.”

It dawned on me in that moment... I had been participating in democracy as far back as I can remember. That is the strength of our system. Good people organized, speaking loudly and clearly. Engaged in the democratic process.

“We’re free! We can finally go home!”

“Don’t be a fool! You think our homes are still there? You think white people will welcome us with open arms?”

The irony was that the barbed-wire fenced that incarcerated us also protected us.

Our childhoods continued to be made up of grotesquely abnormal circumstances...which would eventually become our “normal.”

It had become routine to line up three times a day to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall...but the routines of incarceration had all been thrown out. Now we found ourselves in constantly noisy surroundings with a perpetual stench.

But children are amazingly adaptable. We would survive this experience too.

I had an unsettling feeling...

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America...”

That her calling me “Jap boy” had something to do with our time in camp.

“...and to the republic for which it stands...”

I was old enough by then to understand that camp was something like jail...but could not fully grasp what we had done to be sent there.

The guilt which surrounded our internment made me feel like I deserved to be called that nasty epithet.

“One nation, indivisible...

“with liberty and justice for all.”

I had to learn about the internment from my father, during out after-dinner conversations. That remains part of the problem—that we don’t know the unpleasant aspects of American history...and therefore we don’t learn the lesson those chapters have to teach us. So we repeat them over and over again.

Of course, I did get that role.

As Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, I had the chance to represent my Asian heritage with honor...to millions of viewers on television...

And six times on the silver screen as (Lt.) Commander Sulu, eventually reaching the rank of captain.

But most importantly, my unexpected notoriety has allowed me a platform from which to address many social causes that need attention.

It was not until 1991 that I received a letter of apology...with a check for $20,000 signed by George H.W. Bush. As my father would say, “the wheels of democracy turn slowly.”

That makes an amazing statement about this country.

It took a while, but it did apologize. That apology came too late for my father. He passed in 1979, never to know that this government would admit wrongdoing.

It was a disastrous depression that Roosevelt pulled us out of.

It took that man, and his determination and creative energy...

To establish all those programs, and lift the fortunes of our great country.

But as we were driving here today, I thought, “I’m going to the home of the man who imprisoned me.”

And now I’m here in his home...

Only in America could that happen.

These rulings, which found Executive Order 9066 to be constitutional...were never officially overturned by the Supreme Court...

Until June 26, 2018.

Justice Roberts’ statement went on to say the ruling “has no place in law under the constitution...”

But in a cruel irony, the court struck down Korematsu in a mere side note in Trump v. Hawaii...

The very same ruling that upheld President Donald Trump’s ban on immigration from Muslim countries.