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Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Madam President, first I would like to congratulate the senior Senator from Texas for his leadership on this incredibly important issue with Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia.

It really is important that we get this passed. Our national security depends on it. I think the American economy depends on it.

The Senator mentioned that there was a time in our country's history not long ago--I am going to use my words, not his, but I will paraphrase it--where I think we thought that making things as cheaply as possible was the same thing as making things as efficiently as possible. And I would argue that we privileged the people in our economy who wanted to make stuff as cheaply as possible in China when there are a lot of really other important values at work, including our national security, the supply chains that we rely on, making sure that communities in our country have jobs and wages being created.

I think we have an incredible opportunity as a nation to come together and build an economy that, when it grows, grows for everybody once again. And in my mind, that is what this bill represents.

So I just want to say to the Senator from Texas how grateful I am for his leadership, and I hope that it won't be long before we pass it. Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 2497

Madam President, 80 years ago this month, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, 2 months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it led to some of the most disgraceful chapters in our Nation's history--the forced dispossession, relocation, and concentration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

Two-thirds of them were citizens of this country, forced out of their homes and into internment camps by their own government. They were our neighbors, and they were parents and shopkeepers and students, doctors and factory workers. They were Americans in every sense of the word.

But racist fear forced them into these camps--crowded, squalid, and at war with everything that we stand for as a nation. One of those camps was Amache in Colorado, where nearly 10,000 Japanese Americans were detained against their will.

This is a photo of that camp.

I will mention, just because I looked it up--I figured this might be true, because we have Senators from Nevada and Texas here--that there were five such places in Texas, as well--internment camps.

But this is one that was in southeastern Colorado, and these children are among the first arrivals at Amache, and they were forced to build the camp where their own families were interned for the duration of the war.

I can't tell exactly the ages of the children in this photo, but I would be surprised if the pages on this floor are any older than them. And I would say to the President, in front of the pages, to ask them to imagine a time when our country interned people the age of the people who are pages on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

I have had the opportunity to visit Amache a few years ago with John Hopper, who is a high school teacher, a principal, out there near the camp, who along with his students, created the Amache Preservation Society.

There wasn't anybody else to do it. It was just a high school teacher and his students. They recognized how much this site meant to Colorado, how much this site meant to the country. And, acting completely on their own, they worked year after year after year to restore the site so that the next generation of Coloradans and Americans--the young people sitting on this floor today--would have the opportunity to learn about what happened here.

If it were up to me, every student in Colorado and throughout the American West and, for that matter, in our entire country would come to this site and learn about the Americans of Amache--the men and women who held on to hope year after year, who supported one another, who forged a community behind the barbed wires of this site, who never gave up on the United States of America, even as it was interning them on their own soil.

And if they did go to Amache, they could learn about one of my heroes, Colorado's former Governor Ralph Carr, who spoke out against what was happening at a time when most politicians in the West and in this country--going all the way up to our President, Franklin Roosevelt--were either not speaking out or allowing this to happen.

At that time, many Western Governors opposed internment camps, not just because they were unjust but--I am sorry. At that time, many Western Governors were comfortable locking up their fellow citizens so long as they were locked up in someone else's State because there was an anti-Japanese American prejudice in the land.

Some Coloradans in nearby communities gave way to shameful fear of their fellow citizens and objected to their presence. To say the least, they objected to their presence.

Speaking to an angry crowd one day on the Eastern Plains--I say to my colleague from Texas that this is where my colleague Senator Cory Gardner was from, this part of the State of Colorado--Governor Carr said: ``I am talking to . . . all American people whether their status be white, brown or black . . . when I say that if a majority may deprive a minority of its freedom, contrary to the terms of the Constitution today, then you as a minority may be subjected to the same ill-will of the majority tomorrow.''

He went on: ``The Japanese are protected by the same Constitution that protects us. An American citizen of Japanese descent has the same rights as any other citizen. . . . If you harm them, you must first harm me.''

He went on to lose his next election. I think it was to the U.S. Senate. And I shudder to think what would have happened if people like Governor Carr hadn't been there to stand for our highest ideals as a country, or if survivors and their descendants and community leaders, many of whom have close connections to Colorado to this day or who live in Colorado to this day, hadn't worked for decades to preserve the site and the memory of what happened there.

Thanks to their work, we now have the opportunity to give Amache the recognition and resources it deserves. That is why I introduced this bill, along with my colleague Senator Hickenlooper, to make Amache part of the National Park System. This would ensure Amache has the legal status and funding to preserve the site and the memory of what happened there for years to come.

In the House, Congressmen Ken Buck and Joe Neguse introduced the bill. Not everybody here would know this, but I know Congressman Buck would know this. He and I ran against each other in 2009 and 2010. That was a tough, tough, tough election, and I barely--barely--won. I barely won. But I am proud to serve with Congressman Buck in the House and Congressman Neguse in the House who also have come together, just like me and Senator Hickenlooper, to support this bill.

This site is in Ken Buck's district in Prowers County. Ken won 74 percent of the vote there in 2020. By the way, I think I won 33 percent in 2016, so Ken is outpacing me there. We don't agree on a lot, but we agree 100 percent that this matters to our State and the legacy we want to pass on to the next generation.

I have a list of 65 groups that support this bill: the Asian Chamber of Commerce, the Colorado Council of Churches, the Colorado Municipal League. If that weren't enough, the bill also has the support of the chairman and the ranking member of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

But today, there is 1 Senator out of 99--and it is not the senior Senator from Texas--who is objecting to this bill.

This bill passed the House of Representatives with all but two votes. We have 99 Senators on one side who support this and 1 objecting. I have absolutely no idea why that one Senator is objecting, and I hope that it is just a misunderstanding of some kind. We fight for a lot of things on this floor, but there is a bipartisan tradition going back to Teddy Roosevelt of both parties coming together to protect places that matter to our heritage as a nation.

Amache matters to Colorado, and it matters to America. This is about whether we are going to ignore the worst parts of our history or lift them up and give future generations the opportunity to learn from them so that we can move this country closer to our highest ideals.

So I hope that the Senator who is objecting to this bipartisan bill, with massive support in both the House and Senate, that is of critical importance to the State of Colorado, that doesn't touch or concern any other State in the Union, except to the extent that people from those States of the Union might someday like to come here and learn an important episode in our country's history--I feel strongly about this, in part, because my own mom and her family were dislocated by the same war. They were living on the other side of the world in Poland. The entire family was killed except for an aunt and my grandparents and my mom. And she got here when she was 11 years old, which is probably the same age as these young children here who were picked up from their homes all across the Western United States and brought to a place that they never had known before. It seems to me, the least we could do, with this massive bipartisan support, is to pass this bill.

255, H.R. 2497; further, that the committee-reported amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I thank the senior Senator from Texas who, in fact, is a noncombatant in this effort. And I am sorry that he has had the misfortune of having to come out here and object.

I will say that Colorado and Utah are right next to each other, and I faced the same travel issues that the Senator from Utah faces, I guess.

And I want the record to reflect that I actually didn't name the Senator who objected, but the Senator from Texas did.

My fervent hope is that we can work this out because, really importantly, we are having the anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's decision to inter these young people this month. And if we don't get this back to the House of Representatives, we may miss that anniversary, and people in Colorado would miss the chance to be able to demonstrate that they are carrying this really important legacy forward.

When I think about my mom's experience and the experiences here and the country that these young men and women are growing up in who are with us today, it just makes me think even more about how important all of this is. And, Madam President, I can't think of anybody I would rather have this discussion with than with you presiding in the Chair.

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