The Day of Remembrance
THE DAY OF REMEMBRANCE -- (House of Representatives - March 01, 2006)
Ms. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, 64 years ago, on February 19, 1942, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and communities in one of the great suspensions of liberty in our Nation's history. We recall the day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 as a Day of Remembrance. This was the day the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans and legal residents along the West Coast were suspended and they were incarcerated during World War II.
Families and communities were uprooted from the life they had known. This memory is actually quite bittersweet for me and my family. My grandparents and parents were uprooted from their communities, their lives, their homes, their businesses, despite the fact that they were American citizens. My parents actually met and married at the Poston Internment Camp, my birthplace. In fact, my father says that that was probably the only good thing that came out of that camp.
Growing up, my parents protected me from the experience they went through of having the loyalty they held for this Nation being questioned. And as I was growing up, my parents made a concerted effort to teach me to believe in this country and love this country despite what it did to them.
I shared this sense of patriotism with my husband. Bob, who despite spending his toddler years in a camp, grew up to have a staunch and steadfast belief in our country and our Constitution, including the ideals of justice and equality firmly embedded in both.
Because of the implications of this incarceration, my grandparents, my parents like Bob's and so many others of this generation, did not speak of their experience in the internment camp. It wasn't until my father was much older that this time period was brought up.
But this is an experience that we cannot allow to fade. The government at all levels was blinded by war, and it is imperative that we learn the lesson this moment in history has taught us, including this Nation's ability to recognize and acknowledge our mistakes.
As we mark this tragic anniversary, I hope every American will take this day to affirm their commitment to our Constitution and the rights and protections it guarantees for all of us.
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