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Vol. 72/No. 47      December 1, 2008

 
Japanese from Latin America
demand redress from U.S. gov’t
 
BY ARLENE RUBINSTEIN  
LOS ANGELES—The U.S. government organized the abduction and incarceration during World War II of nearly 2,300 Japanese living in Latin America. Their fight for justice was discussed at a program held at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on November 13. The program was hosted by the Campaign for Justice: Redress Now for Japanese Latin Americans and by Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. Campus sponsors included the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, Asian American Studies Department, Chicano/a Studies Center, and Nikkei Student Union.

Art Shibayama was 13 when U.S. soldiers came to his home in Callao, Peru, and arrested his father in March 1944. “My family was put on a U.S. military transport ship with other Japanese Peruvian families,” Shibayama told the 35 participants in the meeting. “Twenty-one days later we were in Crystal City, Texas, in a concentration camp. We were brought here at gunpoint but they called us illegal aliens,” he said.

Like Shibayama, Hector Watanabe was incarcerated in Crystal City. “Our civil rights were violated. Why did the Japanese emigrate to Peru? For work—they were not guilty of any crimes. We were hostages,” Watanabe told the meeting. In addition to being incarcerated along with 112,000 people of Japanese descent living in the United States, Japanese Latin Americans were shipped to Japan as part of an exchange for U. S. prisoners of war.

As in the United States, authorities in Peru took control of bank accounts, businesses, and homes of Japanese Latin Americans. “My family’s business and its bank accounts were seized by the Peruvian government,” said Watanabe. The Peruvian government refused to let Shibayama, Watanabe, and hundreds of other Japanese Peruvians return after World War II.

“To get out of the camp, you needed a sponsor. So I went to work for Seabrook Farms, a frozen food company, working rotating shifts 12 hours a day,” said Shibayama. In 1944, Seabrook Farms began recruiting Japanese Americans and those from Latin America imprisoned in U.S. concentration camps to work in its southern New Jersey plant, employing 3,000 Japanese as farm and factory workers.

Shigueru Tsuha, a graduate student at University of California, Riverside and an activist in the Campaign for Justice, urged participants to join the effort to win justice for Japanese Latin Americans. “This is connected to the fight for immigrant rights, which the U.S. government has a history of violating. When we win, it will be a victory for all of us and help educate about a living history,” he explained.

The Campaign for Justice is fighting for the passage of the “Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Latin Americans of Japanese Descent Act.” Most Japanese Latin Americans were excluded from the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, which awarded $20,000 and a letter of apology to Japanese Americans interned during World War II. In 1998 the Department of Justice gave about 600 Japanese Latin Americans a token $5,000 settlement.  
 
 
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