Taking A stand
442nd Regimental Combat Team, 1943, Library of Congress
My priory was to show the American people that we are just as loyal as anybody else. We need to prove loyalty because the reason why we're in camp is because the American public says we are the enemy alien. We're loyal to Japan and so forth.
And that perception's got to change.
-Susumu Satow, former 442nd
"All of us can't stay in the [internment] camps until the end of the war. Some of us have to go to the front. Our record on the battlefield will determine when you will return and how you will be treated. I don't know if I'll make it back."
-Technical Sergeant Abraham Ohama, Company "F", 442nd RCT, Killed in Action 10/20/1944
"Indeed, scores of Japanese Americans volunteered for our Armed Forces, many stepping forward in the internment camps themselves. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of Japanese Americans, served with immense distinction to defend this nation, their nation. Yet back at home, the soldier’s families were being denied the very freedom for which so many of the soldiers themselves were laying down their lives…." |
"That, to me, is a signal that the highest authority of the land has confirmed their loyalty because the reason that the Nisei fought with such intensity was for only one reason, and that was to prove their loyalty, because they were accused of being saboteurs and collaborators of the enemy." |
"You are to be congratulated on what you have done for this great country of ours. I think it was my predecessor who said that Americanism is not a matter of race or creed, but it is a matter of heart. You fought for the free nations of the world along with the rest of us. I congratulate you on that, and I cant tell you how very much I appreciate the privilege of being able to show you how much the United States of America think of what you did."
-Harry Truman, former US President
“The philosophy of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights is not simply to grant the majority the power to rule, but is also to set out limitation after limitation upon that power. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion; what are these but the recognition that at times when the majority of men would willingly destroy him, a dissenting man may have no friend but the law.
You sow the wind, for minorities change and the time will surely come when you will feel the hot breath of a righteous majority at the back of your own neck. Only then perhaps will you realize what you have destroyed.”
-Daniel K Inouye