As Donald Trump wreaks havoc on the foundations of American democracy, I’ve been asked how I feel about seeing those things we fought so hard for in the long battle for redress being swept away and rendered meaningless by Trump’s actions.
I’ve often thought about this ever since his election in 2016 and in the first two years of his second term as he’s sought to reshape America to fit his myopic view, and I think the word that best describes my reaction is “fatalistic.” Not in the sense of defeat and complacency but more in knowing that Trump’s bulldozing of democratic principles would undermine many of the gains made in the past decades, and in the shadow of this destruction, to remain committed to the principles for which I’ve fought all my life. Normalcy will return. Be patient.
But let’s be clear about one thing, that no matter what Trump does, he can’t “un-do” the accomplishments of redress in the same way he has undone, say, DEI programs. Un-do what? Take back the apology for the injustice? Demand that we return the $20,000 reparations payment we were each given? And most important, tell Americans who otherwise would know nothing about our WWII experience to un-learn the facts of that history?
The fact that today, the majority of Americans know about the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans is in itself a testament to the success of the redress campaign because it’s in that knowing that the lessons about injustice and racism lie.
Ever since Redress brought our story to light, the tale of our injustice has had its place in the annals of this country’s history for future generations to learn from.
And with Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, historians and journalists reawakened our story and drew a direct line from his ICE enforced deportation policy to the WWII exclusion and imprisonment of Japanese Americans. This rarely used statute has been invoked only twice before in modern history – President Wilson to ferret out German spies during WWI and Franklin Roosevelt for our removal and imprisonment – and only after the Congress had issued a Declaration of War to invoke the legal protections afforded in the statute. Trump, on the other hand, has declared his deportation policy a “war on crime,” essentially casting a shadow of guilt over targeted communities and thus giving his administration the legal protections of the Alien Enemies Act to put it beyond constitutional challenges.
For Japanese Americans, for me, Trump’s invoking this statute is an alarming reminder of how the Alien Enemies Act stripped us of our rights and, unchallenged, allowed our government to spew out lies and propaganda about us to serve their purpose, to allow them to remove and imprison us.
And here we are again, and this time it’s Trump and the Alien Enemies Act.
I created this website originally in 2020 for anyone who might be interested in my book and wanted more information or might want to contact me. And as such, I endeavored to keep the site objective and informative.
But there comes a time when you have to say the hell with objectivity and make it personal. I know from years of being a public voice of the redress campaign that making a political fight personal is unwise because it makes you vulnerable, but there are times when staying objective and stoic becomes intolerable. When staying silent is more objectionable than mouthing off. When you simply have to speak out.
And so….
Let’s begin with some facts and truths, things Trump has shown himself time and again adverse to, and something we’ve all gotten used to, even the fact checkers at some of the nation’s greatest news organizations.
One of the keystones of Trump’s campaign when he ran for a second term were his fabricated stories about immigrants from south of our borders as an inherent danger to the very core of democracy in America. He raised many of the tired old racist false flags as he described “caravans” of illegal invaders that posed a threat to the lives and safety of “everyday” Americans, all the while claiming he was the least racist person in the room. Most politicians, mindful about how the game of politics works, would find ways to avoid being dogmatic and absolutist and say something like, “While I’m mindful that there are many good and lawful people among them….”
Trump, on the other hand, has been indiscriminate in his condemnation of non-white and in particular Latino immigrants, as witnessed by the random sweeps and arrests through targeted communities. His rhetoric makes little if any room for distinctions between those who have come without documents to seek asylum or find sanctuary from violence or just an opportunity to work hard and make a living, from those and the others who should be his real and selective targets (which is not to suggest we ought to abandon controls and regulations at the border; the system is clearly broken and needs fixing).
Regardless, within weeks of being elected to a second term in 2024 and in his eagerness to implement his anti-immigrant policy, he let loose his combat-clad ICE agents to sweep through immigrant neighborhoods with a vengeance, making wholesale arrests that often included (and continues to include) innocent victims, individuals with legal status in this country, even American citizens. Even children. The criterion seemed simple: guilty by race.
The shocking actions of ICE and cooperating local law enforcement under the protection of the Alien Enemies Act has revealed just what a dangerous statute the Act can be in the hands of any president intent on carrying out a program that flies in the face of constitutional constraints.
I’m sure it would shock and anger those who regard President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of the great presidents in the history of this country (which, by the way, includes me, with caveats) that I m equally critical of FDR and Trump for invoking the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and that I argue there is little difference between their reasons for having done so: to sidestep the Constitution. No hearings, no due process, no need to justify targeting a specific ethnic group, no need for warrants or evidence, in short, to disregard completely constitutional safeguards of individual rights. And in this regard, it’s worth noting that the protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights, all those legal guarantees we hold so dear, apply to anyone residing in the United States, with documents or not, criminal or not. That is one of the bedrocks of American democracy.
But what does it mean when a president can ignore something so fundamental as who we are as a nation? FDR invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the very same reason when he sent us to America’s concentration camps: to deny a specifically targeted racial group their guaranteed rights and protections. Many argue in FDR’s defense that we had been thrust into a World War and faced the exigencies of a true global disaster. That’s a debate for another time because my concern here is the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in today’s world where we face no such national calamity, where there has been no evidence or facts to back up or justify the claim that there is a need to enact a measure to suspend constitutional rights of a single group identified by nothing more than race. Simply put, Trump’s cynical invocation of the Act is to provide a legal shield to carry out what has turned out to be a brutal deportation program which I believe the majority of Americans must find reprehensible..
As someone who was a victim of the WWII removal and imprisonment experience, I would point out that there is a vast difference between how we were treated and what’s happening today. In our case, the Army brought soldiers into our communities to process and forcibly remove us, loaded us onto trains and busses and trucks. There was at least a semblance of decency in the removal process. There were other elements of awfulness to the experience for us, but overall, there was no bloodshed and brutality in the process.
In contrast, what I see in today’s world are ICE agents clad in combat gear and cloaked in anonymity brutally making arrests and stripping victims of their dignity while viciously attacking demonstrators exercising their right to protest Trump’s deportation actions. As troubled as our world might have been during the days of WWII, it wasn’t a world where agents of the government could act with total impunity for whatever brutality they may inflict on fellow Americans.
Witness the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
And where are the members of Congress? Are they not offended or ashamed that they’ve allowed a tyrant to intimidate them to such compliance? It’s one thing for obsequious Republicans to do all they can to empower this president, but where are the Democrats? I’ve waited for two years to hear the roar of defiance and anger but hear only faint defiance.
And what of the Supreme Court, the nation’s last hope as the defenders of truth and justice? It’s “my court” as Trump has described them. There’s some truth to that, what with his sycophants constituting the majority.
I began this commentary by saying that my reaction to Trump’s destruction is to be fatalistic. That’s true. I am. But fatalism with an understanding that this too will pass. Things change. They always do. Be patient.
JYT
I’ve often thought about this ever since his election in 2016 and in the first two years of his second term as he’s sought to reshape America to fit his myopic view, and I think the word that best describes my reaction is “fatalistic.” Not in the sense of defeat and complacency but more in knowing that Trump’s bulldozing of democratic principles would undermine many of the gains made in the past decades, and in the shadow of this destruction, to remain committed to the principles for which I’ve fought all my life. Normalcy will return. Be patient.
But let’s be clear about one thing, that no matter what Trump does, he can’t “un-do” the accomplishments of redress in the same way he has undone, say, DEI programs. Un-do what? Take back the apology for the injustice? Demand that we return the $20,000 reparations payment we were each given? And most important, tell Americans who otherwise would know nothing about our WWII experience to un-learn the facts of that history?
The fact that today, the majority of Americans know about the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans is in itself a testament to the success of the redress campaign because it’s in that knowing that the lessons about injustice and racism lie.
Ever since Redress brought our story to light, the tale of our injustice has had its place in the annals of this country’s history for future generations to learn from.
And with Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, historians and journalists reawakened our story and drew a direct line from his ICE enforced deportation policy to the WWII exclusion and imprisonment of Japanese Americans. This rarely used statute has been invoked only twice before in modern history – President Wilson to ferret out German spies during WWI and Franklin Roosevelt for our removal and imprisonment – and only after the Congress had issued a Declaration of War to invoke the legal protections afforded in the statute. Trump, on the other hand, has declared his deportation policy a “war on crime,” essentially casting a shadow of guilt over targeted communities and thus giving his administration the legal protections of the Alien Enemies Act to put it beyond constitutional challenges.
For Japanese Americans, for me, Trump’s invoking this statute is an alarming reminder of how the Alien Enemies Act stripped us of our rights and, unchallenged, allowed our government to spew out lies and propaganda about us to serve their purpose, to allow them to remove and imprison us.
And here we are again, and this time it’s Trump and the Alien Enemies Act.
I created this website originally in 2020 for anyone who might be interested in my book and wanted more information or might want to contact me. And as such, I endeavored to keep the site objective and informative.
But there comes a time when you have to say the hell with objectivity and make it personal. I know from years of being a public voice of the redress campaign that making a political fight personal is unwise because it makes you vulnerable, but there are times when staying objective and stoic becomes intolerable. When staying silent is more objectionable than mouthing off. When you simply have to speak out.
And so….
Let’s begin with some facts and truths, things Trump has shown himself time and again adverse to, and something we’ve all gotten used to, even the fact checkers at some of the nation’s greatest news organizations.
One of the keystones of Trump’s campaign when he ran for a second term were his fabricated stories about immigrants from south of our borders as an inherent danger to the very core of democracy in America. He raised many of the tired old racist false flags as he described “caravans” of illegal invaders that posed a threat to the lives and safety of “everyday” Americans, all the while claiming he was the least racist person in the room. Most politicians, mindful about how the game of politics works, would find ways to avoid being dogmatic and absolutist and say something like, “While I’m mindful that there are many good and lawful people among them….”
Trump, on the other hand, has been indiscriminate in his condemnation of non-white and in particular Latino immigrants, as witnessed by the random sweeps and arrests through targeted communities. His rhetoric makes little if any room for distinctions between those who have come without documents to seek asylum or find sanctuary from violence or just an opportunity to work hard and make a living, from those and the others who should be his real and selective targets (which is not to suggest we ought to abandon controls and regulations at the border; the system is clearly broken and needs fixing).
Regardless, within weeks of being elected to a second term in 2024 and in his eagerness to implement his anti-immigrant policy, he let loose his combat-clad ICE agents to sweep through immigrant neighborhoods with a vengeance, making wholesale arrests that often included (and continues to include) innocent victims, individuals with legal status in this country, even American citizens. Even children. The criterion seemed simple: guilty by race.
The shocking actions of ICE and cooperating local law enforcement under the protection of the Alien Enemies Act has revealed just what a dangerous statute the Act can be in the hands of any president intent on carrying out a program that flies in the face of constitutional constraints.
I’m sure it would shock and anger those who regard President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of the great presidents in the history of this country (which, by the way, includes me, with caveats) that I m equally critical of FDR and Trump for invoking the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and that I argue there is little difference between their reasons for having done so: to sidestep the Constitution. No hearings, no due process, no need to justify targeting a specific ethnic group, no need for warrants or evidence, in short, to disregard completely constitutional safeguards of individual rights. And in this regard, it’s worth noting that the protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights, all those legal guarantees we hold so dear, apply to anyone residing in the United States, with documents or not, criminal or not. That is one of the bedrocks of American democracy.
But what does it mean when a president can ignore something so fundamental as who we are as a nation? FDR invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the very same reason when he sent us to America’s concentration camps: to deny a specifically targeted racial group their guaranteed rights and protections. Many argue in FDR’s defense that we had been thrust into a World War and faced the exigencies of a true global disaster. That’s a debate for another time because my concern here is the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act in today’s world where we face no such national calamity, where there has been no evidence or facts to back up or justify the claim that there is a need to enact a measure to suspend constitutional rights of a single group identified by nothing more than race. Simply put, Trump’s cynical invocation of the Act is to provide a legal shield to carry out what has turned out to be a brutal deportation program which I believe the majority of Americans must find reprehensible..
As someone who was a victim of the WWII removal and imprisonment experience, I would point out that there is a vast difference between how we were treated and what’s happening today. In our case, the Army brought soldiers into our communities to process and forcibly remove us, loaded us onto trains and busses and trucks. There was at least a semblance of decency in the removal process. There were other elements of awfulness to the experience for us, but overall, there was no bloodshed and brutality in the process.
In contrast, what I see in today’s world are ICE agents clad in combat gear and cloaked in anonymity brutally making arrests and stripping victims of their dignity while viciously attacking demonstrators exercising their right to protest Trump’s deportation actions. As troubled as our world might have been during the days of WWII, it wasn’t a world where agents of the government could act with total impunity for whatever brutality they may inflict on fellow Americans.
Witness the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
And where are the members of Congress? Are they not offended or ashamed that they’ve allowed a tyrant to intimidate them to such compliance? It’s one thing for obsequious Republicans to do all they can to empower this president, but where are the Democrats? I’ve waited for two years to hear the roar of defiance and anger but hear only faint defiance.
And what of the Supreme Court, the nation’s last hope as the defenders of truth and justice? It’s “my court” as Trump has described them. There’s some truth to that, what with his sycophants constituting the majority.
I began this commentary by saying that my reaction to Trump’s destruction is to be fatalistic. That’s true. I am. But fatalism with an understanding that this too will pass. Things change. They always do. Be patient.
JYT