On Thursday, Feb. 16, Portland State’s Center for Japanese Studies will host University of Idaho Professor David Adler as he presents his lecture, “National Security and Civil Liberties in Wartime: The Internment of Japanese Americans.”
This lecture is one of several events co-sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies in recognition of the 70th anniversary of the wrongful internment of Japanese Americans.
Adler, a professor of constitutional law, has written extensively about the use of presidential power, and his lecture will focus on the United States government’s response to threats to national security within the context of the Japanese internment.
“Often times, laws are ignored or bent and twisted during the conduct of war, and on occasion that results in the violation of important civil rights and civil liberties, and that’s what happened to Japanese Americans during WWII,” Adler said.
Mari Watanabe, executive director of Oregon’s Nikkei Endowment—a Japanese American history and culture nonprofit organization co-sponsoring the event—said that Japanese people first began emigrating to the Portland area in the late 1800s after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was enacted by Congress. The act prohibited the emigration of any additional Chinese people to the U.S., which allowed Japanese to enter the nation to find work.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the preexisting discrimination and suspicion surrounding Japanese Americans began to escalate, and ultimately resulted in then-President Franklin Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066.
“After Executive Order 9066 was signed, it opened the door for the U.S. military to declare any area a military exclusion zone. Therefore the military determined that half of Washington,half of Oregon, all of California and a small part of Arizona were all exclusionary,” Watanabe explained.
The order gave the military the authority to remove any and all persons from exclusionary zones, not solely those persons of Japanese descent. However, racial discrimination within the top tiers of the military and government focused civil rights violations on Japanese Americans.
“During time of crisis, including war, governmental leaders often lose their compass,” Adler said. “They too fall prey to exaggeration and threats that might be on the horizon and they ignore all too quickly the constraints imposed by the Constitution.”
Adler plans to talk about Executive Order 9066, but also the actions taken by the legislative and judicial branches of government, which resulted in a complete violation of civil liberties granted to Japanese Americans by the Constitution.
According to Adler, after Executive Order 9066 was signed, Congress passed legislation that supported its racially discriminatory policies. Similarly, the Supreme Court refused to question the constitutionality of the order and instead deferred to the other two governmental branches.
Ali Jessie, a history graduate student focusing on Japan-U.S. relations, commented on the importance of understanding the historical context surrounding the internment of Japanese Americans. “I think it is important to understand the story of internment, because it shows how racism and war-time hysteria can have tragic consequences,” Jessie said.
Jessie believes that it is not unthinkable that a large-scale violation of civil rights could happen again. “After 9/11, many Japanese Americans spoke out for civil rights of Arab and Muslim Americans, using their own experience as a warning,” Jessie said.
In his upcoming lecture, Adler also plans to draw connections between the actions taken by the U.S. government during WWII and its conduct in the recent War on Terror. He hopes that his lecture reiterates to attendees the importance of having a solid grasp of the individual rights and freedoms granted to citizens by both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Adler wants people to understand that utilizing one’s First Amendment rights to free speech—which was fundamentally avoided during the Japanese internment—is an important method for affecting governmental policy and should not be viewed as unpatriotic or treasonous.
“Our country was founded in dissent. Dissent is in our DNA, so we ought to embrace it and practice it as a means of shaping the government which derives its very authority from the American people,” Adler commented.
Watanabe had similar sentiments: “[These lectures] are a great way for us to remind people that this event happened and that it violated civil rights. Some people will say, ‘In the United States we would never deny anybody their civil liberties,’ but in reality, we do it all the time.”
Adler’s lecture will be held this Thursday, Feb. 16, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Native American Center located at 710 SW Jackson St. The event is free and open to the public.