The parallel between Japanese internment during World War II and today’s rising Islamophobia is already old news — but it shouldn’t be, because history insists on repeating itself, and we insist on ignoring it.
During this year’s AAPI Heritage Month, the Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal revealed the following in the Department of Justice blog: In 1944, then solicitor general Charles H. Fahy, who defended Japanese Internment in front of the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. The United States, purposely withheld information that would have exonerated Japanese Americans. To justify his support for internment, Fahy relied instead on generalizations that they were inherently “disloyal and motivated by racial solidarity.” These lies about Japanese American loyalties and the glaring omission of evidence was a massive fraud perpetrated against the public, resulting in the imprisonment of 100,000 innocent people.
In 2011, too, we are allowing our national narrative to accuse a minority group monolithically of treason, and to normalize it as a valid opinion. We have the blessing of hindsight, yet the people who represent us are again institutionalizing fear. And although the consequences may not seem as severe as the relocation of thousands of people, an intelligence report by the Southern Poverty Law Center and statements by the Justice Department show a rise in anti-Muslim laws, anti-Muslim violence, and the isolation of Muslim individuals around the country.
Tags: anti-Muslim law, anti-Muslim violence, islamophobia, Japanese internment, muslim americans
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