♪ spatial minimal electronic theme evoking the sounds of wind ♪ [Kimberly Miyoshi] We were born from the tears of internment camp deserts.

Standing here today on this sacred, hallowed ground where 8000 removed people, our ancestors, shuffled through dust clouds into abandoned horse stalls whose stench remained.

And yet here we are.

A testament to their pain.

We stand here in defiance of Executive Order 9066 of barbed wire, guard towers, of questionnaires designed to break our loyalty to each other and attempt to divide.

That is what racism does to stay alive.

♪ laid back hip-hop beats with guzheng ♪ [Narrator] The laws of this country that govern us reflect how we see ourselves.

As the fight for reparations in California and the United States continues, we only have to look at our own history to understand if there is a path forward.

♪ hip-hop beats continue ♪ [John Tateishi] I was just so sick and tired of people saying to me, "You really speak good English.

Where are you from?"

It's the assumption that I'm not American because I don't look like what that person thinks an American is.

And the fact that I don't look like it makes me not an American in their eyes, and certainly not as good as they are because I'm not like them.

[Kimberly Miyoshi] Living in an immigrant family with bachan and jichan who don't speak English and have been here 70 something years, just kind of raised a lot of questions for me.

♪ determined and strong synthy trap/hip-hop beats ♪ [Donald Tamaki] Well, my community immigrated to the United States at the turn of the century, late 1800s, early 1900s.

It was during a time of ultra racism against Asian Americans, but also other people of color.

♪ determined and strong synthy trap/hip-hop beats ♪ [Kimberly Miyoshi] My jichan, my grandfather, came here when he was a young man, and then my grandmother came over shortly thereafter and they raised a family in Los Angeles and, you know, did the best that they could.

And then Pearl Harbor was bombed.

[Milton S. Eisenhower, Director of the War Relocation Authority] When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone.

Living in that zone were more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two thirds of them American citizens, one third aliens.

We knew that some among them were potentially dangerous.

♪ atmospheric clock-like ticking synthesizer pulses ♪ [Donald Tamaki] When the war broke out on December 7th, 1941, all eyes were on the Japanese American community.

Literally the next day, Secret Service agents swept into our communities up and down the West Coast.

And ultimately by March of 1942, almost 120,000 Americans were in the process of being rounded up.

They were incarcerated in concentration camps stretching from California to Arkansas.

♪ atmospheric clock-like ticking synthesizer pulses with eerie bells in the distance ♪ [John Tateishi] You lose all your constitutional rights, you lose your job, you lose your business.

You lose everything.

♪ fingerpicking sounds of the charango strings ♪ [Narrator] The United States had ten internment camps, two of which were in California: Tule Lake and Manzanar.

♪ charango with added violins ♪ [John Tateishi] My family went to a camp called Manzanar, which is in the Sierra Madres, and we were there for three years.

♪ lonely, mournful sounds of the charango with added violins ♪ [Donald Tamaki] Looking back, I think that generation, my parents and grandparents, were so traumatized by the experience that they rarely talked about it.

♪ lonely, mournful sounds of the charango with added violins ♪ [John Tateishi] And, believe me, we understood even as children that these were prisons we were in because, I mean, it's pretty obvious.

Everyone within the camps were Japanese and everyone outside were white.

People who were white could come in and leave.

We could not.

We were under threat of some kind of punishment, if we tried to get outside the fence.

And so for us, even as children, we understood that imprisonment was really shameful.

We were embarrassed by it.

♪ lonely, mournful sounds of violins ♪ Most Japanese Americans spent three years in those camps and afterwards returned to wherever we had come from, in most cases, and tried to rebuild their lives.

♪ lonely, mournful sounds of violins ♪ They had this real kind of psychological wound wound created by all of that and the sense of shame.

So what happened is, as we returned from the camps, the Nisei would not talk about the camp experience, would not say anything to anyone outside, outside of the community, and in many cases did not talk about it in the home.

♪ lonely, mournful sounds of violins slowly fade ♪ [Descendant of Japanese internment camp survivors] And then came the time when we passed World War II in our history book.

And I didn't see any part about Japanese concentration camps.

♪ energetic taiko drums instrumental theme ♪ [Rally speaker] Talking about the liberation of the people.

And that's what we all want at this particular time.

That's your job and my job.

This is why we've got to get organized, brother, because any man who is not for my liberation and the liberation of all oppressed and suppressed people is definitely working to dehumanize those people.

[Donald Tamaki] The civil rights movement, led by Black leaders, woke us up.

♪ taiko drums continue ♪ This had an impact on the country, but it certainly had an impact on Japanese Americans.

We, too, began to wonder who we were and reflected on our own families.

By 1970, the next generation, the third generation of Japanese Americans, began to ask questions and demand an accounting of what happened.

[Narrator] The Japanese American Citizens League, the National Coalition for Redress Reparations, now known as Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, and the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress worked hard to give a voice for the community.

[John Tateishi] By 1978, I was appointed to chair the National JACL Committee for Redress.

What we really focused on was that we had to start with educating ourselves.

We armed all our chapters around the country with these press kits and fact sheets and things that they needed to understand about what the experience was and why it happened.

♪ introspective, cyclical piano ♪ [Narrator] A Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians held investigative hearings from July to December of 1981.

More than 750 people provided testimony of their experiences about the incarceration.

[Witness 1] My name is Grace Watanabe Kimura of Morton Grove, Illinois.

I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you today.

[Witness 2] My name is Allan Hida, I reside at 605 North 104th.

[Witness 3] My mother is a Nisei, born in San Francisco in 1896.

[Witness 4] Prior to my incarceration, behind barbed wires in Tule Lake.. [Witness 5] My name is Chiye Tomihiro.

Before December 7th, 1941, I was attending a high school about 2500 students, only a handful of whom were Japanese Americans.

Each morning before class, we stood and pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States.

But I was soon to learn that liberty and justice for all did not apply to me or my family.

[Witness 6] Proclamation number five issued by General DeWitt, which provided many exemptions to the German and Italian aliens but was all inclusive for everyone of Japanese ancestry.

The first night, as I laid in bed, tears streamed down my face.

♪ introspective, cyclical piano with added harp ♪ [Donald Tamaki] After almost a 20 year struggle culminated in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 for redress and reparations.

♪ introspective, cyclical piano with added harp and percussion ♪ [Ronald Reagan] My fellow Americans, we gather here today to right a grave wrong.

120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps.

Here, we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.

[Donald Tamaki] The Japanese American experience is one instance in modern times where the government recognized a great wrong and did more than apologize for it.

♪ introspective, cyclical piano with added harp and percussion ♪ [Kimberly Miyoshi] We are re-telling the story of what it means to be Japanese Americans today.

♪ introspective, cyclical piano with added harp and percussion ♪ So I think that the only way for us to repair kind of the culture that was broken and the racism that put us there is how we show up in this world for other communities.

And that's a part of our healing.

I think we're powerful.

And I think that we can use the story of what happened to us to bring attention to the need for reparations.

♪ introspective, cyclical piano with added harp and percussion ♪ [John Tateishi] When you talk about Black reparations -- it's so much more complex.

The degree of damage, and the harm and the legacy.

And people will say, "But we can't afford it."

And my response to that is, can we afford not to do that?

And if you don't correct this injustice, correct this wrong, what does that mean about us as a society and a nation and a democracy?

♪ introspective, cyclical piano with added harp and percussion ♪ [Ronald Dellums] There comes a moment when one has to speak to tell his or her own story.

My home was in the middle of the block on Wood Street in West Oakland.

On the corner was a small grocery store owned by Japanese people.

I would never forget, Mr. Chairman and members of this body, never forget, because the moment is burned indelibly upon this child's memory.

Six years of age.

The day the 65 trucks came to pick up my friend.

My mother, as bright as she was, try as she may, could not explain to me why my friend was being taken away as he screamed not to go.

As this six year old Black American child screamed back, "Don't take my friend!"

No one could help me understand that.

No one, Mr. Chairman.

And so I would say to my colleagues, this is not just compensation for being interned.

How do you compensate Roland, six years of age, who felt the fear that he was leaving his home, his community, his friend Ron?

This is not about how long you were imprisoned, it is about how much pain was inflicted upon thousands of American people.

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