Travels and Travails
Japanese Americans Recall '40s Bias, Understand Arab Counterparts' Fear

By Phuong Ly and Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 20, 2001; Page B01

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington knocked Doris Hoshide back 60 years, when America put a foreign face on its enemy and the Hoshide family became prisoners in their own country.

"All our freedom was gone because people compared us to people from Japan," said Hoshide, 90, of Rockville, who was one of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans placed in internment camps after the attack at Pearl Harbor. "We had nothing to do with Japan; we were Americans. I went to UCLA.

"Now I read about what the Arab Americans are going through, and I feel badly for them. They are law-abiding citizens, just like us."

During the past week, an unlikely and largely unspoken kinship has formed between the Japanese Americans who were corralled behind barbed wire during World War II and the estimated 3 million Americans with roots in the Arab world, who are bearing some of the brunt of the nation's current anger.

Yesterday, Japanese American veterans gathered with Sikhs, Korean Americans and others at the National Japanese American Memorial as a show of support for their Arab American compatriots.

"As Asian Americans, I believe that we have a special responsibility to make sure that the mistakes of the past that are memorialized here are not repeated," said Karen Narasaki, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.

About 100 people squeezed into the memorial's pink granite embrace, a curving wall bearing the names of the nation's internment camps and the Japanese American military units that fought in World War II. Rising above the monument -- bounded by Louisiana and New Jersey avenues and D Street NW -- is a bronze sculpture of two cranes, wrapped in barbed wire.

James Zogby, founder of the Arab-American Institute, said: "My community is afraid. There's no question we're afraid. We're afraid as Americans that we might be victims of the next attack. We're afraid of the punks and the bigots . . . that they're turning on us, too."

He said he had received many calls of support from Asian Americans.

"People reached out. Took time from their mourning and suffering and reached out and embraced us and said, 'We will protect you. Come back and mourn with the rest of us.' It is a marvelous statement about America."

Narasaki said: "Let us remember that Arab Americans and Asian Americans of many faiths as well as other Americans also lost members of their communities in these unspeakable attacks, and no one should be presumed to be any less loyal to our country just because of the color of their skin, their national origin, their immigration status or the religion that they follow."

Still, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said Tuesday that there have been more than 40 hate crimes directed at Arab Americans or people believed to be Arab Americans since Sept. 11.

A Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Ariz., was shot and killed over the weekend; Sikhs are generally from India and are neither Arab nor Muslim. An Indian Catholic man was punched and called a "dirty Arab" in San Francisco. His friend was stabbed and critically injured in the ensuing brawl. Several mosques have been firebombed or vandalized.

The incidents are frighteningly familiar for Joseph Ichiuji, 82, who was kicked out of the U.S. Army and reclassified as an "enemy alien" after Pearl Harbor.

In 1942, shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the order to round up Japanese Americans, Ichiuji's family was sent to a camp in Arizona. Ichiuji volunteered again for military service.

"I felt I had to prove that I was a loyal American," said Ichiuji, of Rockville, who wore his garrison cap at yesterday's ceremony. "All the people were against us."

Ichiuji and thousands of other volunteers were segregated into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the European campaign. It would become one of the most decorated units in U.S. military history.

Although the United States also was at war with Germany and Italy, many historians say immigrants from those countries were not systematically singled out, partly because they were well integrated into American society.

But federal laws, dating to 1882, had made Japanese and Chinese immigrants ineligible to become naturalized U.S. citizens. The ban was not lifted until 1952.

As the Japanese Americans were rounded up, other minority groups feared that they could be interned as well. Chinese immigrants put signs on their stores saying, "I'm Chinese." Korean immigrants wore buttons saying, "We Hate the Japs More Than You Do."

Even Washington's famous cherry trees -- a gift from Tokyo in 1912 -- became a target because of their association with Japan. At least four were chopped down, and the groves around the Tidal Basin suffered from neglect during the war.

Not until nearly 50 years had passed did the U.S. government formally apologize for the treatment of Japanese Americans and give $20,000 reparation checks to 65,000 people.

Japanese American culture, however, never fully recovered. At one time, there were more than 40 "Little Tokyos"; now there are three. Census figures show that the number of Japanese Americans -- once the largest Asian group in the United States -- has dropped to No. 5, at 800,000.

Still, the internment camp experience helped inspire the Asian American civil rights movement and ultimately banded together people of disparate backgrounds, said Frank Wu, a Howard University law professor who is co-author of a textbook about the camps.

"People don't pause and ask you, 'Are you Japanese?' before they assault you," said Wu, a Chinese American. "There's mistaken targeting, so people who just have dark skin and accents are vulnerable."

Just this spring, Wu said, people who appeared to be Chinese were considered the enemy after China shot down a U.S. spy plane. A few radio commentators called for the internment of Chinese Americans.

But now many minorities say that although the harassment is inevitable, they don't think internment camps will ever be used again. The country is far more diverse, with minorities in high-profile positions, such as Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, a former camp internee.

Lilly Okura, 82, of Friendship Heights, said she took comfort in President Bush's speeches asking people not to discriminate against Arab Americans.

"Bush is telling everybody to be calm and not accuse people and so forth. Nothing like that was being said in our time. . . . I hope times have changed."

Others aren't so sure.

Narasaki said a taxicab driver in Washington yesterday peppered her with questions about the internment caps, asking how long people were held and whether anyone interned was killed.

"I asked him, 'What is your interest in this?' " Narasaki said, describing the driver as a Palestinian American who has lived in this country for more than 30 years. "And he said: 'I'm afraid. I think that we might be next.' "

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.