Date: 2008-07-29
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of the bill. Twenty years ago I was privileged to be the only Member of Congress selected to serve on the commission that was referred to just a moment ago. and I served as the vice chairman of that commission. I accepted appointment to that commission because. as someone who grew up in Southern California. born shortly after World War II. I was one of those many Californians who. frankly. grew up knowing very little. if anything. about the treatment of Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans during World War H. And yet I was from an area in which we had a mature Japanese American community on Terminal Island prior to World War II. When I grew up. Terminal Island was actually part of the Navy complex in the San Pedro Bay. the Long Beach part of San Pedro Bay. There was nothing left of the Japanese community on Terminal Island at the time I was born and at the time I was growing up. And while there were many Japanese Americans in our community. there was not much discussion of what took place during World War II. On a number of occasions. there was an attempt to bring up a Commission. and finally. we garnered enough votes to support the commission with the idea that it was important for us. not only to acknowledge what went on during World War II and have a historic examination of what occurred there. but as importantly. if not most importantly. it was a concern of mine and other members of the Commission that we have a continuing remembrance of that experience. not to sort of wallow in the mistakes that were made in the past and to point our finger back at a previous generation. but rather to try and extract lessons from that experience so that it would provide us an understanding of how we made mistakes there. and provide us an opportunity to learn from that. such that we would not make similar mistakes in the future. fl 1545 It was an interesting time to be on that Commission to hear the accounts of so many who had gone through that experience and to learn that history can be a strange and often an experience that brings you surprises. For instance. a great civil libertarian in his future years. Earl Warren. as Attorney General and Governor of the State of California. was probably the strongest advocate for the executive order. In his later years. he accepted responsibility for that mistake. Among the top counsels of government of the Roosevelt administration. there was one individual who stood out from the others. who opposed the executive order and believed it was unnecessary and. frankly. overreaching. That person was. interestingly enough. J. Edgar Hoover. J. Edgar Hoover said. "We dont need to bring all of these Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans away from the coastline. We dont need to have any camps to hold these people in and their families." He said. "We think we have sufficient intelligence for those who may be reasonable suspects and we can just concentrate on that." And that was rejected by the national leadership on a bipartisan basis except for one place. Hawaii. The executive order was not carried out in Hawaii because the military leader in Hawaii. when he received the order. responded back to Washington that it would basically cripple the workforce in Hawaii. And so in Hawaii we had the only place where they followed the suggestion of J. Edgar Hoover not to round up everybody because of their ethnicity. And the only reason I bring this up is that it is so easy for us to look forward and say we will never repeat anything like that and only this group would do that. and that group wouldnt do that. and that leadership wouldnt do that. but this leadership would. And you will find when you go back in history. under the pressure and stress of a threat. sometimes we do things that we ought not to do. So I appreciate the kindness of the gentlelady from California. In fact. it was her husband. among others. who convinced me they ought to actually sit on that Commission. And I think that it is extremely important for us to not only remember what happened 20 years ago but more importantly what happened some 60 years ago and to take lessons out of that that will help us ensure that we dont repeat those mistakes in the future no matter what our political philosophy. no matter what our political identification. I think this is a very worthy bill that we have here today. I thank the gentleman for his time.