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If America is to learn the lessons of its past, its citizens must learn to come together to defend civil rights for all, speakers concluded during the Japanese American Citizens League's Day of Remembrance.
Members of the Japanese American Citizens League gathered at the Salt Lake City Library on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the 1942 executive order that authorized the interment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Their Day of Remembrance is an annual event, but this year, the Japanese American Citizens League decided to mark the anniversary with a special dialog between the Japanese American and Muslim communities.
One of those internment camps, called Topaz, was located in central Utah outside Delta. Rick Okabe, a member of the Topaz Museum Board, said the museum is set for a grand opening this summer.
That museum, he said, was originally intended to preserve historical artifacts in the hope that Japanese Americans would never again be subject to such oppression. But recent events, he said, convinced him that there was a broader need — a need to safeguard the rights of all people.
Okabe said President Donald Trump's Jan. 27 executive order restricting the travel of refugees and visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries alarmed the Japanese American community and "demonstrated a disturbing pattern" that reminded them of the conditions that led up to the Japanese internment.
But speakers invited to sit on Saturday's four-person panel, which was moderated by Salt Lake Tribune Editor Jennifer Napier-Pearce, said that despite the similarities, they saw key differences that made them feel optimistic that Americans might not allow their nation to repeat the past.
"More and more people are starting to talk about it," said Mike Honda, a former U.S. representative of California's 17th Congressional district who was incarcerated as an infant in the Amache internment camp in Colorado.
"More members in Congress are willing to say no, and I think there are more people in the country that understand the issue better…we have the majority of people saying no," he said.
Honda said there were other groups who were targeted for discrimination during World War II. Germans, he said, were forced from their homes and made to pledge allegiance to the United States in the middle of the night, and some legal residents and even citizens of German descent were deported. Italians, similarly, faced discrimination.
But the Japanese bore the brunt of the oppression, he said, because the were the most isolated community, and because they had no one willing to speak for them.
"Could this happen again? Yeah, if we're asleep," he said. "But think this great revolution is waking a lot of people up."
Abdullah Bin Hamid Ali, who teaches courses in Islamic Law at Zaytuna College in California, said he too was optimistic because Muslims appear to be receiving more support than did the Japanese.
"In a twisted way," he said, "Trump being president is likely a good thing, because it's bringing so many people together against what they see are clear violations of moral sensibilities and the constitution, among other things."
With the Japanese interment, Ali said. "people said, 'they're not really one of us, so who cares.'"
But Honda warned that it was essential for all Americans to understand that the Japanese interment did not happen overnight, and that social conditions and legal precedent laid the groundwork for the 1942 executive order. Many of those laws, he said, remain on the books and could provide the precedent for oppression in the future.
"As citizens, we need to be armed with information in order to argue with our own government," he said. "We take a pledge to the constitution of the United States. That requires us to make sure that we make the government accountable."
"We need to not fall for the idea that this is something that just started with Trump," Ali agreed. "We ourselves have been responsible for allowing our Constitution to be ripped to shreds."
Ali also spoke of the anxiety he said many Muslims feel — although he added that as an African-American Muslim, he did not personally feel that anxiety himself.
"When we think of the sort of fear and anxiety that Muslims are experiencing right now, I don't believe anyone can really relate to it, including myself," he said. "Muslim has a different, particular connotation. In the western world today, Muslim means someone who is an outsider, someone from the Middle East or Asia. An Arab."
Leah Farrell, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, reviewed legal precedent related to the Japanese internment that could lead to similar action against Muslims.
"Even though there is so much on our side to argue against this old precedent, we still have to be vigilant," she said. "We have come into a situation that is eerily similar."
The fourth panelist, Dr. Salman Masud, an anesthesiologist at Shriners Hospital for Children and the current president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake, plead with Americans to support their Muslim neighbors on economic grounds. He spoke of the historic contributions of Muslims to American society, recounting the story of Peter Salem, a Muslim who came to America as a slave and who ultimately served in the Revolutionary Army.
But the biggest contribution of Muslims in America is the medical field, he said. Thousands of young Muslims study medicine, he said, and they are more likely than other doctors to take jobs in rural or underserved areas.
As the discussion drew to a close, Honda said that if there is to be a registry for Muslims, he planned to sign up.
"I saw what happened to the Japanese population when no one said no," he said. "I think there is an urgency to stand up and become one with our Muslim brothers and sisters."
Twitter: @EmaPen