Friday, February 17, 2006                                                                                  Printable Version (PDF)

 

Washington, DC - Congresswoman Doris O. Matsui (CA-5) issued the following statement to commemorate the “Time of Remembrance” and welcome the Department of Interior’s well-timed decision to designate the Tule Lake Internment Camp as a National Historic Landmark.    Click here to view Congresswoman Matsui's floor statement regarding Internment Camps 

“With this Time of Remembrance, we mark the 64th anniversary of one of the greatest suspensions of liberty in our nation’s history, when tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and communities.  Sadly, this was an avoidable consequence of racial prejudice and wartime hysteria.  I hope every American will take this day to reaffirm their commitment to our Constitution and the rights and protections it guarantees for all of us.

 

“As we mark this tragic anniversary, I applaud the Interior Department’s decision to designate the Tule Lake Internment Camp as a National Historic Landmark. We must preserve these camps as the physical – tangible – representation of our government’s failure to protect the Constitutional right of every American and but also as a symbol of our nation’s ability to acknowledge our mistakes.  Additionally, this designation will ensure that future generations will be able to visit the Tule Lake internment camp to gain a better understanding of the previous generation’s experience in being in an internment camp.”

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the exclusion of 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Legal resident aliens from the west coast of the United States as well as the internment of United States citizens and legal permanent residents of Japanese ancestry in internment camps during World War II.  This date continues to be recognized each year as the “Time of Remembrance.”

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