Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6434, the Japanese American WWII History Network Act to direct the Secretary of the Interior to establish, within the National Park Service, the Japanese…
Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6434, the Japanese American WWII History Network Act to direct the Secretary of the Interior to establish, within the National Park Service, the Japanese American World War II History Network.
We must never forget the maltreatment that these Americans endured.
The establishment of this network would educate generations to come on past racial injustices in our country, in an effort to avoid future prejudice.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, marked the United States' official entrance into World War II.
Two months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered 120,000 people of Japanese descent to be forcibly removed from their homes and placed in internment camps, based on the widespread suspicion that they were acting as foreign agents.
The belief was baseless, but that didn't stop the War Relocation Authority from rounding up more than 120,000 people--two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens.
Japanese Americans were interned and essentially treated as prisoners.
After decades of pressure from the Japanese American League (JACL) and the Japanese American community, President Jimmy Carter opened an investigation to determine if the imprisonment of these people was justified by the government.
The investigation found virtually no evidence of Japanese disloyalty and concluded that the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans was a product of abject racism.
In 1988, over 40 years after the internment camps closed, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered a formal apology for the government's policy toward Japanese Americans and paid $20,000 in compensation to each of the 80,000 living survivors.
The reparations granted to the survivors and the official apology were necessary for our country to move past this grave racial injustice.
It must be noted that, just as our government recognized that reparations to the Japanese American community was necessary to acknowledge and move beyond that injustice, America's original racist tragedy must be similarly addressed.
On July 30, 2008 the U.S. House of Representatives passed H. Res. 194 apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.
The Senate has never passed a resolution, and no reparations have been granted.
Millions of Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States from 1619 through 1865.
Slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude known in history, as Africans were captured and sold at auction like inanimate objects or animals.
Africans forced into slavery were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage.
In 2022, he passage of H.R. 40 is essential to solving the deep racial, economic, social, and cultural divides in America.
Now more than ever, the facts and circumstances facing our nation demonstrate the importance of H.R. 40 and the necessity of placing our nation on the path to reparative justice.
By passing H.R. 40, Congress can start a movement toward the national reckoning that we need in order to bridge racial divides.
Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation and the hope that someday, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future.
We owe it to the millions of Americans who were born into bondage, knew a life of servitude, and died anonymous deaths, as prisoners of this system.
We owe it to the millions of descendants of these slaves, for they are the heirs to a society of inequities and indignities that naturally filled the vacuum after slavery was formally abolished 154 years ago.
Madam Speaker, the establishment of the Japanese American WWII History Network would represent much more than just a resource that will educate on inequality and brutality in America.
It represents Americans moving past injustices and honoring those who were once victims of racial discrimination in our country.
I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 6434, the Japanese American WII History Network.
