Urges Congress to Approve Proposal to Preserve Japanese-American Internment Sites

American Jewish Committee
Monday, 7 February 2000

The American Jewish Committee today urged Congress to approve the Clinton Administration's proposal to purchase and preserve former sites of Japanese American internment during World War II.

The Administration's plan, included in its Fiscal Year 2001 budget proposal, calls for $4.8 million to preserve selected former internment sites by placing them under federal ownership and to commission a study to determine whether these sites should be included in the National Park Service system.

"The Administration's proposal is a fitting memorial to the injustices and indignities so many of our fellow Americans suffered a half-century ago," said David A. Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee.

"The preservation of the internment sites will create a permanent object lesson of a tragic story of intolerance and betrayal – a betrayal of those who were sent to the camps and a betrayal of the American soul, which is defined by its unique commitment to human rights."

In 1983, the Japanese American Citizens League identified the American Jewish Committee as "the first national organization to support our effort to rectify the injustices of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans."

That effort led to the law, passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan in 1988, that formally granted an apology and monetary redress to Japanese Americans who were incarcerated.

Since then, AJC has supported initiatives that teach how during the war years more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, were uprooted from their homes, unjustly confined and deprived by their own government of basic civil rights and human dignities.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org