“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”
When the government told my great-grandmother to leave her home and the life her family had built on American soil, it changed everything. Having been born and raised in the United States, her life here was all she knew. Yes, she was of Japanese heritage, but she was also an American citizen, and the United States was and had always been her country, her home. So why was she the enemy? Why was she taken from her home and placed in an internment camp because of her race? And 80 years later, why are Japanese Americans being compared to insurrectionists who stormed the capital on Jan. 6?
In response to the Jan. 6 riot at the nation’s capital in 2021, president-elect Donald Trump criticized the imprisonment of defendants charged with assault, trespassing and destruction. “Nobody’s ever been treated like this. Nobody’s ever – maybe the Japanese during the Second World War, frankly. But you know, they were held too,” Trump said on “The Dan Bongino Show” on Oct. 15, 2024.
It disturbs me to watch the leaders of our country diminish Asian American history, miseducating us about such an impactful event that took place less than a century ago. Alongside this, I have barely seen any evidence of the internment camps in my history books or being taught in any school setting. This part of history has seemingly been erased. And I think part of the reason is because it is easier to talk about the mistakes of others instead of acknowledging our own. We like to tell heroic tales of our fight for democracy and freedom, yet conveniently leave out the unfavorable moments where oppression came from our own hands.
As much as we like to believe that we are moving forward as a country and that our mistakes are a thing of the past, this is far from the case. And understanding that the incarceration camps were not merely a “mistake” or a “misunderstanding” and rather the most prominent event in Asian American history is the first step to recognizing the racism that has always been prevalent in our country, and that it is still alive today.
I am grateful to have grown up in a community where I have never been discriminated against or called an enemy, simply because of my ethnicity. I do, however, live in a time where the story of my relatives is being tread over and rewritten to ignore the faults of our country’s past.
Trump stated that he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 if re-elected. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is the same act that was used to incarcerate 120,000 Japanese Americans in 1942. It is more clear than ever before that history is on the verge of repeating itself. Our choice now is whether we repeat the cycle of discrimination that has divided humans throughout history, or do we pave a new path towards living in harmony despite our differences?
