Don’t tell me it can’t happen.
In December 1941 Japanese fighter pilots bombed unsuspecting U.S. sailors in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In the shadow of a war and slightly more than two months later, on Feb. 19, 1942, the president of the United States issued Executive Order 9066 which allowed the detention, arrest and relocation to internment camps of American citizens.
The majority of people sent to internment camps throughout this country were Japanese-Americans.
In “Chula Vista Centennial: A Century of People and Progress,” historian and author Steven Schoenherr writes:
“Leaders of the Vegetable Growers Association on K Street, teachers at the Japanese school on Palomar Street and the fathers of most of the Japanese families were taken to the federal prison at Terminal Island in San Pedro… Most of the seventy-seven Japanese families living in Chula Vista were sent to the Santa Anita racetrack.” Eventually they were relocated to Arizona.
Prisoners were not exclusively of Japanese descent. Italian and German immigrants were also caught up in the sweeps designed to keep America safe. Once taken from their neighborhoods, any homes, businesses or possessions they could not carry with them were lost. At the same time, dehumanizing anti-Japanese and anti-immigrant propaganda became a part of this country’s cultural and political landscape.
In September 2001, terrorists flew jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York. The subsequent Patriot Act, introduced slightly more than one month after the attacks and updated periodically since then, broadened the government’s capability of surveillance and detention of immigrants and citizens without charge or trial.
Under the banner of the war on terror the civil liberties of innocent people in this country have been infringed upon as government attempts to keep people safe from real and imaginary threats, domestically and abroad.
During his campaign Donald Trump used divisive rhetoric that fanned the flames of anti-immigrant sentiment and bigotry. He manipulated people’s social fears and anxieties to suit his purpose of winning the election.
Whether or not he believes what he said is difficult to determine given his propensity for hyperbole, lying and intellect-free showboating. But, as with most people, one must take him at his word until he proves otherwise.
In the meantime there are those in power around and influencing him who would like to see a clamp-down on immigrant and religious populations, regardless of citizenship and legal status. It is not beyond reality that under the banner of the war on terror (or the war on illegal immigration or the war on police protestors?) a Trump administration rips apart communities and denies people their civil rights.
Don’t tell me it can’t happen. It has before.
