Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2008, page 59

Human Rights

AAPG Hears of Japanese Ordeal

	AAPG speakers (l-r) Hussam Ayloush, Robin McLaren, Samir Twair and Kathy Masaoka (Staff photo P. Twair).

THE ARAB American Press Guild hosted a June 26 program focusing on the experience of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in concentration camps during World War II.

AAPG President Samir Twair said the idea for the program came after he joined the Los Angeles Council on American Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) April trip to Manzanar, the site of the camp that imprisoned 10,000 American Japanese citizens in the California desert.

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the CAIR/LA, said that in preparation for the April trip, Japanese-American leaders spoke at five Southern California mosques about the wartime incarceration of American citizens.

After Sept. 11, 2001, said Kathy Masaoka, co-chair of Nikkei Civil Rights and Redress, she feared the government might round up and imprison Muslim and Arab Americans just as Japanese Americans were after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

“It was a matter of war hysteria, race prejudice and a failure of our leadership,” stated Masaoka, a third-generation American. The government immediately arrested Japanese-American leaders, she explained, which left the community unable to cope with charges of disloyalty.

“When we saw the parallels and possibility that Muslims and Arab Americans  could be locked up in a post-9/11 America, we forged ties with them and began to learn about Islam,” Masaoka said.

Robin McLaren said she became involved when she attended a 2006 rally for Lt. Ehren Watada, the only officer in the U.S. Army who refuses to serve in Iraq on the grounds it is an illegal war. Watada was an Eagle Scout when he grew up in Hawaii. During officers training school, he was told to read about Iraq.

His research led him to conclude that the Bush administration lied about its reason for invading Iraq, and that he could not serve there and uphold the Constitution. The Army has refused his request to serve in Afghanistan, and Watada is now awaiting a court martial trial.

McLaren said the PATRIOT Act is fencing in Arab Americans. Ayloush urged all Muslims and Arab Americans to take part in the 40th Manzanar pilgrimage on April 26, 2009.

—Pat McDonnell Twair