Fifty-six years after Alicia Nishimoto and Carmen Mochizuki were forced from their homes in Peru and deported to American internment camps, an apology may finally be nearing from their kidnapper: the U.S. government.
Federal lawyers have indicated they are considering settling a lawsuit brought by those involved in a little-known chapter of American history, when an estimated 2,200 people of Japanese descent from 13 Latin American countries were taken from their homes and shipped to the United States during World War II.
"Even after so many years I can't believe what happened to us is real," Nishimoto said during a news conference Thursday at the Los Angeles office of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The way I see it, the U.S. government committed a crime."
Nishimoto, 64, of Gardena, made her remarks on the 56th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066, which allowed the military evacuation of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to 10 internment camps in seven states. At the same time, the U.S. government was rounding up Japanese Latin Americans, the bulk of whom were shipped from Peru to an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas.
After years of lobbying by Japanese Americans, the U.S. government formally apologized in 1988 for the imprisonment of the American residents and offered payments, under a measure known as the Civil Liberties Act, to those still living. Under the bill, the government has paid more than 81,000 Japanese Americans $20,000 each as part of the effort to make amends for their relocation, which historians today condemn as both unnecessary and a blatant violation of civil rights.
But when the Japanese Latin Americans applied for redress under the reparations law, most were told they were ineligible because they were not legal U.S. residents when they were deported to the United States.
Two years ago, Mochizuki and other former internees filed a federal lawsuit seeking redress, a case that government lawyers have been trying to get dismissed. Last week, however, the government attorneys requested a two-week postponement of a court decision in order to consider a settlement.
"My wish is that they won't wait too long," said Mochizuki, 65, of Montebello. "It seems that every day somebody dies and at the same time the sunset is approaching on the law that authorizes reparations."
