Internment Camps

The U.S. House passed a nonbinding resolution urging Japan to apologize for coercing thousands of women into working as sex slaves for its World War II military. Officials in Tokyo say their country's leaders have apologized repeatedly, but the resolution's supporters say Japan has never fully assumed responsibility. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe caused anger in March when he said there was no evidence that the women had been coerced. Lawmakers want an apology similar to the one the U.S.

I feel compelled to respond to Bill Watters' letter of April 7 regarding Japanese internment during World War II. First, he seemed to have missed his history lessons as many of these internees were U.S. citizens. Second, if their "spartan" camps provided "medical and social" needs, it is because the internees had to build them from scratch. Third, upon their return they were not compensated. Most lost their homes (forced to sell before being forced to leave), their businesses, property and farms.

This week in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the rounding up of Japanese Americans to protect the country "against espionage and against sabotage." Ten War Relocation Camps were built; ultimately, more than 100,000 people were interned in them. One of the camps was at Manzanar, and when Ansel Adams arrived with his cameras, he saw "a little city, well-governed and alive" in the shadow of Mt. Williamson.

CODY, Wyo. - The drive east of Cody is through high desert, and the February weekend of my visit was bitterly cold. But I was wearing a heavy down coat, snow pants and boots, and riding in a cozy, warm SUV. That's not how nearly 14,000 earlier visitors had arrived in Cody. They came by train from California in late August, and they weren't wearing down or fleece, nor did they have a comfy hotel room awaiting them. They were among the 100,000 Japanese Americans relocated from the West Coast to the interior of the U.S. at the beginning of World War II, shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

When John Cox first visited the internment camp where about 10,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated during World War II, he was shocked--not by what he saw, but by what he didn't see. "There was nothing," the 16-year-old Northridge Boy Scout said of his trip last year. "There was just these two guard shacks and a few walls still standing. There's really nothing but a memorial plaque to tell you what really happened here."

Toyo Miyatake was an accomplished Los Angeles photographer in the 1930s and '40s. The immigrant, who had come to the United States at age 14, was among the more than 110,000 Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II . In 1942 when he and his family were forced to move to the military-style Manzanar relocation camp near Lone Pine, Calif., Miyatake used his skills to tell the story of day-to-day life for these displaced families...

I feel compelled to respond to Bill Watters' letter of April 7 regarding Japanese internment during World War II. First, he seemed to have missed his history lessons as many of these internees were U.S. citizens. Second, if their "spartan" camps provided "medical and social" needs, it is because the internees had to build them from scratch. Third, upon their return they were not compensated. Most lost their homes (forced to sell before being forced to leave), their businesses, property and farms.

President Clinton announced a plan Thursday to preserve sites of camps where the U.S. government interned 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Americans, he said, must "never forget this sad chapter in our history." "We are diminished when any American is targeted unfairly because of his or her heritage," Clinton said in a letter read at the dedication of a memorial in Washington to those interned and to the 33,000 Japanese Americans who fought for the United States in the war.

The treatment of Japanese and Japanese American women in World War II internment camps will be the emphasis of a lecture titled "America's Concentration Camps" to be given Tuesday evening. The presentation will made by Diane Fujino, a professor of Asian women's studies at UC Santa Barbara. Using photographs and posters, Fujino will provide a historical overview of the internment of 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S.

To this day when Phil Shigekuni passes by a garage sale he is overcome by a sense of sadness. Innocent as they may seem, such sales trigger memories for Shigekuni of a period in his childhood when his parents and many of their friends held lawn sales at which they sold nearly everything they owned because they were about to be shipped off to internment camps.

George Aratani, a Los Angeles businessman who donated millions of dollars to Japanese American causes, and with his wife endowed the nation's first academic chair to study the World War II internment of people of Japanese descent and their efforts to gain redress, has died. He was 95. An entrepreneur who founded the Mikasa china and Kenwood electronics firms, Aratani died Tuesday at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center of complications of pneumonia, his daughter Linda Aratani said. He had lived at the Keiro nursing facility in Lincoln Heights since last summer.

Frank Tanabe's health is deteriorating fast, but his desire to vote is not. The 93-year-old Japanese American lies on his deathbed in his daughter's Honolulu home, in hospice care since early September after doctors discovered his liver cancer had spread to his bones. He doesn't eat much, barely drinks water and no longer talks, his daughter, Barbara Tanabe, told the Los Angeles Times. But just because he can't speak doesn't mean Tanabe's voice won't be heard. In what will probably be his last dutiful act for his country, Tanabe voted absentee last week with his family's help.

The story of the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II hasn't always gotten widespread attention in the United States. But with construction beginning on the new Topaz Museum and Education Center in Utah, another step is being taken to keep the memory alive. In a groundbreaking ceremony on Sunday that featured Taiko drumming and a book signing by former Japanese internment camp resident turned Disney animator Willie Ito, the museum began work on a location some 16 miles away from the original Topaz camp.

Toyo Miyatake was an accomplished Los Angeles photographer in the 1930s and '40s. The immigrant, who had come to the United States at age 14, was among the more than 110,000 Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II . In 1942 when he and his family were forced to move to the military-style Manzanar relocation camp near Lone Pine, Calif., Miyatake used his skills to tell the story of day-to-day life for these displaced families...

Yutaka Shimizu, who became a quiet institution among high school basketball coaches in Los Angeles during a career that began in 1959 and lasted the rest of his life, has died. He was 84. Shimizu, who had a lung ailment, died Sunday at a Lakewood hospital, said Derrick Taylor, the Bellflower St. John Bosco coach with whom Shimizu continued to work. He was the head coach at Hamilton High from 1959 to 1981, coaching future UCLA All-America Sidney Wicks and leading the team to a City Section runner-up finish in 1965.

Stephen Merchant: An article about Stephen Merchant in the Jan. 16 Calendar said that his TV and radio shows took off in the mid-1990s. It was actually the mid-'00s. Jon Huntsman: An article in the Jan. 15 Image section about the way presidential candidates dress misspelled Jon Huntsman's first name as John. Council election: An article in the Jan. 15 California section about the Los Angeles City Council runoff between Joe Buscaino and state Assemblyman Warren Furutani said that after the Pearl Harbor attack, Furutani's grandparents were among Japanese Americans sent to interment camps.

REGARDING "A French Village's Unexpected Heroes" [Her World, Sept. 4], Susan Spano wanders off track as a travel writer to a political critic when she refers to President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 as "infamous." The attack on Pearl Harbor was infamous. It is so easy to be an armchair historian by hindsight. Roosevelt passed this law mandating internment camps after being counseled by many members of Congress and his Cabinet. There was a definite clear and present danger due to mass hysteria of American citizens on our entire West Coast.

When Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan set out to make vampires frightening again with their novel "The Strain," the writing partners had their work cut out for them. The scariest thing about the sexy, brooding bad boys that seemed to be everywhere in pop culture was just how much of their initial bite they'd lost. Under the right circumstances, you could even take one home to meet Mom. Del Toro and Hogan had a noble aim, and they certainly put their hearts into the endeavor. In "The Strain," the calculating monster known only as the Master embarks on the first phase of his plan to subjugate humanity, stowing away on a plane bound for JFK and infecting the passengers with a virus that turns them into mindless, hairless, crimson-eyed minions who feast on blood through fleshy stingers in their throats.

When they first came to this corner of Wyoming 69 years ago, shops and restaurants in the tiny town of Cody hung banners warning "No Japs Allowed. " A local newspaper announced their arrival with the headline, "TEN THOUSAND JAPS TO BE INTERNED HERE. " But this weekend, as hundreds of Japanese Americans interned during World War II at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center returned, many for the first time, new signs greeted them: "Welcome all Japanese Americans. Congratulations. " Photos: Heart Mountain reunion They returned to see the land, now fields of lima beans and alfalfa, and to see the opening of a long-awaited museum at the site that will preserve their stories.