Internment Camps

The Supreme Court on Tuesday took up its first challenge to President Bush's powers in executing the war on terrorism as it weighed whether the more than 600 foreigners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a right to plead their cases before a judge. A majority of the justices sounded skeptical of the administration's claim that the president -- and the president alone -- had control over the fate of the captives. The prison at the U.S.

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists seized four jetliners and caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, President Bush has declared that the United States is at war -- and in wartime, presidents assume emergency powers they would not claim in times of peace. Bush and his aides said they had a right to imprison suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, without court hearings. They asserted a prerogative to keep more secrets than before from Congress, the media and the public.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Constitution gives all people held under U.S. control a right to their day in court, rejecting President Bush's claim that the war on terrorism gives him, as commander in chief, the unchecked power to imprison "enemy combatants." "We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote.

San Francisco Shortly after the second act of the musical revue "The Camp Dance" began, a cast member announced, "We are proud to present to you today the Songbird of Manzanar, Mary Kageyama Nomura." From the wing, Mary Nomura swept onstage in a silky gray-and-white ensemble with a colorful samurai painted on the front. The more than 400 Japanese Americans who filled the folding chairs and lined the walls of the gymnasium at the Buddhist Church of San Francisco seemed taken aback.

More than six decades ago, this tranquil island in Puget Sound became roiled in conflict after hundreds of Japanese American residents were forced off the island into World War II internment camps. Neighbors argued, sometimes violently, over the rightness of targeting an entire population based on race.

U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima expressed skepticism Saturday that the Bush administration's war on terror can succeed without trampling the civil rights of citizens. "The war on terrorism threatens to destroy the very values of a democratic society governed by the rule of law," Tashima told a conference at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. A detainee at an internment camp near Parker, Ariz.

WASHINGTON -- Asian American members of Congress are denouncing a House Republican who said in a recent radio interview that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was appropriate. The comments by Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.), chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees homeland security legislation, came in response to a caller's suggestion that Arabs in the United States be imprisoned as an anti-terrorist measure.

Rep. Howard Coble, attempting to clarify remarks he made last week, said Monday that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was wrong and should not be repeated. "I regret that many Japanese and Arab Americans found my choice of words offensive because that was certainly not my intent," said Coble, a Republican from North Carolina. A colleague, Rep. Michael M. Honda (D-San Jose), said that Coble "still missed the point."

A Japanese American congressman Saturday called on Republican leaders to condemn comments made by a North Carolina congressman backing World War II internment camps. Speaking in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles, Rep. Michael M. Honda (D-San Jose) compared the statements made by Rep. Howard Coble with those made by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who was forced to resign in December as Senate majority leader after praising a 1948 presidential campaign that promoted racial segregation.

"Big Head" began with the letters. In 1942, 20-year-old Masamori Kojima meticulously typed a series of missives from behind barbed wire, describing his experience in an Arkansas internment camp. Like 120,000 other Japanese Americans, Kojima was incarcerated during World War II. Five decades later, his great-niece, performance artist Denise Uyehara, discovered carbon copies of those letters. "We always knew Masamori as the black sheep of the family," Uyehara says.