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Japanese-Latin Americans still seek justice

In this photo provided by the Museum of Japanese Migration to Peru, Japanese migrants stand by aid packages to be sent to Japanese soldiers, in Lima, Peru, in Dec. 1941. PHOTO: AP

Augusto Kague was only 12 when the US government reached far south to his Peruvian farming town and tore his family apart.

It was January 1942 — a month after Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, killing 2,400 and drawing the US into World War II. The roundup of 110,000 Japanese-Americans had begun.

But internment efforts went far beyond US borders — a little-known fact to this day.

Kague’s father, a Japanese immigrant in Peru, was whisked away by security agents, one of 2,264 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry arrested in Latin America and shipped off to US camps. They were interned under the guise of securing Western Hemisphere interests, including the Panama Canal. About 800 were used in prisoner swaps with Japan, turned over to a country that some — as Latin American-born descendants of Japanese immigrants — had never seen.

Now, 20 years after Japanese-Americans won redress for their imprisonment, a small community of Peruvians continues to seek justice with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and a grassroots activist effort based in Northern California.

The group thought it had a breakthrough when a US House Judiciary subcommittee set a July 31 hearing on a bill that would mandate an investigation into the internment of Japanese-Latin Americans and propose remedies.

But the hearing was canceled, and a spokesman for Democratic US Representative Xavier Becerra, the bill’s sponsor, said it’s unclear when it would be rescheduled.

The hearing would have been just one step in a decades-long battle. The US government didn’t include Japanese-Latin Americans when agreeing in 1988 to apologize and pay US$20,000 to interned Japanese-Americans.

The government offered US$5,000 and an apology 10 years ago as part of a settlement agreement for a lawsuit filed on behalf of Japanese-Latin Americans.

While some took the settlement, Kague was one of hundreds who refused it as unfair. His youngest brother, who was born in a Texas internment camp, got US$20,000 as a US citizen.

Three more lawsuits were filed and thrown out, according to the Campaign for Justice, a San Francisco Bay Area coalition seeking redress. The campaign in 2003 also filed a redress petition with the human rights arm of the Organization of American States that is still pending.

Brazil, Panama, Bolivia and other Latin American countries deported people of Japanese ancestry and allowed the US to strip them of their citizenship.
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