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.
PHOTO: AP
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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS