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Is There Room For One More?

A

Harvey Gotliffe

fter World War II, when I
was 10 years old and living
in an apartment building on
Boston Boulevard off of Dexter in
Detroit, I noticed that a man who
worked in a grocery store nearby
had numbers tattooed on his fore-
arm. I asked my mother what the
numbers meant, and she replied
that he was a “DP” — a displaced
person — who the Nazis had
branded because he was Jewish.
He had survived the Holocaust in
Europe and had managed to seek a
new life in a more welcoming land.
By 1951, about 900 Japanese
Americans had also found refuge in
Detroit, after being released from
10 isolated internment camps in
the western United States. After
the bombing of Pearl Harbor by
Imperial Japanese forces, they were
interned in these camps when
Franklin Roosevelt signed the ille-
gal Executive Order 9066 on Feb.
19, 1942. The American govern-
ment ordered the removal of more
than 110,000 Japanese Americans
from their homes out West, and
nearly two-thirds were American
citizens.
The two groups, European Jews
and Japanese-Americans, were
never found guilty of any crime;
they just happened to be living in
the wrong place at the wrong time.
Moreover, they were at the mercy
of edicts signed by their countries’
leaders, Roosevelt in the United

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States and Hitler in Germany.
Our current leader is enamored
with issuing executive orders,
fiats as it were, to restrict people
he deems to be dangerous to our
country from entering our land. As
with European Jews during World
War II, today, those abroad whose
lives have been wracked asunder by
forces within their lands they can’t
control want to taste the freedom
we are privileged to savor — and
sometimes take for granted.
We must be vigilant and wary
when any group is lumped together
and described as the dangerous
“them.” It is also our obligation to
speak up against ideas that can be
harmful to our community, and
that’s a powerful reason to have
a Holocaust Memorial Center in
Farmington Hills and others in
Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.
Very few voices were heard when
the Jewish people were first sent to
forced labor camps in 1939, then on
to concentration camps beginning
in 1941 and, finally, on to killing
camps, primarily located in Poland.
Those who wanted to come
to the United States had to face
the restrictions imposed by the
Immigration Act of 1924, aimed at
deterring a mass influx of “others,”
including Eastern European Jews.
After Roosevelt signed Executive
Order 9066, Japanese Americans
were forced from their homes and
then placed in Assembly Centers,

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which in several instances were
no more than stables at a race-
track. Finally, they were sent to 10
“Relocation Centers,” where they
lived in hastily built barracks in iso-
lated areas of western states.
As with the Jews, there were
few outsiders who objected to
the detrimental action taken.
The Immigration Act of 1924 also
included the Asian Exclusion Act,
aimed at limiting the number of
Japanese and Chinese immigrants
entering the United States.
There are many parallels
between these two once-unwanted
groups, including the way that fam-
ily life was interrupted. The Jews
lost family members forever in the
Holocaust, and traditional Japanese
family life was dismantled in the
camps, as there was no coherent
structure anymore.
I introduced a class at San
Jose State University on how the
American media covered both
the Holocaust and the Japanese
American internment, after rec-
ognizing the similarities between
what both Holocaust survivors and
Japanese-Americans endured.
I brought in speakers to class
from both groups and had students
visit the homes of survivors and
internees to learn more about their
ordeals firsthand.
In 2005, 2008 and 2011, we
brought together 25 members
of each group to participate in a

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“Gathering of Friends” at either San
Jose’s Japanese-American Museum
(JAMsj) or at the Chai House,
where the Silicon Valley Holocaust
Survivors Association (SVHSA)
held their monthly meetings. These
“Bagel and Sushi” brunches allowed
people to sit together and learn
from one another about how much
they had in common.
They were there to share and
not compare, and many Japanese
Americans stated strongly that you
couldn’t compare two similar but
disparate historical events.
Today, they both stress the
importance of family, of working
together and of education for their
children. Members of both groups
go out to schools and community
organizations to tell their stories
and educate the young of the dan-
gers of exclusion based on ethnicity.
Survivors and former internees
are sources of inspiration and a
manifestation of what is the best
in the human spirit each time they
boldly and emotionally tell their
personal tales.
They fervently hope the rest of
us are not only willing to listen, but
are also willing to speak up and
act when others are threatened by
unjust actions. •

Former Detroiter Harvey Gotliffe lives in
Santa Cruz, Calif. He is Emeritus Professor of
Journalism at San Jose State University and
author of The Oy Way.

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February 23 • 2017

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