By William Mackis.
I have lived a long time, and I have witnessed much, both good and bad. When one is young, one is naturally optimistic, because one can envision how easy it would be to change bad things in the world. When one is older, one is naturally more pessimistic, because one sees that very few want to do the easy things that would make the world better. Worse, many people want to do that which they clearly know is wrong in order to achieve personal gain.
At the time that I am writing this, America is going through a presidential election where some politicians are arguing that Americans must bar all Muslims from entering the country and that the United States should build some sort of database to track all Muslims living in America (while also arguing, ironically, against having any sort of database that would track firearms, because such a database would infringe upon Americans' "constitutional rights"). Government surveillance of all mosques has also been proposed.
This article is not about politics. This article is about people, like the late Rev. Kanjitsu IIjima, a Buddhist. Rev. IIjima was born in Japan in 1914, and came to the United States in 1939, where he settled in Seattle, working as both a clergyman and music teacher. Then, one day a few years after his arrival in America, he was rounded up and taken to nearby Puyallup, Washington. From there, he was transported to the Minidoka Relocation Center in a remote area of Idaho, where he was imprisoned. The Minidoka Relocation Center operated from August 10, 1942, to October 28, 1945. The crime that led to the internment of Rev. IIjima? He was Japanese.
Minidoka was regarded as one of the best camps to go to, with a relatively benevolent administration. It was, nevertheless, a prison camp. In one of his writings, Rev. IIjima recounts the sad story of a youth at the camp who committed suicide. The youth left behind a simple note:
When I am reborn, I want to be a Caucasian.
Old as I purport to be, I was not alive during the time that Rev. IIjima and other American citizens were held in internment camps, so I am unable to state from observation how America went down such a path. My guess is that an August 1941 letter from Representative John Dingell of Michigan (Democrat) to President Roosevelt had some impact. In that letter, Rep. Dingell suggested that America incarcerate ten thousand Hawaiian Japanese Americans as hostages in order to ensure "good behavior" on the part of Japan. At the time, many people no doubt viewed Rep. Dingell's suggestion as a practical method of putting America first.
In November 1941 the FBI arrested fifteen Japanese Americans in Los Angeles and seized a large cache of records, including the membership list for the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and the Central Japanese Association. The fifteen persons cooperated with the FBI, and a spokesman for the latter group advised anyone who would listen that, "We teach the fundamental principles of America and the high ideals of American democracy. We want to live here in peace and harmony. Our people are 100% loyal to America."
On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI and local law enforcement began arresting more Japanese Americans. There were no formal charges against the arrestees. Family members were not allowed to see them. Most of the arrestees would spend the war years in camps run by the Department of Justice.
Some readers might wish to interrupt me here to say that, however sad it is as an episode in American history, the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II was related to national politics, not religion, and so is fundamentally different than the issue modern Americans face when dealing with Islamic extremism. I would point those readers to Japan's Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism, by Walter Skya, a book which Duke University Press tells us demonstrates that:
. . . whatever other motives the Japanese had for waging war in Asia and the Pacific, for many the war was the fulfillment of a religious mandate.
Was there, among Japanese Americans in the early 1940s, a small minority of radical Shintoists looking to harm America and its citizens? Of course there was. Was America's solution - internment of its own citizens - a correct solution to that problem? Of course not.
Is there, among Muslim Americans today, a small minority of radical Islamists? Yes, there is. Is mosque surveillance and database tracking a correct solution to that problem? No, it is not. You do not protect a country by destroying the very thing it stands for. As Rev. IIjima writes:
"Nothing is more fearful than Man's ignorance." This is a Buddhist's watchword.
I would argue that one need not be Buddhist to agree with the wisdom of such an assertion. If fear and hate and ignorance were capable of solving the world's problems, we would all be living in an earthly Paradise by now. Since they are not, let us not have recourse to them when making decisions that require rational thought. Let us, instead, use existing laws that are applied evenly and fairly to all, regardless of race, religion, or any other division. And, as individuals, whatever our religious persuasion, let us align our aspirations and actions in these troubled times with those of Saint Francis of Assisi, who asks that,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
In the America of the 1940s, Japanese Americans were not the problem. In the America of today, Muslim Americans are not the problem. Hatred is the problem, and can be solved.
Written on the 31st of July, 2016.
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