The Mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, David A. Bowers, a Democrat, stepped into the mire of Republican refugee fear-mongering yesterday, and was quickly dispatched by a sharp rebuke for George Takei.
Among his many sins, Bowers, apparently unacquainted with American history, compared Syrian refugees to Japanese-Americans interred during the Second World War. Takei, of course, was one of those interred, and his response is well worth reading.
First, the offending letter:
Earlier today, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, Mr. David A. Bowers, in the attached letter, joined several state governors in ordering that Syrian refugees not receive any government assistance, or be relocated to their jurisdiction. Apart from the lack of legal authority to do so (under the Refugee Act of 1980, only the President has authority to accept or deny refugees), his resort to fear-based tactics, and his galling lack of compassion for people fleeing these same terrorists, Mayor Bowers made the following startling statement:
“I’m reminded that Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”
Mayor Bowers, there are a few key points of history you seem to have missed:
1) The internment (not a “sequester”) was not of Japanese “foreign nationals,” but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. I was one of them, and my family and I spent 4 years in prison camps because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America.
2) There never was any proven incident of espionage or sabotage from the suspected “enemies” then, just as there has been no act of terrorism from any of the 1,854 Syrian refugees the U.S. already has accepted. We were judged based on who we looked like, and that is about as un-American as it gets.
3) If you are attempting to compare the actual threat of harm from the 120,000 of us who were interned then to the Syrian situation now, the simple answer is this: There was no threat. We loved America. We were decent, honest, hard-working folks. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, over nothing.
Mayor Bowers, one of the reasons I am telling our story on Broadway eight times a week in Allegiance is because of people like you. You who hold a position of authority and power, but you demonstrably have failed to learn the most basic of American civics or history lessons. So Mayor Bowers, I am officially inviting you to come see our show, as my personal guest. Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding.
— George Takei
George Takei has nailed it. There is no comparison between the “Syrian situation” and the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. Furthermore, to diminish the horror of that episode by referring to it as a “sequester” is unconscionable. Americans surrendered to xenophobia and racism and put tens of thousands of their fellow citizens in concentration camps, for there is no other way to characterize them.
Mayor Bowers ought to be ashamed, and he ought to apologize and then resign. He does not represent Democrats, the Democratic Party, or America itself with his shameful and disgusting actions.
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