Local historians of the American Japanese warn against the use by Trump of 1798 the law of Guarde – San Diego Union -Tribune

Kay Ochi’s parents were 21 and 22 years old when they were forced to leave San Diego, where they were born, and taken to an incarceration camp in the Poston desert, Arizona, simply because of their Japanese heritage.

“It was three years of pure hell,” said Ochi, an American of Japanese origin of the third generation, or Sanseei, who is president of the Japona American Historical Society of San Diego.

The story of how the United States has incarcerated more than 120,000 people of Japanese origin – including most American citizens like Ochi’s parents – during the Second World War are well documented in museums and archives. It is a memory that still shapes the identity of the generations of Japanese Americans today and is a largely recognized example of the way a group of civil rights has been ignored and raped.

But now, militants and civilian rights believe that they are attending a flashback to history while President Donald Trump invoked the same 227 -year -old American law that was used to justify the imprisonment of the Japanese American community in wartime.

“With the way the administration has progressed with decrees, many things seem to be able to reproduce,” said Susan Hasegawa, a local historian in American Japanese history and professor at San Diego City College.

The Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies, promulgated in 1798, when the United States was on the verge of war with France, allows the president to hold or expel the “foreigners” which he considers “dangerous for peace and security” in the country.

The American presidents only invoked the law three times before – during the War of 1812, the First World War and the Second World War, when it was used to incarcerate people of Japanese, German and Italian origin.

Trump invoked the act to justify the detention, expulsion and revocation of visas for an increasing number of immigrants, largely of the Venezuelans that his administration sent, without accusation, to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Last week, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue to expel people under the law, while affirming that the administration had to give people the opportunity to legally fight their deportations. The court did not weigh on the constitutionality of the law.

Defenders of civil rights and others described Trump’s measures as alarming civil rights violations, including the right to regular procedure.

The danger of the extraterrestrial enemies law is that it allows such violations, “under the guise of national security,” said Michael Kurima, co -president of the board of directors of the San Diego chapter of Japona American Citizens League.

He noted that the last time the law was invoked, about two -thirds of people, it was used to imprison was the American citizens.

“If the extraterrestrial enemy law is only a first step, then the abolition of the dissent government could be the next one,” Kurima said. “What starts with alleged gang members from abroad could easily develop to include others – even American citizens – when civil freedoms are treated as conditional.”

Critics have also noted that Trump is the only president of history to invoke the act when it is not the Wartime as the Congress said. He has repeatedly referred to unauthorized immigration as an “invasion”.

“The last time he was invoked was devastating for many people who had nothing to do with the enemy,” said Hasegawa. “So, to start again with a targeted group in a non-war period, it is even more suspicious and frightening.”

On Saturday, six local artists of immigrants and refugees began an artistic installation at the Central Library of San Diego, in collaboration with the local historical society, which shows the parallels between the experiences of Japanese Americans during the Second World War and the experiences of immigrants today.

“It is simply horrible, and we must understand that this has not happened,” said Shinpei Takeda, director of the AJA project, whose artist scholarship holders created the installation, about the return of the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act. “With art, at least it gives people a chance to talk about it, and it shows that something like it has happened.”

A community of San Diego dismantled

When the extraterrestrial enemies law was invoked for the last time, in 1941, around 2,000 people of Japanese origin, known as Nikkei, lived in the county of San Diego.

First generation Japanese immigrants, or Issei, arrived in San Diego from the 1880s, many of which working in agricultural fields and on railways. During the decades preceding the Second World War, they had made significant contributions to the agricultural and fishing industries in the region, Ochi said; Many have worked as fishermen or in tuna cans in the Bay of San Diego, and many were farmers, from the Tijuana river valley to Oceanside, said Hasegawa.

Issei also directed around 30 small businesses in downtown San Diego, near Fifth Street and Island Avenue, added Hasegawa. There were Japanese language schools, as well as a Buddhist temple and two Japanese Christian churches.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States quickly moved to start its forced withdrawal from Nikkei.

In February, the FBI had arrested around three dozen local Isses which he had pre-identified as community leaders, including the Buddhist temple management of San Diego, Japanese language teachers and Japanese martial art instructors, Hasegawa said.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt promulgated the Executive Decree 9066, which mandated the withdrawal of the inhabitants of their community and sent them to incarceration camps. The Japanese were forced to abandon their homes, their jobs and their businesses.

The vast majority of those in San Diego have been sent by train to the Santa Anita racecourse in the County of Los Angeles, a place of detention for thousands of people moved in southern California. Then, they were dispatched to Poston, Arizona – one of the 10 camps created by the United States government to incarcerate people of Japanese origin.

The leaders of San Diego, on the other hand, supported and welcomed the imprisonment. The San Diego Municipal Council, the Comté supervisor council and the Chamber of Commerce have all adopted measures saying that Japanese American residents should be imprisoned or should not be authorized in San Diego.

“Intergenerational trauma”

After their release after the war, the Americans of Japanese origin had difficulty rebuilding their lives, including in San Diego.

Their withdrawal and forced incarceration had decimated Japanese institutions, including companies that used to exist in the city center, said Hasegawa. Many have been replaced or unable to rebuild, unlike big cities like Los Angeles. And many people have been under pressure or forced to assimilate by abandoning their language and their culture.

For many, the assessment of mental health and self -esteem has persisted for decades. “Some people say that resettlement was even more difficult than imprisonment,” said Ochi. “The emotional assessment was even greater and had a lasting impact and an intergenerational trauma.”

In 2022, the San Diego municipal council officially apologized and revoked the resolution that it had spent eight decades earlier to support imprisonment. “It is incredibly important that we identify the racist acts of the past and the injustices of the past and that we approach it head-on,” said the president of the time, Sean Elo-Rivera. “We can recognize the wrong that the city has committed.”

For artists whose work is now exposed to the Central Library, attacking these injustices is also essential, even if their installation examines the means of Nikkei imprisoned, found to preserve their community.

The first generation American Laotian artist Tarrah Aroonsakool, focused on how Nikkei used cooking as an act of resilience, adapting recipes to their rations in wartime. The American Mexican artist of the first generation Jazmin Barajas connected parallel between the way in which Japanese and Mexican traditions use altars and sanctuaries to honor the dead, and juxtaposed images of the walls of the Tule Lake Incarceration camp with that of the American-mexic border wall.