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Volume 5 Number 1 JAPANESE AMERICANS REDRESS BILL
Leading legislators in the House and Senate are seeking redress for the internment of Japanese Americans during World liar II through enactment of the Civil Liberties Act of 1985 (H.R.442/S.1053). The bill would implement the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians which found that the exclusion and detention of Japanese Americans during World War II was based on racial prejudice, war hysteria and tile lack of political leadership - not military necessity. Specifically, H.R. 442 provides that:
there be a formal apology by Congress and the President recognizing the grave injustices committed by the Federal Government against Japanese Americans.
Congress establish an educational and humanitarian trust fund to educate the American people about the dangers of racial intolerance.
individual compensation of $20,000 be paid to each surviving internee, in recognition of individual losses and damages.
The bill is supported by the Japanese American Citizens League, and other civil rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Anti-Defamation League. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is also strongly supportive of the bill. Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., Counsel to the LCCR, in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations, April 28, 1986, eloquently stated the basis for the Conference's support of the bill.
Nothing can ever adequately compensate the Japanese-Americans for the wrongs done them, not even H.R. L142, not even the proposed t20,000 payment, not even a larger figure. The dislocation of their lives, the branding as dangerous to their country, the cruel insult of captivity - all this is beyond monetary recompense. But what this bill can do is make it possible for this nation once again to hold its ',lead high in remorse and thus in decency. We can demonstrate that a great nation can recognize and give recompense for the severest blow it ever afflicted upon the civil liberties of its people and thus give new vitality to its commitment to civil freedom. Future generations of Americans will recall this action, not-, only as good for the national soul, but as a stabilizing force if similar panic once again should confront our nation.
  
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