Yesterday I had the chance to go with my friend Phil Kleweno to the extraordinary Japanese American National Museum, suggested to me by my friend Graciela Kaplan. Among the most powerful things in the museum is the story of how over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were interned in concentration camps by our government during World War Two. The rhetoric about these “dangerous immigrants” that led to this crime in the 1940’s was chillingly familiar to anyone who listens to Lou Dobbs or most of the Republican presidential candidates today.
The most moving story to me was of Ralph Lazo.
In 1942 at age 17, while attending Belmont High School in Los Angeles, Lazo learned that his teenage Japanese American friends and their families had received orders to relocate to government “War Relocation Centers.” Lazo was incensed and insisted that he, too, be sent to the camps, even though he was not Japanese but Latino. There he continued his education alongside his Japanese American friends at Manzanar High School. When asked “Why did you go to camp? You didn’t have to go.” Lazo replied “None of us should have had to go.”
Ironically, in 1944, after his graduation at Manzanar, Lazo left the camp only because he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He went on to serve in the Philippines and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for heroism in combat. He is the subject of the docudrama, Stand Up for Justice.
Ralph Lazo makes me proud to be an American. The yahoos, past and present, who attack immigrants shame me.