49 from Puunene win
internment redress

They may be among the last as
the compensation program winds down

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Forty-nine Japanese Americans who were relocated from a Maui plantation camp at Puunene during the hysteria of fear that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor may be among the last to receive redress payments from the U.S. government.

The award comes on the 56th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt. That infamous order, issued Feb. 19, 1942, allowed the government to evacuate, relocate and intern 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

Forced from their homes, businesses, jobs and schools on the West Coast, they were sent to desolate, uninhabited regions, taking only what they could carry.

The mainland internment camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. Armed soldiers patrolled the perimeter and were instructed to shoot anyone attempting to leave.

In Hawaii, only 3,000 Japanese Americans were relocated, probably because it was logistically difficult to transport a third of the island's population to mainland camps.

These included residents of Iwilei, Puuloa, Lualualei and Kahuku.

The Puunene case was the first $20,000 redress payment made to a neighbor island community, according to Clayton Ikei, president of the local chapter of Japanese American Citizens League.

Debbie Saito, who has nine family members including her mother, Hideko Tanji, who were discriminated against because of their race, said the redress decision "brings closure to a part of their life."

Saito said her uncle, Yutaka Soroyama, recalls not being able to find his family when he returned to Maui after working the summer of 1942 as a carpenter's apprentice on Molokai. Sorayama's family and 14 other families had been uprooted from Camp Six and relocated to a new site five miles away in homes that were built out of salvaged materials.

"My mother, who was 19 at the time, recalls having to go through check points and watching cars being searched," Saito said.

Roy Catalani, an attorney who donated his time to help the Maui residents with their applications, said: "The hardest job was to develop the evidence that confirmed their recollections."

Puunene residents reviewed old documents in archives and warehouses here and on the mainland, and talked to former neighbors and employees of the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Co.

Catalani said Puunene's Camp Six was unique since it was an integrated planation camp of Japanese, Filipino and Korean families.

"In 1942, 15 families of Japanese ancestry were the only ones removed to another plantation camp," Catalani said.

There was an airfield at Puunene, Catalani said, and none of the Filipino and Korean families were relocated.

"The Puunene field was one that the military was interested in expanding. . . . It seems clear that it wasn't Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar's decision to move them.

"All this suggests that they were removed because they were Japanese. Given the sense of the time when you have a clear concern about the Japanese community coming from military officials, it's not too difficult to see that the Puunene families were evacuated because the military was concerned about having persons of Japanese ancestry too close to an airfield."

Mainland Japanese Americans filed lawsuits to halt the mass incarcerations, but wartime courts rejected their pleas. Finally, in 1983, a federal district court in San Francisco ruled that the internments were not justified.

On Aug. 10, 1988, President Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act, which provided for an apology and redress of $20,000 each to the internees. Key roles in the passage of the act were played by U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye and the late Sen. Spark Matsunaga.

The restitution program will end on Aug. 10.

More than 2,500 claims from Hawaii have been paid.

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April 10 is deadline to submit claims

By Star-Bulletin staff

Potential claimants have until April 10 to ask the Justice Department to investigate their cases.

The 1988 law that created the restitution program will expire on Aug. 10, 1998, when the federal Office of Redress Administration will close.

More than 2,000 people of Japanese ancestry, who lost their property and were confined to internment camps are believed to be eligible.

So far, 81,000 Americans of Japanese Ancestry have each received $20,000 under the 1988 civil rights law. The ORA can be reached by calling 1-888-219-6900.

A day of rememberance will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday at Nuuanu Congregational Church to mark the 56th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, which led to the evacuation, relocation and internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.