Internment Quotes

• No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.

  Fred Korematsu

  Race, Ethnicity, Religion

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• There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Curves, Long, Racism

  Gretel Ehrlich (2017). “Heart Mountain: A Novel”, p.38, Open Road Media

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• I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps and that part of my life is something that I wanted to share with more people.

  George Takei

  People, Wire, Boyhood

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I was six months old at the time that I was taken, with my mother and father, from Sacramento, California, and placed in internment camps in the United States.

  Bob Matsui

  Mother, Father, Taken

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• You know, I grew up in two American internment camps, and at that time I was very young.

  George Takei

  Two, Grew Up, Young

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.

  Ruth Asawa

  Adversity, Who I Am, Today

  "The Irrationality of Love and Art" by George Heymont, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 16, 2011.

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• One thing that does seem to me to be fairly consistent is that presidents who restrict civil liberties, even in wartime, are usually judged harshly for it. So most people agree that one of the worst stains on the reputation of FDR, who is widely considered a great president, is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Likewise, Lincoln is judged harshly for the suspension of habeas corpus.

  David Greenberg

  War, People, President

  "Making Presidential History". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.slate.com. August 9, 2007.

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• February 19, 1942, is the year in which Executive Order 9066 was signed, and this was the order that called for the exclusion and internment of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast during World War II.

  Xavier Becerra

  War, Order, Years

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• I think the important thing to remember about the Japanese internment is the situation. We had been attacked. Maybe Roosevelt expected it - I rather think he did. I don't think he expected an attack on Pearl Harbor. I think he expected an attack on Southeast Asia. But we were attacked at Pearl Harbor

  William A. Rusher

  Thinking, Important, Pearls

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

  Barack Obama

  Country, War, Mean

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• There is also the issue of personal privacy when it comes the executive power. Throughout our nation's history, whether it was habeas corpus during the Civil War, Alien and Sedition Acts in World War I, or Japanese internment camps in World War II, presidents have gone too far.

  Dick Durbin

  War, Issues, President

  U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Judge Samuel Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court, www.washingtonpost.com. January 9, 2006.

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• The Constitution contains no 'dignity' Clause, and even if it did, the government would be incapable of bestowing dignity. ... Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits.

  Clarence Thomas

  Government, Humanity, Gay Marriage

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• Our Navy was very largely sunk. And we were at war in no time at all. I share, in retrospect, the distress we all share at the internment of the Japanese American citizens of the United States. It was not our finest hour. But the Supreme Court had it before it at the time, and justified it and upheld it.

  William A. Rusher

  War, Navy, United States

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I have no idea why she quieted down on the subject. Maybe she was told to. I can imagine that it wasn't a very popular position in the Administration, with her own husband having ordered by executive order the internment. Maybe she was just told: "Look, we're in a war now. Turn off your social conscience."

  William A. Rusher

  Husband, War, Order

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• We entered a synagogue which was packed with the greatest stinking bunch of humanity I have ever seen. Either these Displaced Persons never had any sense of decency or else they lost it all during their period of internment by the Germans. My personal opinion is that no people could have sunk to the level of degradation these have reached in the short space of four years.

  George S. Patton

  Army, Space, Personal Opinions

  "After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Post War Germany". Book by Michael Brenner, 1997.

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• I have two passions in my life. One is to raise the awareness of the internment of Japanese-American citizens. My other passion is the theater.

  George Takei

  Passion, Two, Citizens

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• If liberals had been in charge of the Arizona memorial, it would probably have featured an exhaustive exhibit about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and little about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

  Mona Charen

  War, Memorial, World

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• Activist Supreme Courts are not new. The Dred Scott decision in 1856, imposing slavery in free territories; the Plessy decision in 1896, imposing segregation on a private railroad company; the Korematsu decision in 1944, upholding Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens, mostly Japanese Americans; and the Roe decision in 1973, imposing abortion on the entire nation; are examples of the consequences of activist Courts and justices.

  Mark Levin

  Justice, Decision, Abortion

  "Men in Black". Interview with Kathryn Lopez, www.nationalreview.com. February 1, 2005.

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• In today's life, the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. The right to live and triumph is now conquered almost by the same means by which you conquer internment in an asylum: the inability to think, amorality and hiperexcitation.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Stupid, Mean, Thinking

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.173, 1982.

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• Canada has some very, very dark histories, from internments to turning away the St. Louis and the Komagata Maru, but none is darker than our abject failure to respect rights, the spirit and intent of the original treaties with First Nations, Métis Nation, and Inuit peoples. We have to transform that relationship.

  Justin Trudeau

  Dark, Spirit

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• You can't be citing Japanese internment camps for anything the president elect is going to do!

  Megyn Kelly

  President, Citing, Camps

  "And Now We’re Talking About Internment Camps?" by Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn, www.motherjones.com. November 17, 2016.

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• And Eleanor's husband was the man who did the interning. And I think they - Governor Warren, who was later to become such an impassioned Chief Justice on all sorts of human rights issues, was very big in the internment process. And I think that we simply sometimes tend not to understand or remember how people felt.

  William A. Rusher

  Husband, Thinking, Men

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I did a film called 'Fort McCoy,' based on a true story of one of the few internment camps during WWII that was actually in the United States.

  Eric Stoltz

  Stories, United States, Film

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• If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.

  Michele Bachmann

  Data, Census Bureau, Organization

  "Bachmann Warns Of Link Between Census, Japanese Internment". Fox News Interview, talkingpointsmemo.com. June 25, 2009.

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• Nothing that had ever happened to him, not the shooting of Oyster, or the piteous muttering expiration of John Wesley Shannenhouse, or the death of his father, or internment of his mother and grandfather, not even the drowning of his beloved brother, had ever broken his heart quite as terribly as the realization, when he was halfway to the rimed zinc hatch of the German station, that he was hauling a corpse behind him

  Michael Chabon

  Mother, Brother, Father

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