Mayor Bowers' suggestion that the internment of Japanese Americans based solely on their ancestry was necessary or right is truly shocking.
In 1936, the court said the president had "plenary" power in foreign affairs, and in the Korematsu case in 1944 the court upheld the internment of Japanese-American citizens based on the military's assurances that they posed a national security threat.
The story is based on real events, the forcible internment after Pearl Harbor of Japanese Canadians from the west coast of Canada into the interior of British Columbia.
Later, in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act, which apologized for the internment and admitted that those government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".
The problem with saying "internment" when we're really discussing a systematic exile based on race is much deeper than that.
Much of Vietnam's HIV prevention and control policy during the 1990s and early 2000s was based on mandatory HIV testing and the internment of drug users and sex workers and information campaigns that have linked HIV to these heavily stigmatised risk behaviours.
When we make terrible mistakes, like placing American citizens of Japanese descent into internment camps during World War II or enslaving human beings based on skin color, we try to fix the wrong even if it's years afterward.
In 2015, he garnered high praise for his star turn in Allegiance, the play based on George Takei's experience in a Japanese-American internment camp.
Spielberg's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, based on the author's years in a Japanese internment camp in China during World War II, does not have the distinction of being Christian Bale's debut film.
'The Japanese-American Internment Project: If They Came for Me Today' (Friday) Friday is the last day to see this exhibition based on the experiences of Japanese-Americans who were interned in camps in the United States during World War II.
