March 18, 2007
Letter to LA Times
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your opinion piece on the Japanese Latino issue, it is truly wonderful to see a major newspaper take up this issue. Anyone who has sat with Japanese Latinos and heard their stories, seen their tears, as I did supporting them at the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights last year, can only feel the greatest of sympathy for their cause.
But I am sure that even the Japanese Latinos would agree that the true "Forgotten Internees" are the 11,000 or so German-Americans, 3,000 or so Italian Americans and 6,000 of so German and Italian Latin Americans who were put into camps by the US government during WWII. Many of the German-Americans interned were arrested even before the US was at war with Germany. Many remained interned on Ellis Island, within sight of the rear-end of the Statue of Liberty, until an act of congress freed them from internment, three years after the war ended.
You mention these internees in passing, and I am sure they are thankful for that fact, but shouldn't the opinion piece really have been entitled, "German-Americans, Italian-Americans and -Latinos, the Forgotten Internees?"
Would not that title have been more accurate?
Sincerely,
Dr. Kearn Schemm
Pres. German World Alliance/Deutsche Weltalliance
www.germanworldalliance.org