Alaiyo
April 19th, 2006, 12:26 PM
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060417/NEWS21/604170334/1001/
Even though only 6 years old at the time, Elsa Kudo remembers the day in January 1944 when detectives arrested her father in their home in Ica, Peru, a first step toward wartime internment in the United States.
The family had just returned from a picnic when there was a knock at the door.
"They said, 'We're sorry, but we have to take you, on orders from the United States,' " recalled Kudo, 69, who lives with her husband, Eigo, in Honolulu.
Her father, Seiichi Higashide, was one of about 2,300 Latin Americans of Japanese descent picked up in their home countries, stripped of their passports and taken to internment camps in the United States during World War II.
Now, congressional lawmakers, including Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawai'i, and Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., are launching a new effort, calling for the creation of a commission to investigate what happened and recommend remedies if any wrongs occurred.
"Japanese Latin Americans not only were subjected to gross violations of civil rights in the United States by being forced into internment camps ... but additionally, they were victims of human rights abuses merely because of their ethnic origin," Becerra said.
Even though only 6 years old at the time, Elsa Kudo remembers the day in January 1944 when detectives arrested her father in their home in Ica, Peru, a first step toward wartime internment in the United States.
The family had just returned from a picnic when there was a knock at the door.
"They said, 'We're sorry, but we have to take you, on orders from the United States,' " recalled Kudo, 69, who lives with her husband, Eigo, in Honolulu.
Her father, Seiichi Higashide, was one of about 2,300 Latin Americans of Japanese descent picked up in their home countries, stripped of their passports and taken to internment camps in the United States during World War II.
Now, congressional lawmakers, including Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawai'i, and Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., are launching a new effort, calling for the creation of a commission to investigate what happened and recommend remedies if any wrongs occurred.
"Japanese Latin Americans not only were subjected to gross violations of civil rights in the United States by being forced into internment camps ... but additionally, they were victims of human rights abuses merely because of their ethnic origin," Becerra said.