{"id":16290,"date":"2017-02-17T21:29:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-18T04:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16290"},"modified":"2017-02-17T21:29:01","modified_gmt":"2017-02-18T04:29:01","slug":"former-internee-sees-echoes-of-heart-mountain-in-travel-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/02\/former-internee-sees-echoes-of-heart-mountain-in-travel-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Former internee sees echoes of Heart Mountain in travel ban"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Cody\"<\/a>

Ruffin Prevost\/Yellowstone Gate<\/p>

Former Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta speaks during the August 2011 grand opening and dedication of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center near Cody, Wyo.<\/p><\/div>\n

CODY, WYO. \u2014 On Sunday<\/span><\/span>, Sam Mihara will lead a discussion in Washington, D.C., about how a presidential order wreaked havoc for him and thousands of other people, making travel impossible, splitting up families, upending lives and sowing chaos amidst the careful plans and long-held dreams of a select group of people.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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But it won\u2019t be President Trump\u2019s Jan. 27 executive order that suspended travel from seven Muslim-majority countries that Mihara will focus on. He and others who were confined at the Heart Mountain internment center during World War II will discuss Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942.<\/p>\n

That order resulted in the imprisonment of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent living along the West Coast, most of whom were American citizens, including Mihara. He lived with his family in a one-room shack from age 9 \u00a0to 12 at a camp located between Cody and Powell, where\u00a0a museum now commemorates that era<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an awful stain on the history of this country,\u201d Mihara said in a telephone interview before Sunday\u2019s<\/span><\/span> program at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The event is cosponsored by the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family suffered some very difficult times,\u201d said Mihara, 84, a retired Boeing Co. rocket scientist now living in Huntington Beach, Calif.<\/p>\n

Mihara speaks frequently at public events<\/a>\u00a0about his experience at Heart Mountain because \u201cit\u2019s important for us to do whatever we can to make sure it never happens again to anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\u00a01944 U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld Roosevelt\u2019s internment order<\/a>, which never referenced a specific race or ethnicity, although only those of Japanese ancestry were imprisoned in such large numbers. A wide range of constitutional scholars, including the late\u00a0Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia<\/a>, have condemned the 1944 decision, which has never been formally overturned.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>President Ronald Reagan signed the\u00a0Civil Liberties Act of 1988<\/a>, which provided an apology and modest restitution payments to internees.<\/p>\n

Mihara said Roosevelt\u2019s order was flawed because it \u201clacked any kind of proof that we were likely to become spies or conduct sabotage,\u201d something he sees paralleled in Trump\u2019s travel ban.<\/p>\n

The Trump order was blocked by a federal judge, and later a three-person appeals court. The administration has defended the travel ban, saying it was based partly on terrorism risk criteria developed by the Obama administration. But the Justice Department announced Thursday<\/span><\/span> that it will not further defend the travel ban in court, and Trump will instead release a new order tailored to comply with recent court rulings.<\/p>\n

Mihara said he would oppose any such executive order if it primarily applies to a specific race or religion, or fails to provide hard evidence detailing specific threats.<\/p>\n

Shirley Ann Higuchi, a Washington, D.C., attorney and chairwoman of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, said it might be logistically difficult to secure the borders without treading on civil rights, but it\u2019s not impossible.<\/p>\n

George W. Bush managed to strike a reasonable balance in the days following 9\/11, Higuchi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bush administration took appropriate measures to safeguard us with a security system that screens everyone without discriminating against Muslims or Arabs or people that simply may \u2018appear suspicious\u2019\u201d without probable cause, said Higuchi, whose\u00a0mother and father first met when both were 11-year-old internees at Heart Mountain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Higuchi pointed out that Norman Mineta was also 11 while an internee at Heart Mountain, which housed more than 14,000 Japanese-Americans during its three years of operation.<\/p>\n

Mineta served as transportation secretary under President George W. Bush, and recalled a cabinet meeting shortly after 9\/11 for\u00a0a 2006 interview with the San Jose Mercury News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know what happened to Norm Mineta in the 1940s, and we\u2019re not going to let that happen again,\u201d Mineta recalled Bush saying during that meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the president said that day had a tremendous impact on me. It gave me a great feeling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If you go<\/b><\/h5>\n

The\u00a0Heart Mountain Interpretive Center<\/a>\u00a0at 1539 Road 19 between Cody and Powell\u00a0 has a permanent display covering Executive Order 9066. The center is open Wednesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.<\/span><\/span> Call 307-754-8000<\/a> or visit\u00a0<\/i>heartmountain.org<\/i><\/a>\u00a0for more information.<\/i><\/p>\n

Contact Ruffin Prevost at 307-213-9818 or ruffin@yellowstonegate.com. Reprinted with permission from YellowstoneGate.com<\/a>, an\u00a0independent, online news service about Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and their gateway communities.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CODY, WYO. \u2014 On Sunday, Sam Mihara will lead a discussion in Washington, D.C., about how a presidential order wreaked havoc for him and thousands of other people, making travel impossible, splitting up families, upending lives and sowing chaos amidst the careful plans and long-held dreams of a select group of people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":16291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5099,5542,5544,5543],"class_list":["post-16290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-franklin-roosevelt","tag-heart-mountain","tag-norman-mineta","tag-sam-mihara","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}