Bob Fuchigami spent three years of his boyhood detained at a Japanese-American internment camp in Colorado. Now 86, the U.S. Navy veteran says he fears what might happen if president-elect Donald Trump listens to one of his advisers and creates a registry for immigrants primarily from Muslim countries.
“If something happens like 9/11, what are they going to do? Take all the Muslims and put them into camps like we were put into concentration camps?” said Fuchigami, who recalls the infamous ABC system used to track Japanese-Americans during the World War II era. “When you start to make lists, itap sort of like the first step toward doing things like that.”
Fuchigami is one of several survivors of the U.S. policy of Japanese-American internment who have criticized what they see as worrisome rhetoric coming from the Trump transition team and some of his supporters.
Much of the concern stems from Trump’s own call to to the U.S., as well the of Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and a Trump adviser.
Kobach wants to used after the Sept. 11 attacks to track immigrants and visitors from select — and primarily Muslim-majority — countries. He recently was photographed alongside Trump with a list of that included plans for “extreme vetting” of “high-risk aliens” that included questions “regarding support for Sharia law, jihad, equality of men and women, the United States Constitution.”
Aides to Trump recently of a registry based on religion, though Trump was for that kind of system during his presidential run.
Itap that kind of uncertainty that worries Gil Asakawa, a board member of the of the Japanese American Citizens’ League.
“I don’t think Japanese Americans, as a community, are freaking out and becoming hysterical,” said Asakawa, whose in-laws were interned in California and Arkansas during World War II. “But certainly itap happened to us. We raised the red flag and warned about it right after 9/11 and I think itap worth being vigilant.”
A trend to watch, he added, was the growing visibility of white nationalists or the alt-right movement, and the potential repercussions of their divisive rhetoric. “They really have been given permission to be out of that particular closet,” Asakawa said.
A white nationalist group calling itself the National Policy Institute met recently in downtown Washington — leading to cheers in celebrating Trump’s victory.
Trump also made waves when he picked Steve Bannon as a strategist. Bannon had served as an executive at Breitbart News, which Bannon said was a , among other views — though Trump dismissed the criticism.
“I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time,” Trump said in with The New York Times. “If I thought he was a racist, or alt-right, or any of the things that we can, you know, the terms we can use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him.”
In recent months, two national research groups said they have seen an uptick in hate-motivated crime.
An by the Pew Research Center found that in 2015 there were 91 reported aggravated or simple assaults “motivated by anti-Muslim bias.” Thatap two shy of the 93 assaults recorded in 2001; the most in the last 16 years.
And the Southern Poverty Law Center noted there was a in “incidents of hateful harassment” after the Nov. 8 election.
The new national mood has been jarring to Jo Ann Ota Fujioka, a Colorado delegate for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders who spent three months in an Arizona internment camp when she was a toddler.
She said she was taken aback when a Trump surrogate suggested in a recent Fox News interview that Japanese-American internment for a modern-day Muslim registry system; though he clarified he didn’t mean the U.S. should set up camps again.
“I just could not even believe (it) when I heard that,” she said.
Her plan was to continue advocating against that kind of rhetoric. “If there’s injustice, especially if it happens to you, speak up. You can’t let one thing go by,” she said. “If you don’t protest it and you don’t question it, then it is.”
Colorado has some experience in . During World War II, Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr — to the detriment of his own political career — the policy of Japanese-American internment.
The Constitution begins with “‘We the people of the United States,’” the Republican governor once said. “It doesn’t say, ‘We the people, who are descendants of the English or the Scandinavians or the French.’ ”
Some of the state’s current legislators have tried recently to address the divisive tenor of the national discourse.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet referenced Carr when talking about the need to oppose anything resembling a Muslim registry.
“Governor Carr spoke out against racial intolerance and stood up for our constitutional principles during a particularly challenging time for our country,” he said. “We should honor his legacy today and must never single out individuals based on their race or religion.”
His Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, took a similar tact.
This year he gave tribute to a woman held at a Japanese-American internment camp in Colorado, and he criticized some of the more recent episodes of hate speech. “There is no role for racism or discrimination in America, and any rhetoric or action that reflects racism is abhorrent and at odds with our values as a nation,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, an Aurora Republican who ran on a platform that included a pledge to to Trump or to Hillary Clinton, did not respond to requests for comment.
