Internment camps in 7 states housed 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry

October 22, 1999
Web posted at: 1:03 p.m. EDT (1703 GMT)

In this story: 'Leave out the haiku' 'Proud American of Japanese ancestry' Interned as girl, she's not bitter RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Construction begins in Washington Friday on a national memorial honoring Japanese-Americans who fought for the United States in World War II and those who were sent to prison camps because of their ancestry.

VIDEO The executive director of the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation was interviewed on CNN before the groundbreaking. Windows Media 28K 80K

But, even as groundbreaking for the year-long project gets under way, officials are debating whether to allow the monument to bear two controversial inscriptions -- a Japanese-American creed and a short poem.

J. Carter Brown, chairman of the U.S. Fine Arts Commission, suggested the poetry -- in the Japanese form called a haiku -- might be omitted. But he avoided giving an opinion on the text of the inscriptions.

"On the basis that 'fewer is better,' we would in any case leave out the haiku, which just on visual grounds is not really in a place that is viable from the point of view of other inscriptions," Brown said Thursday in formulating a resolution. "It's linear on a curved surface. It has a lot of strikes against it."

The Japanese-American memorial, seen here in an architect's model, will be situated north of the Capitol on a triangular piece of land

Previously, some arts commission members complained that the memorial's board of directors had proposed too many inscriptions for the monument. The commission considered nine on Thursday.

Charles Atherton, secretary of the commission, said the chief objection voiced at this meeting was that the planned haiku would be hard for most visitors to understand. It reads:

"O, America

"Imperfect, stumbling, striving

"Lessons from the past"

The other disputed inscription is a "Japanese-American Creed" written in 1940 by Mike M. Masaoka, former Washington representative of the Japanese-American Citizens League, more than a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"I am proud that I am an American of Japanese ancestry," it says. "I believe in her institutions, ideals and traditions. I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future."

Brown said the commission could accept that inscription, again from the visual point of view. However, Atherton said commission members objected, noting there was no Polish-American creed or German-American creed so a Japanese-American creed also was unnecessary.

Cherry Tsutsumida, the executive director of the memorial, said its board of directors would review both inscriptions on Saturday.

Organizers of the memorial chose the texts from a long list. Many refer to the internment of 120,000 people of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor. Presidents since the war have apologized for the measure and Congress has authorized compensation.

One quotation on the list, but not chosen by the board for inclusion on the memorial, is from Ralph L. Carr. In World War II he was governor of Colorado, the site of one camp where Japanese-Americans were confined.

"If a man may be deprived of his liberty," Carr said, "simply because men now living in the country where his grandfather was born have become enemies of the United States, then we are disregarding the very principles for which the war is being waged."

Two months after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered all people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States to move, or be moved, inland.

Tsutsumida was 8 years old when she was separated from her father and imprisoned in an Arizona camp

U.S. officials worried that people of Japanese ancestry living in the states would ally themselves with the enemy.

The California-born Tsutsumida was 8 years old when her family was forced to split up -- her father sent to internment camps in New Mexico and North Dakota, while she and the rest of the family lived at a camp in Arizona.

They were not reunited until after the war in 1945.

But the experience, bewildering to a child, did not leave Tsutsumida a bitter adult.

"The joy of knowing we live in a democracy that can admit it's wrong and move forward is something that makes a little bit of joy come to our hearts," she told CNN.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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