robert manning

The article “California to apologize for internment of Japanese Americans” by Cuneyt Dil in last Monday’s The Mining Journaldoes warrant a response though perhaps not rising to a rebuttal.

The United States not only recognized years ago the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans was wrong and compensated families an average of $20,000, most compensation was considerably less and wholly inadequate.

To be sure, there were Japanese cells in California working against U.S. interests, just as there were Nazi cells in the Midwest, New York, and California and they were arrested, too. Mr. Les Ouchida is correct that he and many of his brethren were only arrested because “we had the wrong last names and wrong faces.”

However, the Japanese were worse in 1942 in China and particularly in the Nederland Oost Indie (the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia). In the Dutch East Indies, Europeans, especially Dutch nationals, Canadians, Australians, and Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps which were primitive and torture of those speaking out was common.

My parents were Dutch nationals and my father working as a civil engineer for the Dutch government in Bandjarmasin and Kendangen, Borneo was arrested and shipped to Japan as slave labor in building tanks in a Mitsubishi plant.

My mother, having a difficult pregnancy, and my 18 month older sister, returned to our home in Soerabaja, Java where there was a better Dutch government hospital.

Most of us know the significance of Pearl Harbor Day, 1941 Dec. 7, many Japanese do not. By early 1942 Japanese forces worked their way south from the Philippines into Korea, Singapore, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, etc. and rounded up Europeans, Australians, Canadians, and Americans.

We were imprisoned in Adek and Soerabaja and while I cannot recall the early days of imprisonment, I do remember hearing the screaming and crying of those being tortured. I remember vividly the last few months of imprisonment.

While the terms of surrender were signed in USS Missouri in September 1945, the release of prisoners on Java did not happen until late 1946. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, a nation beaten down by the Nazis, did provide me (and others I presume) with $130 and an apology for the Netherlands being unable to protect their protectorate in the South Pacific.

My parents and younger brother did not survive to receive the apology, my older sister died of malnutrition in the camps. My father fought the war for the remainder of his short life and a few friends tell me I’m still waging a war.

I wonder why California is apologizing for something over which they had little control, as I was bewildered about the Rotarian who apologized to the Japanese Sister City delegation for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I appreciate Mr. Les Ouchida’s understanding and not holding any animus towards the U.S. or California, nor do I hold any animus towards today’s Japanese, however I still won’t drive a Japanese automobile.

By the by, as much as I believe in the importance of the Sister City Program with foreign nations, especially Finland, or Holland if that should ever occur, I’d end the Sister City relationship with Japan until an apology and reparations are paid to those wrongly imprisoned from 1942 through 1946.

Editor’s note: Robert Manning is a resident of the city of Marquette.