Mary Murakami’s memories of her teenage years are stark, defined by the harrowing experience of being forcibly relocated and imprisoned during World War II. Recent immigration enforcement actions have reignited these memories for her and many others.
Historic Echoes: Immigration Enforcement and Past Injustices
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The establishment of an ICE detention center at Fort Bliss in Texas has sparked criticism due to its historical significance. Fort Bliss was one of the sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. For survivors like Mary Murakami, these immigration policies bring back unsettling reminders of the past.
MARY MURAKAMI: There’s so many parallels. It’s unbelievable.
SUMMERS: Born in 1927, Mary Murakami spent three years in the Topaz internment camp in Utah. At 14, the attack on Pearl Harbor changed her life, casting a shadow over San Francisco’s Japanese town as military forces took control.
MURAKAMI: And when all of us kids looked out the window, we saw the U.S. Army from one curb to the other curb, and they were all pointing their guns towards us.
SUMMERS: Following the attack, the U.S. declared war on Japan. In February 1942, Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorized the forced relocation of those considered threats to national security.
MURAKAMI: We were no longer citizens of this country. It called our parents aliens, which was true to the United States, but they called all of us who was born in the United States non-aliens. And when you’re a non-alien, you realize that all your civil rights are gone. And that’s the point that we felt that our country didn’t want us anymore.
MURAKAMI: We got the personal notice to be taken to camp I guess in April because they took us in May. We packed up, and we walked to where they told us that the meeting place was. And that’s where they gave us these official government – it looked like a luggage tag with your family number on it, and you put it around your neck if you didn’t have a pin to pin it on your lapel. And that’s when we officially lost our name, I guess. I was 22416E.
MURAKAMI: We were loaded onto a school bus. And you don’t know what’s going to happen to you. I mean, you had rumors that you were going to get killed. So everybody was very quiet on the bus.
MURAKAMI: By October, we were in the permanent camps. They put us on these trains and took us to Topaz, Utah. It was terrible. There was barbed wires around the whole camp, and there were tall lookout posts and armed guards guarding us. And Topaz was not ready completely. The structures weren’t completely done. And the only thing in the rooms were Army cots and a pot-belly stove.
MURAKAMI: Well, you could see why it’s an upsetting time because the same thing is happening to the immigrants now. I never thought these thoughts would so vividly come back with another group of people in the United States. They’re being taken without being able to communicate. And you went to these camps that were not made for humans to live in, and your education is stopped. You don’t know how long you’re going to be there. It’s amazing that you see your life all over again.
SUMMERS: Mary Murakami, now 98, is among the many Japanese Americans who faced forced incarceration during World War II.
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