9066 to 9/11: America's Concentration Camps Then...And Now?
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A production of the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center and the Japanese American National Museum.
Director: Akira Boch
Producers: Karen L. Ishizuka and Robert A. Nakamura

9066 to 9/11: America's Concentration Camps Then...And Now? is a 20 minute documentary film that directly addresses the surprising similarities between the Japanese American concentration camps of 1942 and the current treatment of many individuals of Arab descent due to 9/11. Also contained on the DVD is a supplement documentary, Something Strong Within, featuring home movies, made by those forced to live in the concentration camps. The film is primarily visual, because though there is music playing throughout, no words are spoken. However, the visual aspect of the home movies speak volumes. Though these people lost so much, they tried, despite overwhelming obstacles, to build a life for themselves within the walls of the concentration camps.

After nearly every human rights disaster in recent days, practically the entire world stands up and declares, "Never again." However, these good intentions rarely register actual results at being able to prevent other disasters in their tracks, having learned from previous experiences. In a couple of years, we will inevitably be faced with another critical issue concerning the civil and human rights of a people, a condition which may eventually develop into genocide, and find a reason to look away because of one reason or another.

As Americans, we like to think we help alleviate the suffering of others. We like to think that we, as a society, simply do not have the capacity to commit such offenses. We respond in horror to all things concerning the Holocaust and we like to think we are helping the people of the Darfur region in the Sudan reach an agreement among its leaders. However, this film presses the question: Have we ever committed similar acts of unwarranted violence? Could we? With the occurrence of the Japanese concentration camps during the second World War and our recent and ongoing response to those of Middle Eastern descent after September 11, the unfortunate answer is yes. (Though it isn't featured in this film, one may also venture to say that a sustained lack of civil rights for the minority populations of this country could also be included in such a category.)

The American response to the Japanese American community after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Arab American community after the attacks of 9/11 had much in common. Both communities were targeted as being suspicious by other Americans (and by the U.S. government itself), some even experiencing vicious attacks, for simply belonging to the same race, religion, or ethnicity as the attackers themselves. As a result of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, all Japanese Americans were sent to ten concentration camps throughout the southwestern U.S. in 1942, where they were detained for approximately three years (900 days). Likewise, between September 11, 2001 and July 2004, three to five thousand Muslim men and men of Arab descent living in the U.S. have been detained by the Department of Justice, and most were deported, simply due to the basic religious or racial similarity they share with the attackers. In both of the situations described above, not a single one of the individuals detained were charged with any terrorism-related crimes.

Jerry Lang, a Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles had this to say about our the response of the United States in such times of crisis, "So as the judiciary goes forward and deals with cases post-9/11, what lessons are they supposed to have learned? The only thing [they seem to have learned] is, 'Well, we should make sure people aren't lying to us.' They don't get the deeper lessons about how, in times of national security, racism can warp our fundamental calculations of what is in our interest and what collateral damage we are willing to accept on our civil liberties."

It is so interesting that while we, as a nation, were rising in righteous anger at Hitler's concentration camps, that right here in the United States, we had our own concentration camps. While the U.S. may not have mistreated Japanese Americans in the concentration camps to the same appalling levels that Hitler did, the very fact of their existence is enough for history to judge the U.S. as being inconceivably hypocritical and only concerned with our own self-interests.

So why must the United States as a country, protect the civil liberties of ALL people, even those minorities who may currently be unpopular? According the Constitution of the United States, all people are protected under the basic principle of equality under the rule of law. It was one of the foundational principles of this nation. Anything less is not only unconstitutional, it is anti-American.