Roanoke, Va., mayor opposes Syrian refugees, cites WWII internment of Japanese-Americans

A Virginia mayor ignited a backlash Wednesday after he cited America’s mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II as support for his call to deny Syrian refugees the opportunity to resettle in the United States.

In a letter on official city stationery, Roanoke, Virginia, Mayor David Bowers asked local governments and nonprofit groups to join the more than half of the nation’s governors who have said they do not want to accept Syrian refugees into their states, citing security concerns after last week’s Paris terrorist attacks that killed at least 129 people. The Obama administration plans to admit about 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year.

Bowers’ stance on the issue is just one among many. In Congress, Republican lawmakers plan to vote on legislation toughening the U.S. screening process for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

But there was one paragraph in Bowers’ letter – which called Roanoke a “welcoming city” – that was highly unusual:

“I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from (Islamic State) now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Bowers, a Democrat, said in the statement.

For many public officials across the nation, the mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II has long been one of the most embarrassing moments in the nation’s history – a dark chapter that has been apologized for and legally repudiated, and which is now providing a mirror for some Asian-American lawmakers to hold up to the present.

“I can’t believe that I’m having to point this out, but most people today – most historians, most respected students of history – would say the internment of Japanese-Americans was a mistake and it’s not a model on which to base policy today,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., whose parents and grandparents were interned during World War II.

“What did occur in the wake of Pearl Harbor was an irrational response to wartime hysteria, and I would say that the way that the local discourse is going on right now is we’re allowing the word, the notion of Syrian refugees, to be conflated with terrorism,” Takano said Wednesday.