This column reflects the opinion of the writer. Learn about the differences between a news story and an opinion column.
Tone deaf on internment
Gordon Spunich calls (Jan. 27) for our nation’s leadership to “protect its citizens first and foremost, just as FDR did post-Pearl Harbor.” Upwards of 60 percent of the detainees in U.S. World War II internment camps were themselves American citizens by birthright or naturalization. These citizens were not protected, but rather deported and incarcerated solely on the basis of their Japanese ancestry.
The fact that “as time went by, that decision was reversed” does nothing to excuse four years of racially motivated wrongful imprisonment of 110,000 Americans by their own government.
Publishing a justification of internment, particularly in Spokane, which benefits hugely from its ties with Japan in the form of Nishinomiya Garden and welcomes Japanese students to the Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute, highlights Spunich’s lack of understanding and is hugely irresponsible on the part of The Spokesman-Review.
This tone-deaf attitude may have had a place in 1942, but it does not belong in a newspaper in 2016.
Sarah Hendron
Spokane