'For Valley families, it should strike a chord.' Border centers compared to internment camps

Stan Morita says he's not typically political, but when he saw footage of immigrant children being held in detention centers at the border, it struck a nerve.

"I thought of the assembly centers at the Fresno Fairgrounds that were hastily put together, where my parents and grandparents were forced to stay in the livestock area before being sent to internment camps in Arkansas," he said. "But I call them concentration camps."

Morita, a raisin farmer in Biola, is Japanese American. His mother was 16 and his father 22 when they were ordered to report to a temporary detention center in Fresno during World War II before being sent to the Jerome War Relocation Center, the last of America's internment camps.

"When I hear about what's going on now at the border, I can't help but reflect on my own family's experience," Morita said. "That imagery, of folks in cages, it made me think of all of those lost hopes and dreams and plans. I've heard people argue it's different, but it's not. Because what I see is people exploiting a powerless group and dehumanizing them in order to make a political point. And it's hard for me to sit by and watch that happen again."

Morita, 55, is not the first to compare the U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facilities, part of President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, to the internment of Japanese Americans or to the Holocaust.

Last year, Fresno Japanese Americans voiced concern that history would repeat itself when Trump aimed to ban people from several predominantly Muslim countries from traveling to the U.S.

Former first lady Laura Bush condemned the mass detention centers, where thousands of children have been separated from their parents after trying to enter the country illegally.

"Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso," Bush wrote in the Washington Post this week. "These images are eerily reminiscent of the internment camps for U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. "

Facing criticism, Trump signed an executive order halting the separation of children from their families at the border on Thursday, but details of how the policy will play out — and how families who have already been separated will be reunited — is still unknown.

Sarah Reyes, former member of the California Assembly, took to social media to urge Valley residents to speak out against the policy, pointing out the region's immigrant community and also its past ties to internment camps.

"Then, they called Japanese citizens the enemy. They said they were going to destroy America. Fast forward to today, you hear the same rhetoric coming out of the administration about these undocumented residents," she said. "I don't think it's a stretch to compare... My greatest fear is that we have orphaned hundreds, if not thousands of children, and that is unforgivable."

Amparo Cid, a Fresno attorney focusing on social justice issues, has been visiting middle and high schools teaching about the Japanese internment camps in Fresno since Trump was elected.

"This is a part of American history," she said. "If more people had spoken up when Japanese Americans were being dehumanized, some of those horrors could have been avoided."

Cid said that regardless of the immigration policy's outcome, it's "the lasting rhetoric" she worries about. And that for Fresno families, the issue should be above politics.

"For Valley families, it should strike a chord. Every single one of us, regardless of party affiliation," she said. "These are children and families seeking asylum, fleeing horrendous conditions. It's unfathomable that their first experience with America is to be locked up in cages. It's disgusting."