[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3143-3147]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        BAINBRIDGE ISLAND JAPANESE AMERICAN MONUMENT ACT OF 2007

  Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 161) to adjust the boundary of the Minidoka Internment 
National Monument to include the Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial in Bainbridge 
Island, Washington, and for other purposes.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                                H.R. 161

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Bainbridge Island Japanese 
     American Monument Act of 2007''.

     SEC. 2. BOUNDARY ADJUSTMENT.

       (a) In General.--The boundary of the Minidoka Internment 
     National Monument, located in the State of Idaho and 
     established by Presidential Proclamation 7395 of January 17, 
     2001, is adjusted to include the Nidoto Nai Yoni (``Let it 
     not happen again'') memorial. That memorial--
       (1) commemorates the Japanese Americans of Bainbridge 
     Island, Washington, who were the first to be forcibly removed 
     from their homes and relocated to internment camps during 
     World War II under Executive Order 9066: and
       (2) consists of approximately 8 acres of land owned by the 
     City of Bainbridge Island, Washington, as depicted on the map 
     titled ``Bainbridge Island Japanese American Memorial'', 
     numbered 194/80,003, and dated September, 2006.
       (b) Map.--The map referred to in subsection (a) shall be 
     kept on file and made available for public inspection in the 
     appropriate offices of the National Parks Service.

     SEC. 3. ADMINISTRATION OF MONUMENT.

       (a) Administration.--The Secretary of the Interior 
     (hereinafter in this section referred to as the 
     ``Secretary'') shall administer the Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial 
     as part of Minidoka Internment National Monument in 
     accordance with--
       (1) Presidential Proclamation 7395 of January 17, 2001;
       (2) laws and regulations generally applicable to units of 
     the National Park System, including the Act of August 25, 
     1916 (popularly known as the ``National Park Service Organic 
     Act,''; 16 U.S.C. 1 et seq); and
       (3) any agreements entered into pursuant to subsection (b).
       (b) Agreements.--
       (1) For the purposes of defining the role of the National 
     Park Service in administering the Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial 
     owned by the City of Bainbridge Island, the Secretary is 
     authorized to enter into agreements with--
       (A) the City of Bainbridge Island;
       (B) the Bainbridge Island Metropolitan Park and 
     Recreational District;
       (C) the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community 
     Memorial Committee;
       (D) the Bainbridge Island Historical Society;
       (E) successor entities to the entities named in 
     subparagraphs (A) through (D); and
       (F) other appropriate individuals or entities, at the 
     discretion of the Secretary.
       (2) In order to implement an agreement provided for in 
     paragraph (1), the Secretary may--
       (A) make grants to the City of Bainbridge Island for 
     development of an administrative and interpretive facility 
     for the Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial;
       (B) enter into a cooperative management agreement with the 
     City of Bainbridge Island, pursuant to section 3(l) of Public 
     Law 91-383 (16 U.S.C. 1a-2(l); popularly known as the 
     ``National Park System General Authorities Act''), for the 
     purpose of providing assistance with operation and 
     maintenance of the memorial;
       (C) make grants to other non-Federal entities for other 
     infrastructure projects at the memorial, subject to a match 
     of non-Federal funding equal to the amount of a grant made 
     pursuant to this paragraph; and
       (D) make grants or enter into cooperative agreements with 
     non-Federal entities to support development of interpretive 
     media for the memorial.
       (c) Administrative and Visitor Use Site.--The Secretary is 
     authorized to operate and maintain a site in Seattle, 
     Washington, for administrative and visitor use purposes 
     associated with Minidoka Internment National Monument, using 
     to the greatest extent practicable the facilities and other 
     services of the Seattle unit of the Klondike Gold Rush 
     National Historical Park.
       (d) Coordination of Interpretive and Educational Materials 
     and Programs.--

[[Page 3144]]

     The Secretary shall coordinate the development of 
     interpretive and educational materials and programs for the 
     Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial and the Minidoka Internment National 
     Monument site in the State of Idaho with the Manzanar 
     National Historic Site in the State of California.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Grijalva) and the gentlewoman from Washington (Mrs. 
McMorris Rodgers) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona.


                             General Leave

  Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and exclude 
extraneous material on the bill under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Arizona?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 161, 
introduced by my colleague on the Natural Resources Committee, the 
gentleman from Washington State, Representative Inslee.
  This noteworthy legislation would authorize a memorial to commemorate 
the Japanese Americans of Bainbridge Island, Washington, who were the 
first Americans to be forcibly removed from their homes and relocated 
in internment camps during World War II.
  The new memorial will serve as an important remembrance of a sad 
chapter in American history. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl 
Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order 
providing for the relocation of Japanese Americans living along the 
west coast.
  On March 30, 1942, the relocation began at the Eagledale Ferry Dock, 
with 227 Bainbridge Island residents being forcibly removed to 
internment camps away from the coast. Eventually, more than 12,000 
Japanese Americans in Washington State and more than 110,000 Japanese 
Americans along the west coast were relocated.
  Public Law 107-363 directed the Secretary of the Interior to study 
the Eagledale Ferry Dock on Bainbridge Island, Washington, to determine 
the suitability of designing the site as a unit of the National Parks 
System. The study was to include an analysis of the historical events 
associated with the dock and the potential for preserving and 
interpreting the site.
  On May 1, 2006, the Department of Interior transmitted to Congress 
the study report. The study recommended designating a memorial site on 
Bainbridge Island, and that memorial will be managed as a satellite 
site of the Minidoka Internment National Monument, an existing National 
Park System unit in Idaho. H.R. 161 would implement the recommendations 
contained in the study.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to commend and congratulate my colleague, Mr. 
Inslee, for his commitment and leadership in this matter. A hearing was 
held on a nearly identical measure last Congress, and Representative 
Inslee arranged for the Subcommittee on National Parks to receive 
moving testimony from an internee whose photograph showing her holding 
her infant child has become a searing image of the internment.
  I would also note that for most of us the internment of Japanese 
Americans was a historical event that we read about in history books, 
but for two of our colleagues it was part of their life experience. My 
colleagues, Mike Honda and Doris Matsui, spent part of their childhoods 
in internment camps. I want to acknowledge their experiences in this 
unfortunate episode in history.
  Mr. Speaker, we strongly support passage of H.R. 161 and urge its 
adoption by the House today.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. McMORRIS RODGERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 161 and 
yield myself as much time as I may consume.
  This legislation further recognizes a tragic period in our Nation's 
history by designating the ``let it not happen again'' Memorial on 
Bainbridge Island, Washington, as part of the Minidoka Internment 
National Monument in the State of Idaho.
  While a hearing was held on this legislation in the 109th Congress, 
we are concerned that this bill has not gone through the markup 
process, where issues in this bill, such as its inclusion of 8 acres of 
land in the State of Washington in a monument over 700 miles away, 
could have been discussed.
  Additionally, it is critical to point out that the National Park 
Service testified that this bill could divert scarce resources that are 
needed for existing parks and programs.
  That being said, we will not oppose the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend Congressman Jay 
Inslee of Washington for bringing forth H.R. 161 and yield to him as 
much time as he may consume.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, today, when we pass the Bainbridge Island 
Japanese American Monument Act of 2007, we will be making a strong 
American statement. That statement will be that the power of fear will 
never again be allowed to overcome the promise of liberty. These are 
images we should never see again in America; and today, with the 
passage of this bill, we will make a strong American statement that 
they will not.
  On March 30, 1942, the American Army, pursuant to an executive order 
by an American President, rounded up 227 Americans living on Bainbridge 
Island and marched them down the Eagledale Dock in Eagle Harbor of 
Bainbridge Island, Washington, surrounded by American soldiers, some 
having bayonets deployed. They were taken away to internment against 
their will, without trial and without recognition of their rights as 
citizens and their honor to serve America.
  And now, today, when we are making the memorial on Bainbridge Island 
at the site of this dock, which is now being prepared and is under 
construction, we will be making an American statement that this cannot 
happen again.
  The saying is ``Nidoto Nai Yoni, never let it happen again,'' and by 
making this part of our National Parks System, we will be making a 
statement that these images will never happen to any generation of any 
creed in America.
  I want to note some of the people. This is a picture of a young 
fellow at that time named Frank Kinamoto. In this picture, Frank had 
his little tag. Everyone was given a little tag they had to wear with a 
number on it. Frank grew up to be a respected dentist on Bainbridge 
Island, and Frank has done personally what this legislation will do 
nationally. He has spent many years going around showing a collection 
of photographs telling young students why the protection of our civil 
liberties is critical and why we should never be overcome by fear 
again, and I pay respects to Frank and his efforts.
  Another young woman at the time, who testified several months ago, 
who has been pivotal in this effort, Fumiko Hayashida, shown with her 
daughter here just before she was marched down that pier. Fumiko came 
to town, who is 95 years young, who is the oldest internee that we are 
aware of, to send Congress a message to make a national statement to 
memorialize this.
  Now, there are three reasons I think it is important that we pass 
this bill.
  First, although this was a tragic episode in American history, it was 
an episode involving patriotism because, and this is incredible to me, 
of the 227 people marched down that pier, 62 of them turned around and 
volunteered to serve their nation in World War II, and 62 of these 
people served with distinction. These people were the ultimate 
patriots. Having been sent to camps by Uncle Sam, to turn around and 
fight for the freedoms to which they were not entitled was the ultimate 
act of patriotism, and we honor them as an act of patriotism in this 
memorial.
  Second, it is a memorialization of their neighbors. Many of their 
neighbors rallied around them. Many of their neighbors guarded some of 
their equipment to wait for them to come home. And Walt Widward, the 
publisher of the Bainbridge Island Review,

[[Page 3145]]

was the only publisher on the western coast of the United States to 
editorialize against this violation of American values. That is 
something to memorialize.
  But, most importantly, Nidoto Nai Yoni, never let it happen again. 
And this will be a statement to ourselves, to our children, to our 
grandchildren, that, when we are in fear in this country, we should 
never lose that anchor of American civil rights and civil liberties in 
respect to what we are as Americans.
  We have gone through these days in the last several years. We have 
experienced fear that sometimes has infected the discussion here in the 
Chamber; and when we go through and deal with our fears today, I think 
it is well that we take a lesson from history of 1942 to hew to the 
power of liberty, rather than the power of fear.
  So I am happy today that we will pass this bill that will make this 
part of our National Parks System. I will invite all Americans to come 
visit us in Bainbridge Island. We will invite the world to come see 
that America is a country that makes mistakes but learns and improves. 
And this is a continuation of that American tradition of improving the 
American value system. So I am happy today this House will take this 
step.
  I want to thank the Bainbridge Island community and all of those who 
worked on this project. Clarence Moriwaki, who has led the effort on 
Bainbridge Island, congratulations. And congratulations to America for 
always being an improving country.
  Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, at this point, I would like to yield 6 
minutes to my good friend and colleague from Oregon, Congressman Wu.
  Mr. WU. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support H.R. 161, to expand the 
Minidoka Internment National Monument to include the Nidoto Nai Yoni 
Memorial, which commemorates the Japanese Americans of Bainbridge 
Island, the Japanese Americans of Bainbridge Island, Washington, who 
were interned during World War II.
  On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an 
executive order which forcibly removed approximately 120,000 Americans 
of Japanese ancestry from their homes, their friends, and their 
communities. They were incarcerated by this government for their 
ancestry. Just over 1 month after the executive order was signed, 227 
Bainbridge island men, women, and children were sent to internment 
camps. They were the very first Japanese American families in the 
United States to be incarcerated.
  We in the Pacific Northwest would like to think that we live in a 
better part of the country, in a part of the country where things are 
the way they ought to be. But sometimes the way we want things to be is 
not the way things happen or reality. Because these Japanese Americans 
were taken from their homes in the heart of the Puget Sound. They were 
sailed to Seattle. They were loaded onto trains for a 3-day journey to 
Manzanar, a concentration camp in California's Mojave Desert. These 
Americans were the very first Americans to be so detained, and the last 
of the detainees were not released until October of 1946, 4\1/2\ years 
after the signing of the executive order and over a year after the end 
of World War II.
  But this chapter of our history did not end there. Upon release from 
the internment camps, Japanese Americans could not return to the lives 
that they had led before the tragic and misled executive order. I would 
like to submit further information about General DeWitt's decisions and 
recommendations, and I will do that at a different time, but during the 
period of internment, they had lost their homes, their businesses, and 
their livelihoods.
  By commemorating Japanese Americans who were so detained, we ensure 
that this sad episode in our history will never be forgotten and 
hopefully not repeated, because we need to learn from the mistakes of 
the past.
  Thirty years passed before the executive order was formally rescinded 
in 1976. In 1988, a Presidential apology was issued internees.
  This is not an abstraction. This is not a theoretical debate. The 
Military Commissions Act passed by this Congress on September 30, 2006, 
potentially puts American citizens at risk of military detention. That 
is a plain reading of the Military Commissions Act. It was hotly 
debated between the then chairmen of two committees and this Member. It 
has been commented upon to a limited extent in the national press.
  But I think that a fair reading of the Military Commissions Act would 
show you that if a person is just walking down the street and is 
detained by military authority for whatever reason, and we are not 
talking about aliens in Afghanistan, we are talking about someone 
walking down the streets of Portland, Oregon, or in Bainbridge Island. 
What could potentially happen to that person?
  The better course under the Military Commissions Act is that they are 
subject to military justice, a very limited review by a military 
tribunal, and the end of that appeal road is the Secretary of Defense. 
That is actually the better course.
  Now, I have to point out that there are 25 detainees in Guantanamo 
who, after 5 years of detention, have not had their first review yet; 
and I say that is the better course because the course that is actually 
more troubling under the Military Commissions Act is that if there is 
not a review, there is no appeal. There is no appeal to a civilian 
court. There is no habeas corpus, a doctrine which has served Anglo 
American societies well for almost a thousand years.
  This memorial, which H.R. 161 helps us remember, is not an 
abstraction. It was real suffering for the Japanese Americans, for the 
Americans who were incarcerated. But it is also a reminder that, as was 
said of the executive order much later, when actions are taken by this 
government in an atmosphere of hysteria, great injustices can be 
perpetrated; and we need to be careful in our era lest we be put in a 
position to issue an apology decades from now.

       Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii passed under 
     martial law, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended, and the 
     military police took several hundred suspected spies and 
     saboteurs of Japanese extraction into custody. But the very 
     size of the Japanese community in Hawaii (nearly half the 
     territory's population), and its vital importance to the 
     islands' economy, foreclosed any thought of wholesale 
     evacuation. The mainland community, however, was 
     proportionately much smaller (in California, barely 1 percent 
     of the population), more economically marginal and socially 
     isolated, and long buffeted by racist pressures. The mainland 
     Japanese for the most part kept warily to themselves, many of 
     them toiling with exemplary efficiency on their family fruit 
     and vegetable farms. Insular and quiescent, they were also 
     internally riven by age and legal status. Their elders, the 
     forty thousand first-generation immigrant Japanese, or Issei, 
     were generally over the age of fifty and debarred from 
     citizenship by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, a 
     statutory impediment that perversely exposed them to the 
     accusation that as non-citizens they were poorly assimilated 
     into American society. A majority of their children, the 
     eighty thousand second-generation Nisei, were under the age 
     of eighteen. Born in the United States, they were also 
     citizens. Alien and citizen alike, the peculiarly vulnerable 
     Pacific Coast Japanese community was about to feel the full 
     wrath of war-fueled hysteria.
       Curiously, no clamor for wholesale reprisals against the 
     mainland Japanese arose in the immediate aftermath of the 
     Pearl Harbor attack. The Los Angeles Times soberly 
     editorialized on December 8 that most of the Japanese on the 
     Coast were ``good Americans, born and educated as such,'' and 
     serenely foresaw that there would be ``no riots, no mob 
     law.'' General John L. DeWitt, chief of the army's Western 
     Defense Command, at first dismissed loose talk of mass 
     evacuations as ``damned nonsense.'' He condemned any 
     broadside assaults on the rights of the American-born Nisei. 
     ``An American citizen, after all, is an American citizen,'' 
     he declared. Individual arrests were another matter. 
     Government surveillance, ongoing since 1935, had identified 
     some two thousand potentially subversive persons in the 
     Japanese community. Along with fourteen thousand German and 
     Italian security risks nationwide, they were quietly rounded 
     up in the last days of 1941. But those individual detentions 
     stopped well short of wholesale incarcerations. ``I was 
     determined,'' Attorney General Francis Biddle wrote, ``to 
     avoid mass internment, and the persecution of aliens that had 
     characterized the First World War.''
       In fact, the immigrants whose loyalty had been questioned 
     during World War I had then

[[Page 3146]]

     been freshly arrived and seemed to many observers unarguably 
     alien. But by 1941 those older European groups were settled 
     communities, well assimilated, their patriotism as well as 
     their political loyalty actively cultivated by Roosevelt's 
     New Deal. Though a surprising six hundred thousand Italians--
     more than 10 percent of the entire Italian-American 
     community--remained Italian citizens and were automatically 
     labeled ``enemy aliens'' after Mussolini's declaration of 
     war, Roosevelt instructed Biddle to cancel that designation 
     in a joyfully received announcement at Carnegie Hall, 
     shrewdly delivered on Columbus Day 1942, just weeks before 
     the congressional elections.
       The Japanese were not so fortunate. As war rumors took wing 
     in the weeks following Pearl Harbor, sobriety gave way to 
     anxiety, then to a rising cry for draconian action against 
     the Japanese on the West Coast. Inflammatory and invariably 
     false reports of Japanese attacks on the American mainland 
     flashed through coastal communities. Eleanor Roosevelt's 
     airplane, en route to Los Angeles on the evening of the Pearl 
     Harbor attack, was grounded in the Midwest while the first 
     lady telephoned Washington to check a radio message that San 
     Francisco was under bombardment. Painters at Stanford 
     University blacked out the skylight of the library's main 
     reading room so that it could not serve as a beacon to enemy 
     pilots. Carpenters hammered up dummy aircraft plants in Los 
     Angeles to decoy Japanese bombers away from the real 
     factories. Athletic officials moved the traditional New 
     Year's Day football classic from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 
     California; the game was played instead in North Carolina, 
     presumably safe from Japanese attack. Japan's astonishing 
     string of victories in the Pacific further unsettled American 
     public opinion. Hong Kong fell on December 2, Manila on 
     January 2, Singapore on January 25.
       The release at the end of January of a government 
     investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack proved the decisive 
     blow. The report, prepared by Supreme Court Justice Owen J. 
     Roberts, alleged without documentation that Hawaii-based 
     espionage agents, including Japanese-American citizens, had 
     abetted Nagumo's strike force. Two days later, DeWitt 
     reported ``a tremendous volume of public opinion now 
     developing against the Japanese of all classes, that is 
     aliens and non-aliens.'' DeWitt himself, described by Biddle 
     as having a ``tendency to reflect the views of the last man 
     to whom he talked,'' soon succumbed to Rumor's siren. He 
     wildly declared to an incredulous Justice Department official 
     that every ship sailing out of the Columbia had been attacked 
     by submarines guided by clandestine radio operators near the 
     river's mouth. When evidence of actual attacks failed to 
     materialize, DeWitt invoked the tortured logic that the very 
     absence of any sabotage activity on the West Coast proved the 
     existence of an organized, disciplined conspiracy in the 
     Japanese community, cunningly withholding its blow until it 
     could be struck with lethal effect. In February the respected 
     columnist Walter Lippmann alleged that military authorities 
     had evidence of radio communications between ``the enemy at 
     sea and enemy agents on land''--a charge that FBI director J. 
     Edgar Hoover had already advised Biddle was utterly without 
     foundation. A radio technician from the Federal 
     Communications Commission reviewed DeWitt's ``evidence'' of 
     electronic signals and declared it hogwash. All 760 of 
     DeWitt's suspicious radio transmissions could be accounted 
     for, and not one involved espionage. ``Frankly,'' the 
     technician concluded, ``I have never seen an organization 
     [the U.S. Army's Western Defense Command] that was so 
     hopeless to cope with radio intelligence requirements. The 
     personnel is unskilled and untrained. Most are privates who 
     can read only ten words a minute. . . . It's pathetic to say 
     the least.''
       But by this time facts were no protection against the 
     building gale of fear and prejudice. ``Nobody's 
     constitutional rights,'' Lippmann magisterially intoned, 
     ``include the right to reside and do business on a 
     battlefield.'' Lippmann's colleague Westbrook Pegler echoed 
     him less elegantly a few days later: ``The Japanese in 
     California should be under armed guard to the last man and 
     woman right now,'' Pegler wrote in his widely read column, 
     ``and to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.'' 
     Unapologetically racist voices also joined the chorus. 
     ``We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for 
     selfish reasons,'' a leader of California's Grower-Shipper 
     Vegetable Association declared. ``We might as well be honest. 
     We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the 
     Pacific Coast or the brown man.'' Prodded by such sentiments, 
     in early February 1942 DeWitt officially requested authority 
     to remove all Japanese from the West Coast. It was impossible 
     he claimed, to distinguish the loyal from the disloyal in the 
     peculiarly alien and inscrutable Japanese community. The only 
     remedy was wholesale evacuation. The same man who had said a 
     month earlier, ``An American citizen, after all, is an 
     American citizen,'' now announced, ``A Jap's a Jap. . . . It 
     makes no difference whether he is an American citizen or not. 
     . . . I don't want any of them.''
       At the Justice Department several officials, including 
     conspicuously Edward J. Ennis, director of the Alien Enemy 
     Control Unit, as well as Biddle's assistant James H. Rowe, 
     struggled to quell this irrationally mounting fury. Rowe 
     denounced Lippmann and Pegler as ``Armchair Strategists and 
     Junior G-Men'' whose reckless charges came ``close to 
     shouting FIRE! in the theater; and if race riots occur, these 
     writers will bear a heavy responsibility.'' Attorney General 
     Biddle informed Secretary of War Stimson ``that the 
     Department of Justice would not under any circumstances 
     evacuate American citizens.'' But at a fateful meeting in the 
     living room of the attorney general's Washington home on the 
     evening of February 17, the gentle and scholarly Biddle 
     buckled. Facing off against Assistant Secretary of War John 
     J. McCloy and two army officers, Ennis and Rowe argued 
     heatedly that DeWitt's request for evacuation orders should 
     be denied. Unknown to his two subordinates, however, Biddle, 
     new to the cabinet, unsure of his standing with Roosevelt, 
     and overawed by the Olympian figure of Stimson, had told the 
     secretary of war by telephone earlier in the day that he 
     would not oppose DeWitt's recommendation. When this became 
     clear, Rowe remembered, ``I was so mad that I could not 
     speak. . . . Ennis almost wept.'' Even Stimson had grave 
     misgivings. ``The second generation Japanese can only be 
     evacuated,'' he wrote in his diary, ``either as part of a 
     total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, 
     or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their 
     racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or 
     even trust the citizen Japanese. This latter is the fact but 
     I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our 
     constitutional system to apply it.'' Despite his own 
     reservations and the sputtering opposition of the Justice 
     Department officials, Stimson advised the president that 
     DeWitt should be authorized to proceed. The cabinet devoted 
     only a desultory discussion to the matter. On February 19 
     Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It directed the War 
     Department to ``prescribe military areas . . . from which any 
     and all persons may be excluded.'' No explicit reference to 
     the Japanese was necessary. When Biddle feebly objected that 
     the order was ``ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily 
     cruel,'' Roosevelt silenced him with the rejoinder: ``[T]his 
     must be a military decision.''

  Ms. BORDALLO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 16, 
the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Monument Act of 2007. This 
important legislation will expand the boundaries of the federally-
recognized Minidoka Internment National Monument to include the Nidoto 
Nai Yoni `Let It Not Happen Again' Memorial in Bainbridge Island, 
Washington.
  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that 
authorized the forcible removal and relocation of Americans of Japanese 
ancestry from the western United States nearly 3 months after the 
Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor precipitated the United 
States' entrance into World War II. Under the authority of Executive 
Order 9066, on March 24, 1942, Lieutenant General John DeWitt issued 
Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1, forcing the removal of the 227 Japanese 
Americans residing on Bainbridge Island.
  This edict allowed Japanese Americans residing on Bainbridge Island 
only 6 days to sell their belongings, close their businesses, and pack 
up their lives before resettlement and internment in camps elsewhere in 
the United States. These Americans endured the additional burden and 
injustice of being congregated at Eagledale Ferry Dock under armed 
guard before transport to the mainland. Friends and neighbors converged 
as a symbolic gesture of unity and support for these Japanese Americans 
who were involuntarily removed from the community. They left behind all 
the belongings and possessions that they could not carry or wear. These 
Americans of Japanese ancestry were the first of over 100,000 Japanese 
Americans to be interned in remote and desolate camps. They were the 
first group of Japanese Americans to be stripped of their rights as 
American citizens under the authorities of Executive Order 9066.
  Today, by authorizing this historical piece of land to be within the 
boundaries of the Minidoka Internment National Monument, we memorialize 
the sacrifices Japanese Americans made during World War II. We also 
would acknowledge through the enactment of this legislation the 
occurrence of an egregious infringement of American citizenship rights. 
By adopting this legislation we would provide an official record of our 
hope and determination that an act similar to this one is never 
repeated in the future. This site marks the beginning of the forced 
exodus of an entire ethnic minority from the western United States and 
today we hope to transform it into a means of educating future 
generations of the importance of civil liberties, especially in times 
of war.
  This memorial, a short ferry boat ride from Seattle, is a fitting 
symbol of this disturbing

[[Page 3147]]

and unfortunate chapter in American history. While the internment camps 
themselves are located in desolate areas, far away from everyday sight 
and thought, this monument, in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, will 
serve as a continual reminder of the patriotism of Japanese Americans 
during the Second World War and the mistakes that we should never let 
happen again. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this 
important legislation and I commend our colleague, the gentleman from 
Washington, Mr. Inslee, for his sponsorship of this bill.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 161, 
to adjust the boundary of the Minidoka Internment National Monument in 
Idaho to include the Nidoto Nai Yoni (``Let it not happen again'') 
memorial. This memorial commemorates the Japanese Americans of 
Bainbridge Island, Washington, who were the first to be forcibly 
removed from their homes and relocated to internment camps during World 
War II.
  In 1942, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forcibly removed 
from their homes and placed in internment camps--two-thirds of these 
were American citizens, none of which had ever shown disloyalty to the 
American cause. Forced to live under harsh conditions, the last 
internment camp closed 4 long years later.
  These innocent Americans were treated unjustly by their own 
government during a time of war, simply because of their national 
origin, and such a crime against them must not go unnoticed. The 
memorial is rightly named with the words, ``Let it not happen again,'' 
for it is important to remember the past mistakes of our government in 
an effort to avoid future ones.
  As we recognize this, we must strive to ensure that all Americans 
know about these mistakes to prevent their repetition. H.R. 161 helps 
accomplish this by requiring the Secretary of the Interior to 
coordinate the development of interpretive and educational materials 
and programs regarding the Bainbridge Island Japanese Americans.
  In times of war it may be easy to get carried away and put labels on 
those around us, assuming what their political ideals are based solely 
on their national origin or religious background. But as we have seen 
in World War II, such assumptions are unjust and can lead to disastrous 
consequences for a group of individuals.
  I thank my colleague, Mr. Inslee, for introducing this important 
legislation, to ensure that we never let such unjust practices occur in 
this great Nation again. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting 
this resolution.
  Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, the House unanimously passed H.R. 161, the 
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Monument Act of 2007. This measure 
would provide for the preservation of a historic site on Bainbridge 
Island, WA, where the first Japanese Americans were assembled for 
internment during World War II.
  I thank my friend, Congressman Jay Inslee, for his heartfelt 
commitment and leadership in introducing this legislation and working 
so effectively through the years to provide for this historic site. As 
an original cosponsor of this legislation and supporter of past 
efforts, I am proud to see its passage in the House. In addition, I 
wish to thank the Committee on Natural Resources and especially my 
friend, Chairman Raul Grijalva of the Subcommittee on National Parks, 
Forests and Public Lands for their support and quick action.
  During the war hysteria in 1942, Executive Order 9066 was signed by 
President Roosevelt which effectively trampled on the rights of U.S. 
citizens by ordering the internment of approximately 120,000 Japanese 
Americans.
  Due to the military importance of Bainbridge Island, WA, lawful 
Japanese American families of this community were the first to be 
forcibly removed from their homes and sent to internment sites. These 
families would not be able to return to the island for more than four 
years. H.R. 161 would preserve their story.
  H.R. 161 would enact recommendations from the National Park Service 
by extending the boundary of the Minidoka Internment National Monument, 
located in Idaho, to include the Bainbridge Island site as a satellite 
location. The Minidoka internment camp was the final destination until 
the end of the war for most of the families from Bainbridge Island. 
Including the Bainbridge Island site into an existing national monument 
would make it eligible to receive grants for funding.
  Mr. Speaker, I am truly grateful for the support H.R. 161 enjoyed in 
the House of Representatives, and I anticipate similar endorsement in 
the Senate. Memorializing the Bainbridge Island site will preserve the 
stories of injustice fallen on these innocent American families and 
serve as a reminder of how easily the civil rights can be discarded in 
guise of homeland security. Appropriately, the Bainbridge Island 
Memorial will be named Nidoto Nai Yoni, which translated from Japanese 
means ``Let It Not Happen Again.''
  Mrs. McMORRIS RODGERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva) that the House suspend the rules 
and pass the bill, H.R. 161.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. GRIJALVA. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this question will 
be postponed.

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