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- <text id=90TT2756>
- <link 93HT0846>
- <title>
- Oct. 22, 1990: American Notes:Reparations
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Oct. 22, 1990 The New Jazz Age
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 35
- American Notes
- REPARATIONS
- A National Apology
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Stooping before nine elderly Japanese-Americans, several of
- them more than 100 years old and in wheelchairs, Attorney
- General Dick Thornburgh last week presented each one a formal
- Presidential apology, and a reparation check, for an episode
- that still stands out as one of the nation's worst violations
- of individual rights. During World War II, supposedly in order
- to forestall possible attacks by Japanese agents against
- strategic installations in the U.S., the federal government
- summarily ordered the "relocation" of 120,000 ordinary citizens
- and immigrants of Japanese descent to 10 internment camps.
- </p>
- <p> Culminating decades of lobbying by Japanese-Americans to
- redress the pain and blot caused by the unjustified
- imprisonments, the bittersweet event commenced a race against
- time to reimburse, over the next three years, the 65,000
- victims who remain alive. The $1.25 billion Civil Liberties Act
- of 1988, funded by Congress only this year, authorizes a
- $20,000 payment to every man, woman and child who suffered as
- a result of the internment policy and was still alive at the
- time the law was passed.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-