Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the amendment before us is cosponsored by the distinguished Senator who just spoke, Senator Lee, as well as Senators Coons, Collins, Paul, Lautenberg, Gillibrand, Kirk, Tester, Johnson, Sanders, Whitehouse, Heller, Baucus, DeMint, Webb, Klobuchar, Bingaman, Rockefeller, Begich, and Boxer. An amendment similar to this received 45 votes in the last session. I wish to spend a moment on the genesis of this amendment because, for me, it goes back to April 1942, the day a Western Defense Command and Fourth Army Wartime Civil Control order went out in San Francisco with instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry, that: All Japanese persons, both alien and nonalien, will be evacuated from the above designated areas by 12 o'clock noon on Tuesday, April 7, 1942. No Japanese person will be permitted to enter or leave the above described area after 8 a.m. Thursday. That was in the city of San Francisco. What was created was an internment camp near the city which became a staging area for the placement of Japanese Americans in detention camps without charge or trial for the remainder of World War II. This was Tanforan Racetrack, directly south of San Francisco. One Sunday afternoon--I was a small child in 1942--my father took me down to show it to me. This is what I saw. We see stalls made into bunk houses. We see the center of the field made into barracks. We see the little places where individuals were kept.…”