Mark Takano: “our country's history is complicated. Our country's history is at times uncomfortable to confront. That does not make it…”

“our country's history is complicated. Our country's history is at times uncomfortable to confront. That does not make it divisive or offensive to preserve and to learn from. Japanese incarceration during World War II stands as one of those uncomfortable chapters that Trump and his administration are attempting to erase. More than 125,000 Japanese Americans, including my parents and grandparents, were rounded up and placed in desolate camps at the hands of their own government. There are dozens of these camps memorialized around the country for people to visit and honor these experiences. At the Manzanar National Historic Site in California, content is now being censored because the words on the plaque there make this administration uncomfortable. As the saying goes, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This administration wants us to forget that our government is capable of rounding up entire families and upending their lives, as they did to my family, without any due process. They want us to forget the past while they perpetuate yet another legacy-defining human and civil rights abuse on a national scale.”