Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today with my colleagues for so many to recognize and honor a stamp just issued by the U.S. Postal Service that, with stunning simplicity, remembers, recognizes, and honors one of the most remarkable and inspirational stories in the whole of our country's history. It is a story of tragedy, perseverance, and triumph that is so quintessentially American, that goes so deeply to our essence, and that offers the most fundamental lessons that we must never forget. And that is the point of this stamp, that we never forget the story of the Japanese-American soldiers of World War II and their famous motto, which is its own lesson: ``Go for broke.'' For many of us, the story is well-known and has instructed and inspired our own lives. But for a growing number of our fellow citizens of our country and world it is not. So permit me just a brief retelling. As World War II loomed, Americans of Japanese ancestry were beginning their third generation, or nisei, in substantial communities, yet they remained largely marginalized because of their race. In Hawaii, they constituted over one-third of our population, yet largely still labored on plantations or worked in small businesses. The same was true on the West Coast, from Washington through Oregon to San Diego.…”