Densho Digital Archive - Henry Sakamoto Interview (denshovh-shenry

<Begin Segment 21>

JC: So Hank, tell me about your hopes for the future.

HS: Well, as expressed many, many times, hopes for the future is that the denial of civil liberties will never happen to any other group as it happened to persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II. One of the unfortunate things about history as it's being made now is the matter in which the Patriot Act is being enforced, and the Patriot Act was of course passed without due consideration by our Congress, and so therefore, there are many provisions, and I'm no expert on the Patriot Act, many provisions in the Patriot Act that seem to permit denials of civil liberties targeted at persons of Arab descent in these times particularly. And as a result of the Patriot Act, the Department of Justice asked various municipalities to cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in creating these joint terrorist task forces which in our case involved representatives from the City of Portland police department, and they worked together with the FBI, and I suppose that's supposed to be in areas of suspicious activity that might be in violation of the Patriot Act. Well, there are many in the community, particularly representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, see this joint terrorism task force as an area that might violate the constitutional rights of many people, and one of the danger areas is that with the joint terrorism task force, there's no means for checks and balances. And so the, through the assistance of the ACLU and other local organizations such as the JACL, the city council has had hearings every year since the creation of the joint terrorism task force on whether or not to participate, and then after they decided to participate, whether or not to continue cooperating with the FBI.

So I was asked by the Japanese American Citizens League to testify at the first hearing along with my son Scott, and then I was also asked to testify at the second hearing along with my son Scott. And here again, you deal with time limits because some of these hearings can go on and on and on and on. And the very first hearing at the City Council chambers, the place was full, and so what could have been a three-minute presentation was reduced to two minutes. And you know, it's a difficult thing to say things that are thoughtful and germane in that period of time. You have no time to create a case. But there's another hearing coming up. I don't know the exact date, sometime this month. But even though we'll be limited again to two minutes or three minutes, I'm sure we can present a case that's a little bit more germane, and the reason for that is the Supreme Court on September 28th this year came down with two rulings that I know of anyway that they say the Supreme Court said it violates the constitutional liberties of American citizens and, that deal with the specific arrest, not arrests or detention of two Arab Americans for different reasons but held without charge, and so it's a violation of their civil liberties. They receive no due process, similar to what happened to persons of Japanese ancestry after Pearl Harbor. And Justice Sandra Day O'Conner in one of the rulings said that there is, and she referred to that under the Patriot Act, unless the Supreme Court says this is in violation of their constitutional rights, you're in danger of repeating what happened to the Japanese Americans during World War II, and that's, comment I thought was just really right on track. So the thing that you hope for in the future is that our political leaders are very, very careful in seeing that the constitutional rights of American citizens are protected. That's my hope. Is that a good hope for the future?

JC: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about or anything that you can think of that you'd like to say to future generations who might view this?

HS: Obey your parents. No. For future generations, beyond what I said, about being aware of your constitutional rights and how to make sure that those rights are not violated again, you need to be aware of what's going on. It's very, very complex to keep current of political events. It's very, very complex to even try to keep aware of what the political candidates are saying and how to separate fact from fiction, those things like that. But you can't begin to evaluate what's going on unless you keep abreast of current events and how those current events ultimately get interpreted and perhaps ultimately get put into law, and the greatest example is the current event of September 11, 2001, and how it got quickly put into law under the Patriot Act and how it's relatively simple for political leaders to misinterpret the law and misinterpret society and do things that are not in the best interests of the citizenry at large. That's a tough suggestion, but then that's what we need to do.