The Trump administration is exploring possible detention sites for migrant children near a former Japanese-American incarceration camp.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed in a statement to local outlet KUAR that the government is looking into two areas in Arkansas to potentially use “as temporary shelter for unaccompanied alien children.”
One of the sites, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture facility, stands a mere two miles outside the Rohwer Relocation Center, where many Japanese-Americans from the West Coast were incarcerated during World War II. The prison camp was one of two located in Arkansas.
Densho, an organization that works to preserve Japanese-American history, told HuffPost that a move like this suggests the Trump administration is not making any effort to avoid the mistakes of the past.
“This administration has repeatedly used Japanese-American incarceration as precedent for its cruel and xenophobic policies,” said Nina Wallace, communications coordinator for Densho. “What’s really disturbing is that they appear to be using Japanese-American history not as a warning but as a blueprint for how to carry out similar human rights violations.”
Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order saying he would halt the widely condemned practice of separating migrant children from their detained parents and proposing instead to detain families together.
But in the HHS statement, spokesperson Carla Daniels noted that the new sites, if approved, would only hold kids who come to the U.S. unaccompanied and not families. She also said that in addition to the USDA facility in the town of Kelso, the department was considering Little Rock Air Force Base as a potential detention site.
The HHS activity was widely condemned across the Japanese-American community. Among the critics was actor George Takei, who’d been held at Rohwer himself over 70 years ago.
The Japanese American Citizens League called the proposal “unconscionable.”
“JACL is deeply disturbed to hear that among the sites considered is one that overlaps the former site of the Rohwer incarceration camp. It is unconscionable that the former site of a Japanese American concentration camp is being considered for the location of a modern site for children,” the civil rights organization said in a statement. “For many Japanese Americans incarcerated during the war, the sites of the former camps are considered hallowed ground.”
While there are key differences between then and now, Wallace, the Densho spokesperson, said the lack of due process in both situations is “a parallel we can’t ignore.” She described the language used by HHS and others as eerily reminiscent of that heard during World War II.
“When politicians and media pundits claim that these detention facilities are ‘shelters’ or ‘summer camps,’ when they say there’s no reason to be concerned because the kids are getting free food and free education, well, they said the same thing during WWII,” Wallace said. “Knowing that Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated as children had deep, long-lasting trauma as a result of that experience, why would we want to inflict that on anyone else?”
Local officials aren’t pleased, either. Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) has spoken out several times against the move.
“I don’t believe this proposal is a good one. Someone should have looked a little closer at the historical context of this site,” Crawford told Talk Business & Politics, an Arkansas news site. “It’s literally within sight of another internment camp dating back to 1942 involving Japanese-Americans. That proposal wasn’t a good idea, either.”
Ultimately, Wallace said, the incarceration sites serve today as a testament to the resiliency of the Japanese-American community during a time of rampant discrimination and “their determination to ensure that what happened to our families during WWII does not happen to anyone else.”
“We want to see these sites stand as a warning against repeating history,” she said. “Siting a jail for immigrant kids practically next door to a former concentration camp is a slap in the face to the Japanese-Americans who have worked so hard to keep the painful memories from places like Rohwer alive.”