SB2678.DOC

SECTION 1. The decade following the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the racial profiling, increase in hate crimes targeted toward specific ethnic and religious groups, and the detention of individuals without trial, all resound of past injustices.

Until September 11, 2001, the last place in the United States that was attacked by foreign enemies was at Pearl Harbor. The Arizona Memorial became one of Hawaii's most popular tourist attractions because of its significance in world history as the site of the event that compelled the United States to enter World War II. As part of our nation's World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, approximately 1,500,000 people view the Arizona Memorial each year.

Honouliuli is also the setting of other key World War II sites. In Kapolei, Fort Barrette's cannons and Fort Barrette road's role as a supply road and connector to the Kapolei Military Reservation made it a target for neutralization on December 7, 1941. In a pre-dawn, one-hour attack, air fighters riddled Fort Barrette road with bullets. In the same hour, Japanese planes launched a preemptive strike to disable military aircraft on the Marine Corps Air Field in Ewa. Nearly three years later, West Loch in Honouliuli was the base for Operation Forager, commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz. This victorious, offensive attack in the Mariana Islands was a pivotal point in World War II for Allied Forces.

As a result of the actions by Japan in World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the military to relocate those whom it deemed to pose a threat to national security and to declare large sections of the country as military areas and exclusion zones. The order authorized the exclusion of persons of Japanese ancestry from the entire Pacific coast. The federal Census Bureau secretly provided confidential information on Japanese-Americans to assist in the internment efforts. Citizens with as little as one-sixteenth per cent of Japanese blood were placed in the internment camps. Korean-Americans, mistakenly thought to be Japanese, were also affected.

Without judicial process, 110,000 to 120,000 innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry were unlawfully rounded up and sent to and detained in war relocation camps. Sixty-two per cent of the detainees were citizens of the United States. Interrogators accused the detainees of disloyalty, sabotage, and spying. These accusations stung the hearts of the detainees who had committed no crime. Entire families, with children born in the United States, were taken out of their homes and placed in internment camps with only basic belongings. Once removed, their lands were seized and forfeited. The only basis for the deprivation of liberty and property was that their ancestors came from Japan. The war relocation was the single largest forced relocation in the history of the United States.

The makeshift barracks were cramped with the overflow of people and lacked plumbing or cooking facilities. Swirling dust blew in through the cracks and holes in the buildings. There was not enough warm clothing to go around during the winters, where the temperature dropped below zero degrees. The food was poorly prepared, and many people fell ill and died from the lack of medical care and poor living conditions. Detainees lived with the shame of using community toilets. Families were separated as men were arrested on false charges and taken to other camps. Barbed wire and armed guards intimidated the detainees and sentries killed several of them. Later in the war, men were forced to choose between two options: take an oath of loyalty to the United States, which meant being drafted to fight, or refuse to take the oath, resulting in removal proceedings to Japan.

In Hawaii, American authorities interned between one thousand two hundred to one thousand eight hundred Japanese-Americans. The already existing state of martial law lessened the perceived need for wholesale internment. The detention was economically crippling to Hawaii because Japanese residents comprised thirty-five per cent of Hawaii's population. When the five relocation centers in Hawaii closed, these Hawaii residents were transferred to mainland sites. The three hundred detainees who remained in Hawaii were housed in a newly constructed camp in Honouliuli. While no persons were officially charged, they remained in the detention centers for the duration of the war. Sanji Abe, the first American of Japanese ancestry to be elected to the territorial senate, and Thomas Sakakihara, a member of the territorial house of representatives, were among the internees.

In her landmark book, "Farewell to Manzanar," Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston echoes what many survivors felt about their experiences in the internment camps. Visiting the Manzanar internment camp with her husband and three children decades later, the author needed to remind herself that it actually existed, because with time, she began to think that the experiences in her young life were only a creation of her imagination.

In Hawaii, the Alien Internment Camp, in Honouliuli stands as a reminder of a time when fear and prejudice overrode the civil rights for which America is known. The isolated area is in a gulch now overgrown with wild and natural foliage. Broken pieces of the drainage catchment and pipes, floors, foundations, and walls remain as a testament to the barracks and tents that stood there during World War II. Armed guards patrolled the camp, which was ringed with double barbed wire fences and guard towers.

A report entitled "Costs of War," written by a multi-national team of highly respected scholars, shows that the actions taken in response to September 11, 2001, echo the injustices experienced by innocent Japanese-Americans during and following World War II.

The purpose of this Act is to fund the efforts to preserve the site of the World War II internment camp in Honouliuli, take preliminary steps for the eventual construction of an education center for residents and visitors alike, and perpetuate the lessons of history so that we avoid repeating its tragic mistakes.

SECTION 2. There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $100,000 or so much thereof as may be necessary for fiscal year 2012-2013 to preserve and develop the internment camp site in the Honouliuli district.

The sum appropriated shall be expended by the department of land and natural resources for the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 3. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2012.

INTRODUCED BY:	_____________________________

THE SENATE	S.B. NO.	2678
TWENTY-SIXTH LEGISLATURE, 2012
STATE OF HAWAII