In so far as we are concerned, you Japanese are privileged to go about your business without molestation. Later you can fit into our local defense picture, you will be called upon to assist in our efforts to provide every possible emergency relief facility.”
Those remarks were delivered by then Chula Vista mayor Vincent Howe to a delegation of city residents desperate to affirm their loyalty to their city and their country.
The people, many of them farmers, were of Japanese ancestry or, in fact, American citizens and they made that public declaration just days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
What compelled the Chula Vistans to reassure City Fathers that they were trustworthy isn’t clear in reading the archives of The Star-News. But history—and a sprinkling of common sense—tells us that if you think something bad is headed your way, you get out in front of it. Let people in charge know you’re “one of the good ones.”
Aside from Howe’s remarks there is no mention of what other council members thought or said during the exchange at the Dec. 13 city council meeting. No mention of it is found in the city record of the day, though the powers that be did note the discussion about driveways and parking zones.
A little more than two months later, on Feb. 19 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt ordered “persons of Japanese” ancestry be rounded up and sent to live in faraway camps for the duration of what was by then World War II.
No mention of the mandate is made in The Chula Vista Star in the days and weeks after Executive Order 9066. Neither are there public declarations of defiance or even opposition from city leaders.
And, it seems, city leaders were silent in April of that year when the local paper wrote that Japanese residents had been shipped out earlier in the month. (Notably, the paper did devote opinion space to the imminent start of baseball season).
But that was then, this is now. Surely if innocent people were persecuted—displaced simply because of their ancestry or ethnicity—people of power and influence today would speak out against the injustice and abuse, wouldn’t they? We aren’t just students of history, we learn from our mistakes don’t we?
