Civil Liberties Act of 1988

Japanese Canadians lost an estimated four hundred and thirty-three million dollars during that time, and it took until 1988 for the government to officially apologize.

That's also the same year that President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, admitting the US government acted on race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership when it forcefully removed and incarcerated about a hundred and twenty thousand Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were US citizens.

The second thing the attack on Pearl Harbor did was it showed the immediate need for a quick route to Alaska.

At first, supplies and troops could be sent by air rather than by boat or road, but that idea came to a halt in January 1942.

Her work shed light on the situation and galvanized a group seeking to demand restitution and reparations for the survivors.

Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and Mamoru Ito received the very first reparations check on October 1990.

Unfortunately, Dorothea never got to see the fruit of her time spent giving Japanese Americans the dignity and voice they deserved.

Her health failed in the last decade of life as she dealt with post-polio syndrome and esophageal cancer.

There were others in the Japanese American community who thought litigation was the way to go.

And you had this lawsuit that was actually hanging over Congress's head when they enacted the Civil Liberties Act.

And part of the Civil Liberties Act was if you took payment under the Civil Liberties Act, you could no longer be part of or benefit from any lawsuit.

So honestly, I don't think there was any widespread support for Japanese Americans to get reparations, yet they got it.

I don't think anybody cared or knew about Italy getting reparations.

40 in Congress that was first introduced in 1989.

It's never gone far.

Why 1989? It was a year after the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.