Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 6, 1993 TAG: 9308060041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
At age 13, he and his family were uprooted from their home in Lima, Peru, and forced by both American and Peruvian authorities to travel not just several hundred miles, like the majority of internees from the western American states, but more than 4,000 miles to a relocation camp in Texas.
The other internees were almost all American citizens or permanent U.S. residents, but throughout his internment and for years after in the United States, Shibayama was forced to remain an illegal alien.
Having been born in Peru, he was unwilling to go to Japan, as authorities had hoped, in exchange for American prisoners. The Peruvian government that expelled him as a security threat refused to take him back after the war. He could never inherit his father's shirt factory in Lima and could not go to school because of the need to support his brothers and sisters in the United States.
Yet Shibayama received a letter July 2 from the U.S. government telling him he was not entitled to the apology and $20,000 check already given to 75,000 others who were sent to or born in relocation camps.
Shibayama and other Latin-American internees were consistently denied official travel documents and permanent U.S. status in what the American Civil Liberties Union later called "legalized kidnappings." And because the relocation camp restitution law passed in 1988 appears to cover only those who were U.S. permanent residents and citizens during the war, or those covered under special rulings since, Shibayama does not qualify.
"I feel I was cheated," said Shibayama, 63, a retired service station owner in San Jose, Calif. "Especially because I lost my chance at an education."
With the fifth anniversary Wednesday of congressional approval of the restitution law, stories like Shibayama's - once buried deep in Japanese-American family lore and forgotten federal reports - are becoming an issue again.
About 2,200 applicants have been denied the apology and financial restitution provided under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and several thousand more are encountering bureaucratic and regulatory barriers. For fiscal 1994, $100 million is expected to be appropriated for distribution among the approximately 5,000 who are eligible and have not yet been paid. Overall, an estimated 80,000 detainees are said to qualify for restitution.
More than a dozen Japanese-American community leaders met this week with James P. Turner, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights. They won a major concession granting restitution to children who had been brought into camps by mothers who some officials argued had come voluntarily.
A Justice Department spokesman said officials were reviewing the law to see how Latin-American internees like Shibayama "can be found eligible for redress."
by CNB