After stalling for decades at the federal level, reparations for slavery has received new interest amid a national reckoning over the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
SAN FRANCISCO — When Miya Iwataki and other Japanese Americans fought in the 1980s for the U.S. government to apologize to the families it imprisoned during World War II, Black politicians and civil rights leaders were integral to the movement.
Last Sunday marked the 81st anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing an executive order that allowed the government to force an estimated 125,000 people — two-thirds of them U.S. citizens — from their homes and businesses, and incarcerate them in desolate, barbed-wire camps throughout the west.
In December, the National Nikkei Reparations Coalition, alongside more than 70 other Japanese American and Asian American organizations, submitted a letter calling on the Biden administration to establish a presidential commission. She said that starting conversations in her community is “undoing a lot of ideas that people have” about American history and the case for reparations, said Masaoka, 74.
Only 30% of U.S. adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2021 supported reparations for slavery, 77% of whom were Black Americans. Support among Latinos and Asians was 39% and 33%, respectively, and white Americans had the lowest rate of support, at 18%. “There was not a dry eye in the house at those hearings,” said Iwataki, who worked with the National Coalition for Redress/Reparations to arrange transportation to the hearings, as well as meals and translators, for former detainees.
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