American Notes REPARATIONS

Stooping before nine elderly Japanese-Americans, several of them more than 100 years old and in wheelchairs, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh last week presented each one a formal Presidential apology, and a reparation check, for an episode that still stands out as one of the nation's worst violations of individual rights. During World War II, supposedly in order to forestall possible attacks by Japanese agents against strategic installations in the U.S., the federal government summarily ordered the "relocation" of 120,000 ordinary citizens and immigrants of Japanese descent to 10 internment camps.

Culminating decades of lobbying by Japanese-Americans to redress the pain and blot caused by the unjustified imprisonments, the bittersweet event commenced a race against time to reimburse, over the next three years, the 65,000 victims who remain alive. The $1.25 billion Civil Liberties Act of 1988, funded by Congress only this year, authorizes a $20,000 payment to every man, woman and child who suffered as a result of the internment policy and was still alive at the time the law was passed.