| |
|
Arturo Shibayama |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Top: Art Shibayama's
Family in Peru 1939.
Left: Panama Canal Zone:
Japanese Peruvians en route to U.S.
Internment Camps. April 2, 1942. U.S. Army
Signal Corps Photo. National Archives.
Courtesy of National Japanese American
Historical Society. |
|
Arturo Shibayama was born in Peru to parents of
Japanese descent. When he was 13 years old, he and
his family were forcibly taken from their home in
the city of Lima, loaded onto a U.S. Army transport
ship and brought under armed guard to the U.S. for
the purpose of hostage exchange.
| |
"In New Orleans we
landed and the women and children were let
off the ship first and they were marched
into like a warehouse and they were ordered
to strip and stand in line naked and then
they were sprayed with some kind of
insecticide and then after shower they were
put on a train and then the men went through
the same process. And that was the first
time we got to see the rest of the family.
We were put on the same coach and my sister
says she felt so humiliated because she had
to stand naked in front of boys her own
age." |
|
| |
- From an
interview with Art Shibayama on the
"Tracked In America"
website |
|
The Shibayama family was interned in
Crystal City, Texas, for 2-1/2 years. When
the
Crystal City camp closed after the war’s end,
the Shibayama family was paroled to Seabrook Farms
as cheap labor. In 1952, while still classified as
an “illegal alien”, Mr. Shibayama was drafted into
the
U.S. Army and was stationed in Germany during
the
Korean conflict.
| |
"In the Army, one
day my section leader he says, hey Art, he
says how come you not a citizen? So I told
him what happened to me. He says I'll get
you one. My paper went to Washington, came
back. I was denied. Because I didn't have a
legal entry. Now how can that not be legal
entry when the US brought us here forcibly?" |
|
| |
- From an
interview with Art Shibayama on the
"Tracked In America"
website |
|
Since the early 1980s, Mr. Shibayama has been
seeking proper acknowledgment and apology from the
U.S. government for the violation of his civil and
human rights. In the early 1990s, the U.S.
government declared him and other Japanese Latin
Americans to be ineligible for redress under the
Civil Liberties Act of 1988 (which provided
an apology and $20,000 compensation to interned
Japanese Americans) because they were
“illegal aliens” at the time of internment.
Subsequent litigation on behalf of the Japanese
Latin Americans resulted in the controversial
Mochizuki settlement agreement, which Mr. Shibayama
rejected.
Mr. Shibayama has continued to press for an
apology and equitable redress as a matter of
principle, through legislation, litigation and
grassroots education. Not having found justice
through the U.S. court system, Mr. Shibayama and his
two brothers appealed to the international community
by filing a petition with the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
This petition seeks to hold the U.S. government
accountable for its failure to provide redress for
war crimes and
crimes against humanity perpetrated against
the Japanese Latin Americans during WWII.
Links:
Campaign For Justice: Redress Now For Japanese Latin
Americans
Tracked in America
The Hidden Internment
|
|
