With a sweeping executive order, more than 120,000 people living in the U.S. lost their homes, their businesses and their freedoms.
They were forced to leave their lives behind, rounded up for extreme vetting from a suspicious government and taken to camps surrounded by fences and barbed wire.
All because they came from a different country and were made out to be the enemy.
“We were set aside because of our race,” said Charles Matsumoto, a Greenwood resident of Japanese-American descent. “Fear does a lot of things to a lot of people.”
Matsumoto and his wife, Mary, lived through the era of forced internment for Japanese-Americans during World War II, where legal immigrants and citizens born in this country were stigmatized because of their race.
Now, the couple is seeing parallels in today’s society and its attitudes toward Muslims. They want to share their own experience in order to recall the injustices of the past, and ensure no other group has to suffer through it again.
“When are we going to learn that people are people?” Charles Matsumoto said. “What they did then was something that the whole United States should be concerned about. We lost our freedom.”
The Matsumotos will take part in a program Friday focusing on the internment of Japanese-American citizens at Resurrection Lutheran Church, where they are members. The church will show the documentary “The Legacy of Heart Mountain,” followed by a question-and-answer session with the couple.
This year is the 75th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment order, made after 2,403 Americans were killed by the Japanese in an attack at Pearl Harbor two months earlier.
With President Donald Trump signing an executive order that temporarily bans people from seven mostly Islamic countries from entering the U.S. in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks and increase the vetting process for people coming from counties with ties to terrorism, and making a suggestion during the campaign to create a registry of Muslims living in the U.S., history seems to be repeating itself in the worst way, Charles Matsumoto said. Trump later tweeted he did not suggest a database.
“I’d hope people would come to see this movie, because it shows what can happen to a group based on their color or ethnicity,” Charles Matsumoto said.
Their unique perspective will drive home the damage that fear can bring to a community and a country, said Dave Schreiber, senior pastor at Resurrection Lutheran Church.
“This seemed to be a logical time to learn from our history, one hopes, about what a campaign of fear can do,” he said. “Fear is a very powerful emotion, and a very human emotion. One of the most common messages to God’s people in the Bible is to say, ‘Do not fear.'”
The months following the Pearl Harbor attacks were fraught for Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. Suspicions of saboteurs and enemies already operating in the U.S. raged.
“There was fear. As soon as the war broke out, immediately, the leaders of the community were rounded up by the FBI. They were held without communication with their families,” Charles Matsumoto said.
On Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which established military areas in California, western Oregon and Washington and southern Arizona. The law stripped Japanese-Americans of their constitutional rights, and forced them first into converted fairgrounds or horse racing tracks, then into one of 10 relocation centers established hundreds of miles inland.
Anyone with Japanese ancestry was forcibly removed to the guarded camps, including Mary Matsumoto and her family. Living in the Seattle, Washington, area, they were sent to Minidoka Internment Camp in Idaho.
The dust-filled camp, which had been constructed in a matter of months out of the desert, had no hot water, incomplete sewage and heating systems and small shared barracks.
Mary Matsumoto, who was only 2 years old when her family was relocated, doesn’t recall much about the camps where they lived for three years.
“I was just a baby, so I don’t really remember it. My parents never talked about it,” she said.
Charles Matsumoto was 9 years old when Roosevelt issued his executive order. The executive order and the evacuation of entire communities happened so quickly that it was disorienting, Charles Matsumoto said.
“Being 9 years old, you didn’t realize what was going on. You knew something was happening; you could read the paper and see that. But still,” he said.
His father had come to the U.S. around 1906, first entering Mexico and then establishing himself in the San Jose, California, area. Once he had earned enough money, he brought his wife over to start their lives in a new country.
They lived in a farming community of other Japanese immigrants, with Charles Matsumoto being one of 12 brothers and sisters.
Luckily, his father had a friend who lived in Ault, Colorado, and the family packed up whatever belongings they could and headed east. Of the nearly 130,000 Japanese-Americans living in the areas affected by the executive order, only about 10,000 were able to move voluntarily on their own.
“There was a short window of opportunity to leave,” he said.
When his family returned to California from Colorado after the war, they essentially had to start their lives over. But Charles Matsumoto worked hard, earned scholarships to college and earned degrees from San Jose State University and the University of Idaho, before finishing his doctorate in pharmacology at the University of Washington.
He and Mary Matsumoto moved to the southside of Indianapolis when he was offered a job from Eli Lilly.
Despite the treatment of his family and his people, Charles Matsumoto has been a devoted patriot. He served in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957. His son, Greg Matsumoto, joined the U.S. Air Force, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq before retiring.
The love for his country is what makes the current demonizing of Muslims and other groups so troubling, he said.
“The United States has a lot of warts, but is has a lot of good parts. I’d like to have that continue, regardless of who the president is or what party is in power,” Charles Matsumoto said. “Things will get better, but it’s slow coming.”
Throughout their lives, the Matsumotos have been active in educating people about the injustice of the internment camps, serving with the Hoosier Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.
When the opportunity to do a program with their church came about, they jumped at the chance.
The screening of “The Legacy of Heart Mountain” and the Matsumotos’ presentation is part of Resurrection Lutheran Church’s year-long recognition of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The congregation has planned a large number of activities to not only celebrate the milestone, but to reflect on the enduring values of the Reformation that can continue to impact the church today, Schreiber said.
One of those activities is a monthly “faith and film” night, showcasing movies that touch on important topics in modern society and facilitating discussions around those films.
“The Legacy of Heart Mountain” was suggested by the Matsumotos, and Schreiber felt it was a fascinating look at a forgotten slice of U.S. history.
For Schreiber, the film also has taken on greater importance with the current debate revolving around immigration. Planning for the screening was made last year, well before the presidential election and the tense political atmosphere that has since overcome the nation.
“To me, the subject of this film was very much in my heart, because of, even prior to the election, let alone after the election, the amount of xenophobia in the air — the fear of the ‘other,'” he said.
“I have to very honestly say, last fall before the election and since the election what I’ve seen has troubled me deeply in terms of the lack of clarity from the larger Christian community about how un-Christian some of the rhetoric has been,” Schreiber said.
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“The Legacy of Heart Mountain”
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Resurrection Lutheran Church, 445 E. Stop 11 Road, Indianapolis
What: A screening of a documentary focused on the forced internment of Japanese and Japanese-American people living in the U.S. following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Charles and Mary Matsumoto, Greenwood residents who were both affected by the internment.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Information: rlcindy.org
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