Sixty years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing 140,000 Japanese from the blast, heat and radiation. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 75,000. Thousands more suffered, and many died, from the long-term effects of the heat and radiation from the bombings that also caused scarring, cancer and birth defects.

San Jose, CA – On June 2, members of the San Jose Japanese American community met at the Yu-Ai-Kai (Japanese American Seniors' Center). They were there to learn more about the attacks on Arab Americans, Muslims and civil liberties following Sept. 11. Susan Hayase moderated the program on behalf of the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee. In her introduction, Hayase said, “It is happening again,” and pointed the connection between the mass arrests of Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbor and the detention of Arab and Muslim Americans today.

San Jose, CA – A standing ovation greeted Maha El Genaidi’s denouncement of “Bush’s secret government of oil barons and multinational corporations,” as she blasted the attacks on Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians at the annual Day of Remembrance program. The theme of the program was “Race Prejudice, War Hysteria, and a Failure of Political Leadership,” and it made the connection between the World War II internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps and today’s attacks on civil liberties as the U.S. government wages war on Iraq.

San Jose, CA – More than 200 people gathered at the Buddhist Church in San Jose's Japantown, Feb. 17, for the annual Day of Remembrance program. For more than twenty years, the Japanese American community has commemorated President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which led to the removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the west coast, and forced their imprisonment in U.S. concentration camps during World War II.

San Francisco, CA – Chanting “Free Wen Ho Lee!” more than 150 people rallied in front of the San Francisco Federal Building, June 8, for a National Day of Action to protest the government's persecution of Dr. Wen Ho Lee. Dr. Lee was an employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory, which designs and builds nuclear weapons. He was jailed and charged with providing an unnamed foreign power with information on atomic weapons.