Japanese Americans recall World War II internment 60 years later SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - It's been 60 years, but the pain of destroying her mother's kimonos and anything else of Japanese origin still stings Betty Haruko Nishi. She remembers all too well how the federal government forced thousands of Japanese to give up their homes and businesses to live in internment camps during World War II. "Everything happened so fast. My dad's new tractor, we had to leave behind. We couldn't take anything Japanese," Nishi, 72, told the San Jose Mercury News. "It was horrible." President Roosevelt signed an executive order on Feb. 19, 1942, forcing about 120,000 Japanese-Americans, many of them U.S. citizens living on the West Coast, away from their homes, jobs and farms and into 10 internment camps. The U.S. government did not formally apologize or make reparations to internment survivors until 1989. Former internees say they hope a lesson was learned from their pain and that others don't receive similar treatment during America's war on terrorism. "I hope the same thing doesn't happen to the Middle Easterners," said Dave Tatsuno, whose family was forced to sell their store's merchandise and move to Topaz in the Utah desert. "Most of them are innocent like we were. The country has to be careful to never again fall into the trap of condemning a people due to ancestry." Nishi had just celebrated her 12th birthday with her family in Turlock when she was sent to a filthy assembly center in Merced with her parents, five brothers and sister. Nishi's mother went temporarily blind with stress, and her siblings got pneumonia and ulcers. Four months later, they shared two stark rooms in Amanche, Colo., and watched many young men leaving the camps to fight for the United States overseas. Ultimately, the all-Japanese 100th Battalion - 442nd Regimental Combat Team suffered the highest casualty rate and became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service. "Looking back I remember the deep well of pain the experience caused my parents," Nishi said. "It is something that will always be in my heart." Katie Hironaka, 82, also can't forget, even though she admits the camps - in a strange way - may have saved lives. "What was done to us was wrong," said Hironaka, who was sent to Heart Mountain, Wyo., with her parents and brothers. "And yet, there was so much prejudice and ignorance, who knows how many Japanese homes would have been burned, how many citizens would have been hurt or even killed if we had been around?" she said. "In that way it was good, and yet it was so terrible as well."

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