Japanese Americans driven from jobs in '40s get apology
It took 71 years, but California's State Personnel Board has issued a formal apology for a World War II-era resolution that essentially kicked 265 Japanese Americans out of state service and prevented countless others from taking state government work.
The apology, laid out in a resolution adopted earlier this month, has no legal consequences.
The state rescinded its discriminatory resolutions many years ago and gave back pay to 88 Japanese Americans who challenged their terminations. A 1983 law awarded up to $5,000 to Japanese American employees who lost their jobs.
But until last week the board had never said it was sorry for its part in the institutionalized discrimination.
The board's resolution retraces the nation's paranoid politics after Pearl Harbor, beginning with a 1942 California order that purged state job eligibility lists of "any person or persons who are citizens, naturalized citizens, or native-born citizens who are descendants of nationals with whom the United States is at war."
David Unruhe, spokesman for the Japanese American Citizens League, applauded the board for its resolution.
"This apology was a long time coming," Unruhe said, "but it is a sincere apology nevertheless."
BILL WATCH
Freshman Assemblyman Anthony Rendon last week proposed the Nonresidential Building Energy Retrofit Financing Act of 2012 to create a state loan program for projects cutting energy consumption in commercial buildings. Problem is, it's 2013. An aide to Rendon, D-Lakewood, racked up the error to oversight: AB 122 reintroduces a measure from last year that died in an Assembly committee.
WORTH REPEATING
"His vision of a world free of hatred and injustice has changed the face of American society and continues to inspire people around the world."
GOV. JERRY BROWN, in his proclamation declaring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day in honor of the civil rights leader's birthday last week
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