Less than three months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
on Dec. 7, 1941, a date which President Franklin D. Roosevelt said
“will live in infamy,” the United States began its own “days of
infamy.”

On Feb. 19, 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which
allowed the U.S. military to exclude Japanese Americans from the
U.S. Pacific Coast. Within months, more than 120,000 Japanese
Americans, the majority of whom were U.S. citizens, were stripped
of their homes and businesses on the coast and sent to War
Relocation Camps inland.

The U.S. Census Bureau illegally provided confidential
neighborhood information about Japanese Americans, making the
military’s job easier, and, in 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
the constitutionality of Roosevelt’s order. It wasn’t until 1988
that President Ronald Reagan issued an official apology to interned
Japanese Americans.

Documenting those dark days of American history and one Colorado
governor’s fight to defend the Constitutional rights of Japanese
Americans, Nitto Tire has sponsored a 50-minute video titled “The
Untold Story of Ralph Carr and the Japanese: The Fate of Three
Japanese Americans and the Internment.” Starting this month, the
documentary is being shown on All Nippon Airways international
flights.

According to the Colorado State Archives, Carr served as the
state’s governor from 1939-1943. He was born in 1897 in Rosita and
educated in Cripple Creek. After graduating from the University of
Colorado he moved around the state, living in Victor, Trinidad and
Antonito.

Before being elected governor, he served as Colorado Assistant
Attorney General and as a U.S. District Attorney. As a Republican,
Carr didn’t support Roosevelt’s New Deal but had been a strong
supporter of his foreign policy. That is until the fear of the
so-called “Yellow Peril” pushed the nation into rampant
discrimination against a group of its own citizens.

Carr was one small but strong voice against internment and his
fight to help Japanese Americans keep their U.S. citizenship
eventually cost him a seat in the U.S. Senate.

“If you harm them, you must harm me,” he said. “I was brought up
in a small town where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred.
I grew to despise it because it threatened the happiness of you and
you and you.”

Carr died in 1951.

According to a news release from Kourtney Schepman, of the Los
Angeles-based Pacific Design Center, the documentary marks the 69th
anniversary of the internment. The hope is that it will convey two
messages — “never forget” and “never again.”

It follows three Japanese Americans as they experienced the
1940s. One of these was Robert Fuchigami, who, with his family, was
uprooted and forced to live in Colorado’s Camp Amache. He speaks of
the deterioration of family unity and the sadness he felt while
living in the camp.

The second account, that of Herbert Inouye, recounts one
family’s move from California to Colorado’s safe haven. He said
that, while traveling across country, his family met with angry
mobs and soldiers with guns but at the Colorado border they were
met with warmth and kindness by Colorado State Troopers.

The third story is that of Mitchie Terasaki, who avoided
government evictions and became a Colorado civil servant after she
was hired by Carr.

The video can be viewed at http://vimeo.com/28381711.

Nitto Tire has factories in both the United States and Japan and
is a supporter of the Japanese American National Museum and other
organizations dedicated to building awareness of Japanese American
history and culture.

Founded in 1952, All Nippon Airways is the ninth largest airline
in the world, according to its revenues.