I beg your pardon, my dear Nisei friends if you should get hurt by what I am about to say hereinafter – about what your friends are doing down south in protest of fencing immigrants. I honestly believe you are not living up to your sense of justice – not at all – you are only degrading your otherwise fair protest to what yourselves had gone through behind the fence of the so-called relocation centers during World War II.

First and foremost, I confide in you that I am personally party, though indirectly, to what you have gone through. My ex-wife, a Nisei, spent her late-teen days in that formidable period at Manzana. Her big brother and sister were with her. She told me all about what it was like and won my heartfelt sympathy.

Yes, I am fully aware of the significance of THE FENCE and the hardships you had endured through the subsequent pre-Reagan days. Your president officially apologized for the country’s wrongdoing, offered compensation and settled, though superficially, the long-overdue account.

Now, here’s my understand of the situation down south: To begin with, the matter of illegal immigration is totally wrong and your government’s move to “fence them out” is, likely political motivations aside, right and justifiable. The issue is not erecting nowaday “relocation camps” but that the detainees are illegal non-American citizens.

Manzana fenced-in American citizens, not aliens. Down South, it is floods of aliens, yet to be American citizens, that are being detained, subject to certain legal actions. The difference in nature is so obvious that your friends’ activities in support of the illegal actions of yet-alien immigrants only degrades your clamor for justice, running contrary to your movement towards winning a due status for the “Americans of Japanese ancestry”.

I know for a fact that not a few common Americans side with you in your movement. They regret all that happened then and support to uplift the status of the Japanese American. May I ask whether or not they look favorably at your friends down south joining in the protest against “fencing”? I am sure you are aware that the keyword “fencing” is being totally misused here.

I am aged 84 and my ex-wife has long passed away. Were she here to say her piece, I am inclined to believe she would feel the same way as I do. As I said in the outset, I beg your pardon if I were wrong in the assessment. I am prompted to say my piece in support of you. Watch your steps, my deal Nisei friends. This is a sensitive issue with some international implications including the country of your ancestry, Japan.

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