Nathan Gingrich (he/him/his)

On this day 82 years ago, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the height of insanity of racism after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, signed Executive Order 9066. It ordered all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to be summarily rounded up and imprisoned within 10 barbed wire prison camps, with no charges, no trial, no due process. One day, a few months later, we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway, carrying rifles with shiny bayonets on them. They stopped up the porch right in front of our window and banged on the front door. My father answered, and one of the soldiers pointed the rifle at him, right in front of us, and ordered us out of our home. I had just turned five in April; it was May when they came to take us away. My father gave my brother Henry and me two heavy suitcases. And we brought them out onto the driveway and waited for our mother to come out. When she did, she had our baby sister in one arm, a huge duffel bag in the other, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. That is one morning that is seared into my memory. I will never be able to forget all the innocent people, my family included, who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, most of who were law abiding U.S. citizens, who were suddenly categorized as ‘enemy aliens.’ Today, I hear terrifying words from political leaders today that once more raise the specter of what happened before, right here in America. Donald Trump and his allies are talking about rounding up 11 million people and putting them into mass detention camps before deporting them. There won’t be time for due process, to sort out who is documented and who is not. Homes will be lost. Businesses, too. Families will be torn apart. Lives will be ruined, over fear and ignorance, all to serve the ambitions and agendas of politicians. I know, because I lived through it. I say, never again. Not while I have one ounce of fight still left in me. Join me. Fight this madness. Help keep America from repeating the mistakes of its past.