Dear Editor,
Responding with all due respect to my colleague Professor Janis Dietz’ Letter to the Editor [Feb. 28], where she indicated that she would be willing to give up all of her freedoms for the U.S.A. to protect her. My grandparents and mother were given no such choice.
My grandparents were denied the privilege of becoming U.S. citizens by a racist exclusionary act designed to prevent persons of Japanese ancestry from becoming citizens, regardless of how long they lived in this country. Although their children, including my mother, were considered citizens by right of being born in this country, both first generation (Issei) non-citizens and second generation (Nisei) citizens were thrown into concentration camps during World War II by the authority of the United States government where over 100,000 people were held. Their only crime was the accident of the country of their ancestors.
Now, the U.S. government imprisons Arab Americans and non-citizens with the same rationale used in World War II, to “protect” us. I love this country, too, but I am not willing to fully trust a system that promises to uphold the rights of all of its citizens and yet imprisons some of its own without charges other than they look like “the enemy.” To quote an old cartoon, “Pogo,” “We have met the enemy and he is us.” As soon as we start to make exceptions to our freedoms we should be guaranteed under the Constitution, any one of us can become “the enemy.” I, for one, am not willing to give those precious freedoms up.
Paul Alvarez
Professor of Movement and Sports Science
