Comparing California's Prop 8 to the Japanese American Internment

"It wasn't that long ago that discrimination was legal in California. Japanese Americans were confined in internment camps."

This is how one of the many "No on Prop 8" television commercials started, and to me, it is absurd and offensive to compare the internment of the Japanese Americans with the right to marry for gays and lesbians. Granted, I know there are many gays and lesbians who have faced extreme discrimination and prejudice within society, their friends, or their family, and I would be stupid to try to say that I know how it feels. However, Proposition 8 is not about how hard it is to live as a gay or lesbian, it is about the single issue of being allowed to be legally married. I have relatives who have told me about the internment camps, and being banned from being legally recognized as married is nothing compared to what the Japanese Americans had to go through.

Here's a little background for those who do not know about the Japanese internment camps. Right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States government felt it was unsafe to let Japanese Americans to live freely in their country. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the government to relocate about 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and lives, many of who were born citizens. The Japanese Americans were allowed to take very few things to the "relocation centers" and the rest they tried to sell. Many non-Japanese Americans offered to buy their belongings at extremely low prices, because they knew if the Japanese American familes couldn't sell it, someone would just come and steal it anyways. Anything else the Japanese American familes could not get rid of in time, were eventually stolen while they were in the camps.

While in Manzanar and the other camps around the country, prisoners were forced to live in shoddy barracks surrounded by fences with armed men in watchtowers. The entire camp was poorly constructed, so there were holes in the walls of the barracks, which made it difficult to sleep when the strong desert winds kicked up sand and rocks through the cracks. Families were closed off with partitions that did not have ceilings, which meant that it was impossible to have any kind of privacy. The camp toilets and showers were communal, with no partitions or dividers. As you can imagine, no one was allowed to leave the camp.

Four and a half years later, in 1945, Manzanar officially closed. However, many did not want to leave because they had nowhere to go, knowing that all of their belongings, houses, and cars had been either sold or stolen. Manzanar at least offered a roof over their heads. The government would not allow anyone to stay at the camps, and the Japanese Americans were forced to relocate again, but this time, out into the real world where most families had nothing.

Once the government decides to gather all the gays and lesbians and force them out of their lives to place them in a guarded camp to live in subpar conditions for four years, then they can use the internment of Japanese Americans to promote their cause. Until then, please do not try to argue that the issue of gay marriage comes even close to the tragedy of ruining the lives of an entire race of citizens. I'm just glad the people making those "No on Prop 8" commercials were smart enough to also not compare their cause to the slavery of African Americans.