Japanese American civil rights leaders and advocates criticized former President Trump for comparing rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to those held in internment camps during World War II.
“It’s flat-out offensive. It’s a night-and-day difference what happened,” David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Japanese Americans’ whole families were incarcerated without any sort of trial — their own crime was they were of Japanese descent.”
“For these January 6 people, they have had their day in court, they’ve either been indicted or convicted of crimes, and that is why they’re being incarcerated,” Inoue added.
Trump, who appeared Friday in an interview on “The Dan Bongino Show,” questioned why those prosecuted for their actions during the Jan. 6 riots were still being held after a Supreme Court ruling in June found an obstruction law used to charge scores of rioters was improperly applied.
“Why are they still being held? Nobody’s ever been treated like this,” Trump told host Dan Bongino. “Maybe the Japanese during Second World War, frankly. But, you know, they were held, too.”
Roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II after then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order. President Biden called it “one of the most shameful periods in American history.”
Ann Burroughs, the president and chief executive of the Japanese American National Museum, called Trump’s comparison “egregiously inaccurate and flawed.”
“This is an egregiously inaccurate and flawed historical analogy,” Burroughs said in a statement. “There is no comparison between the treatment received by the January 6 rioters and Japanese Americans who were denied due process when they were forcibly removed from their homes, systematically dispossessed and incarcerated for the duration of the war.”
“Now more than ever, the lessons from the Japanese American incarceration must never be forgotten, ignored, minimized, or erased,” she added.
Sharon Yamato, the daughter of former Japanese Americans who were incarcerated, told The Associated Press that the comparison was “horrible.”
“Japanese Americans are not and should not be compared to insurrectionists who committed major crimes and in which people were hurt and killed,” Yamato said. “And I think that that is just so horrible to try to even make that comparison or allege that there’s any similarities between the two.”
The former president has previously backed the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, labeling them “warrior” and “victims.”
“Those J6 warriors — they were warriors — but they were really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Trump said at a rally in Nevada earlier this year. He has also suggested that if elected in November, he will issue pardons.
The Justice Department charged about 1,500 defendants in connection to the Capitol breach. Roughly 550 have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees.
The Hill has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
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