Japanese Americans reflect on painful history of incarceration, find similarities under Trump

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- It's been 83 years since Flora Ninomiya's life changed forever. She was six years old when she and her family were forced into an internment camp in February of 1942.

"I was a child and so I feel that I was protected by my mother, my two older sisters. My older sister at the time was 10 years old and so she knew that something was really not right," said Ninomiya who was incarcerated at Camp Amache in Colorado.

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Saburo Fukuda was 7 years old when he saw FBI agents take his dad during a sermon.

"It was a very confusing period for me not understanding what was going on and from that point on we didn't see father for three years," said Fukuda.

Their lives will forever be marked by the signing of Executive Order 9066, which allowed for the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans nearly two months after the Pearl Harbor attack.

This was President Franklin Roosevelt's effort to address the fear of potential espionage.

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Over 100,000 Japanese Americans were forced to live in camps through most of WWII. This week they are remembering that painful history.

"It's an important time for our community. It's a time when we gather together to remember our collective history. Especially the dark days that our families and our communities faced during War World 2," said Grace Shimizu, Director of the Campaign for Justice: Redress NOW for Japanese Latin Americans.

Almost immediately after the incarcerations President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 which allowed for the deportation of German, Italian and mostly Japanese immigrants.

During his campaign, President Trump vowed to invoke the same act to target migrant criminal networks operating in the U.S. This has brought back the history many Japanese Americans experienced.

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"We are angry that this current administration is actually using the template of Japanese Americans' forced removal and mass incarceration as a blueprint to target immigrants. This is a campaign of hate and it's going to destroy the civil society of this country," said Mike Ishii, Co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity.

As mass deportations increase across the country, Japanese Americans are sounding the alarm.

"You can't do this again," said Ninomiya.