Samuel --

Just a few weeks after my fifth birthday, in the spring of 1942,
my parents got my younger brother, my baby sister, and me up
very early, hurriedly dressed us, and quickly started to pack.

When my brother and I looked out the window of our living room,
we saw two soldiers marching up the driveway, bayonets fixed to
their rifles. They banged on our front door and ordered us out of
the house. We could take only what we could carry with us.

We were loaded on to train cars with other Japanese-American
families, with guards stationed at both ends of each car as
though we were criminals, and sent two-thirds of the way across
the country to an internment camp in the swamps of Arkansas.

For nearly three years, barbed wire, sentry towers, and armed
guards marked home. Mass showers, lousy meals in crowded
mess halls, and a searchlight following me as I ran from our
barracks to the latrine in the middle of the night -- in case I
was trying to escape -- became normal.

So when I hear Donald Trump's transition advisors talk about
building a registry of Muslims and his surrogates using the
internment of Japanese-Americans as their model, I am outraged
-- because I remember the tears streaming down my mother's
face as we were torn away from our home. And I am resolved to
raise my voice and say, loudly and clearly, that this is not who we
are:

[link removed]

My mother was born in Sacramento, my father grew up in San
Francisco, and my siblings and I were born in Los Angeles. We
were American citizens, as proud of our country as we were of our
Japanese heritage. But in the fear and mass hysteria of wartime,
none of that mattered. When our government allowed hatred and
racism to overtake our values, nothing else mattered.

We cannot allow our country to be led down that dark path ever
again.

Samuel, I am committed to fighting for our values, our democracy,
and the moral character of our nation. And I am committed to
standing with the Democratic Party against bigotry and oppression
for the next four years and beyond, no matter what form it takes. I
hope you will do the same. Add your name today to stand with me:

[link removed]

Thank you,

George








































































































































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