Mayor apologizes for citing WWII internment of Japanese Americans in Syrian refugee memo

A Virginia mayor who ignited a fierce backlash by citing the mass detention of Japanese Americans during World War II in comments about keeping Syrian refugees out of the region has apologized for his remarks.

At a special meeting Friday, Roanoke Mayor David Bowers conceded that his comments were “unwise and inappropriate,” the Associated Press reported.

Bowers also said he has no plans to step down, despite calls for him to resign.

In a letter on official city stationery, Bowers had asked local governments and nonprofit groups to join the more than half of the nation’s governors who have said they do not want to accept Syrian refugees into their states, citing security concerns after the Paris terrorist attacks. The Obama administration plans to admit about 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year.

Bowers’ stance on the issue is just one among many. In Congress, Republican lawmakers plan to vote on legislation toughening the U.S. screening process for Syrian and Iraqi refugees despite a veto threat by President Obama.

But it was a single line in Bowers’ letter that caught critics’ attention.

“I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from [Islamic State] now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Bowers, a Democrat, said in the statement.

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For many public officials across the nation, the mass detention of Japanese Americans during World War II has long been one of the most embarrassing moments in the nation’s history — a dark chapter that has been apologized for and legally repudiated, and which is now providing a mirror for some Asian American lawmakers to hold up to the present.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside), whose parents and grandparents were interned during World War II, said that most historians and students of that era agree that the wartime internment of Japanese Americans was irrational and stoked by fear.

“What did occur in the wake of Pearl Harbor was an irrational response to wartime hysteria, and I would say that the way that the local discourse is going on right now is we’re allowing the word, the notion of Syrian refugees, to be conflated with terrorism,” Takano said.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign had previously touted an endorsement from Bowers on its website, but by Wednesday, Bowers’ name had been erased from the site, and the campaign issued a blunt rejection of his statement: “The internment of people of Japanese descent is a dark cloud on our nation’s history and to suggest that it is anything but a horrible moment in our past is outrageous.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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