Today, February 19, 2022, marks 80 years since the date FDR signed Executive order 9066, ordering the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. The Wikipedia entry above is chilling and painful to read, as it should be.
Nothing I could say would give back the time lost to those families during the 30 months that passed until the Supreme Court declared the internment unconstitutional. The wheels of justice, I suppose, spin even more slowly than time. George Takei, of Star Trek fame, was one of the children held in those camps. His story, also touched on in Wikipedia, says more than I could here of how terribly wrong this all was, so I’ll simply mark the date, lest we begin to forget.
The reminder of this loss to those also brought to mind the two years of time most of us have lost, to one degree or another, during this pandemic. The former, of course, was an intentional wrong and this period a mere tragedy, but one that has done more than putting so many lives on hold. It has taken two years of experiences, growth, and so much more from our lives – time we cannot get back.
Respect and grief is more than due to the numbers who have died from COVID, nearing six million according to Johns Hopkins and probably many more who died without being diagnosed. Still for all of us fortunate to have lived through it all, we have lost not just loved ones, but a part of ourselves, or at least lives we could have been living, which is worthy of considering.
I might have been working to mark things off my own bucket list, instead of marking time. Many even older than me have lost two years of their likely last few. Children have lost growth experiences usually afforded to the young, and with a moment’s reflection you can identify your own loss. None of us I suppose, like the Japanese-Americans above, will be able to simply pick up where we left off as if nothing happened. Their losses and ours were not their faults. The best we can do, I suppose, is to be kind and help each other carry on, which I ask and pray we will.
