Proof of citizenship

I am tired. I went on a trip with my father for a week. We really had a great time. Five years ago I would not have taken time off work to go on a trip. My father wanted to take a trip down memory lane and kept talking about going for a final trip. So I went.

We went to Honolulu. While visiting the Arizona, my father tried to hide his tears but he couldn’t do it. He took his time to read the names of all of the people who had died on the Arizona and later after going back to Contemplation Point, he read the names of the soldiers, sailors, marines and civilians who died during the attack.

A few days later we went to Fort DeRussy Museum and looked at the exhibits that dealt with Hawaii’s military history. While the United States was locking Japanese Americans in camps for national security reasons, Japanese American soldiers took some of the highest casualties of any American military unit in World War II. They had to prove that they were loyal Americans.

Likewise, African-American soldiers served. The Tuskegee Airmen flew missions to protect American Bombers and were segregated from the rest of the Army Air Corp. They had to prove that they were as skilled, as capable and as dedicated as their White counterparts. While they were fighting to liberate Europe from oppression, their families suffered oppression here in the States.

Native Americans operated as “code-talkers” and served with distinction trying to prove that they were also equally “American.” While fighting for the United States, their families were on reservations and were treated as incapable of handling their own affairs by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Historically, minority groups have had to fight harder to “prove” their worthiness to be an American and to prove their loyalty. We have fought for liberty without extending the complete rights of citizenship and liberty to those who were citizens.
As a nation, we have come a long way toward looking at people based on character and not on race, religion, or gender. We still have a long way to go.

Today, on the news there was a report on the rise of racists groups in the United States. This bothers me. In order to keep our democracy secure, we need to practice tolerance. We cannot deny one group rights without putting our own rights in jeopardy. It is frequently our differences that our strength is built on. Evil cannot succeed when good men and women speak out against it.