Stooping before nine elderly Japanese-Americans, several of them more than 100 years old and in wheelchairs, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh last week presented each one a formal Presidential apology, and a reparation check, for an episode that still stands out as one of the nation's worst violations of individual rights. During World War II, supposedly in order to forestall possible attacks by Japanese agents against strategic installations in the U.S., the federal government summarily ordered the "relocation" of 120,000 ordinary citizens and immigrants of Japanese descent to 10 internment camps.
Culminating decades of lobbying by Japanese-Americans to redress the pain and...
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