For Sam Ozaki, the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, rekindled the pain and humiliation he endured after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942.
Sixty-two years ago, Ozaki was a high school student in Los Angeles. And though he was born in the United States and raised here, the presidential order sent Ozaki and thousands of other Japanese-Americans to internment camps.
“The first thing that came to mind was, `Here we go again’–that they would begin picking on and profiling Arab-Americans,” said Ozaki, 79, a retired teacher and high school principal from Rogers Park.
Ozaki spoke Saturday at a rally against alleged governmental profiling and detentions of Pakistani-Americans, Arab-Americans and Muslims. The rally, which took place in the basement of a South Asian restaurant in the heart of Chicago’s Pakistani and Indian district, followed a caravan protest through Rogers Park.
The rally drew a modest crowd of activists. Organizers said they expected a low turnout by neighborhood residents and Devon Avenue shopkeepers, likely scared off by fear of reprisals by police, the FBI and immigration authorities.
“I think this climate of fear has really affected people,” said Jeff Lyons, an organizer from the Chicago chapter of Refuse & Resist, a grass-roots activist group. He was referring to reports since 9/11 of police and FBI agents questioning people of South Asian or Arabic origin living or doing business in Chicago.
“Sometimes you have to create a climate of solidarity so people feel able to speak out,” Lyons said.
