For Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2002

Thinking was outrageous, racist

Vic Holloway (Letters Aug. 29) takes Toru Miyoshi to task for his criticism of the U.S. government/s policy of incarcerating Japanese Americans during W.W.II.

He somehow justifies his position by referring to the wartime atrocities committed by Japan and blames Miyoshi for Japan/s wartime conduct.

Such thinking is outrageous and racist and an insult to all Japanese Americans.

To blame Japanese Americans for Japan/s conduct is absurd. Are German Americans equally guilty for the genocidal murder of six million Jews?

If ancestry is a measure of guilt of a people in the minds of people like Mr. Holloway, if the way you look or how you spell your last name justifies the government taking all you own and putting you in prison, and if that/s what Americans condone, then this country is in serious trouble.

But that/s exactly what happened to Japanese Americans during WWII.

We were forced from our homes at gunpoint and placed in prison camps surrounded with barbed wire and armed soldiers in guard towers with orders to shoot anyone attempting to escape.

So what if we had baseball games? So what if a handful left to attend college in the Midwest? The government had made a huge constitutional blunder and allowed such things to make the camps appear the type of resort Mr. Holloway would like to think of them as.

We are a nation of laws. If we fall to the whims of the time or to hysterical thinking, we cease to be the great democracy we have been for over 200 years.

John Tateishi

National Executive Director

Japanese American Citizens League

Another letter on Marian/s problem

This is one more letter in a long list of letters regarding the ridiculous wait and neglect one receives when having to use Marian Emergency Room and other facilities.

In May, my granddaughter was expecting her first child. She had to get on a waiting list for the baby to be delivered. I/ve never heard of such atrociousness.

Then on Aug. 27, my oldest daughter had a serious head injury from a fall. She was taken by ambulance to the ER, where she lay for hours, strapped to a backboard in the hallway.

No one came to examine her, ask how she was doing or see to her needs.

Doctors and nurses walked by numerous times but no one seemed concerned. We as a family didn/t know whether her injury was life threatening.

The lack of care and overcrowding has become more than a serious problem; it borders on being criminal.

Santa Maria keeps growing and prices climb higher. Why do we not see fit to build another hospital?

Twice in the last year my faith in the care has been shaken.

Bobbie Biely

Santa Maria

Taxes should go to private schools

I very much support using tax dollars to be used by citizens for private schools. The last of our nine children is a junior at a private school. We have paid tuition for all of our children to attend private schools while still paying taxes to support public schools. We had our children in public schools for one or two years. The inferior education was appalling. The per capita rate at which our private schools operate with excellent quality of education, arts, and physical education is but a fraction of the rate that public schools are supported for each child. School supplies, books, and field trips are all paid additionally to tuition. In public schools these are all supplies and very much abused.

Everyone deserves the choice of where to send their children and we deserve the help from taxes. Whenever competition is created, products improve. Maybe this will save our public schools.

Margie Halsell

Santa Maria

Flying flag flouts why they came

I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. It was inhabited by immigrants from Germany, Italy, Poland, Austria and many others. In the 20-plus years I lived there I never once saw a flag of a foreign government flown.

I can understand an immigrant being proud of the country, the language and the heritage where he comes from.

To me a flag is a symbol of the country/s government. For any immigrant to be proud of a government that has oppressed its people for hundreds of years and is noted for its graft and corruption confuses me.

How can people be proud of a government that wouldn/t permit U.S. aid into the country when national disasters occur. If they think their country/s government is so great, what are they doing here?

It appalls me when they come here and reap our country/s bounty and flaunt their country/s flag in my face.

Robert Ferrence

Lompoc

Corbett should try it down in Mexico

I am amazed at Steve Corbett/s spin on his interpretation of the condition of immigrants, illegal or otherwise, living in the U.S. Immigrants know that when they arrive here, they will be housed better, eat better and receive better medical care, and their children will receive a better education. They do not need to learn English; everything is available in their native language.

I did not say they don/t learn English, I said it/s not necessary or required. Not in spite of, but because of, the United States of America and our generous support programs that are carefully crafted to accommodate and comfort foreign nationals, they are not living in third world poverty at the hands of their own government.

Mr. Corbett believes that Latino children deserve to be freed from the stranglehold of poverty. What about white, black and American Indian children still living in poverty?

Many, not all, immigrants work hard to assimilate into the mainstream of our American society. Many struggle to see that their children attain a higher education, many become homeowners, and business owners.

Mr. Corbett seems to be disgruntled that all immigrants, (no matter whether they deserve it or not) do not immediately assume middle class standing when they arrive here.

I have an idea! Mr. Corbett should pack up his cause and move down to Mexico to fight the abuse and neglect of those citizens by their very own government.

Suzanne Canas

Santa Maria