This is a response to Mr. Edward’s letter of Feb. 5.

Mr. Edwards, you complain that 120,000 citizens of the United States; having had all their worldly goods taken from them, having been interned without trial in concentration camps for the duration of WWII, will receive a whole $20,000 each nearly 50 years after the fact.

You would deny this pitiful recompence because the color of their skin is ‘yellow’, because they were of Japanese decent. Your reaction is racist, pure and simple.

You call this a kick in the face to various ethnic groups in the United States. Why? Because there are other totally unrelated problems that have not been solved yet!? That is not a reason. Not only are the examples you cite unrelated, but we already have spent and are spending billions of dollars on those problems.

After some more ranting and raving about the American voter and the Republican party we finally get to the real source of your anger, “It’s the Japanese who are buying the country right from under us.”

First: The Japanese have bought approximately 1 percent of our industry in the last eight years, at that rate it will take them 400 years to gain a controlling interest in the United States.

Second: Americans own more of Europe than Japanese own of the United States.

Third: Japanese-Americans are Americans, not Japanese, they are not now responsible for the trade deficit and the national budget deficit (at least no more so than any other Americans). They were not then responsible for Pearl Harbor. The reasons given for putting them into concentration camps were no more valid than were the reasons given for keeping blacks segregated in the armed forces.

You finish by asking us to look beyond our prejudice and “fight for OUR country.” I ask you to do the first and remember that the type of nationalism embodied in the second is what starts most wars.

Robert I. Morphis

Technician

Physics Dept.