A Japanese civil rights group blasted former President Donald Trump on Friday calling his statement "flat-out offensive" comparing Jan. 6 defendants to World War II internment camps.
Trump's comment came during an interview Friday with MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino, in which he said, "Nobody's ever been treated like this," referring to people charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“Nobody’s ever — maybe the Japanese during the Second World War, frankly. But you know, they were held too," he said.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. government forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in internment camps. Of those, about two-thirds were American citizens.
The Justice Department recognized in 2011 that "mistakes" were made in its legal defense of the internment camps.
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By contrast, about 1,500 people have been charged in the Capitol riot, 1,200 of whom have either pleaded guilty or were convicted. Around 600 were accused of attacking police officers or rioting.
David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, shredded the comparison, telling The Washington Post, "It’s flat-out offensive."
"It’s a night-and-day difference what happened,” said Inoue. “Japanese Americans’ whole families were incarcerated without any sort of trial — their own crime was they were of Japanese descent. For these January 6 people, they have had their day in court, they’ve either been indicted or convicted of crimes, and that is why they’re being incarcerated.”
Ann Burroughs, president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum, called the analogy "egregiously inaccurate and flawed."
“There is no comparison between between the treatment received by the January 6 rioters and Japanese Americans who were denied due process when they were forcibly removed from their homes, systematically dispossessed and incarcerated for the duration of the war," she said. "Now more than ever, the lessons from the Japanese American incarceration must never be forgotten, ignored, minimized, or erased.”