A vintage U.S. flag with signatures of Japanese-Americans, including survivors of internment camps during World War II, has been donated to a museum in Los Angeles on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of their forced displacement.
The flag was donated to the Japanese American National Museum on Saturday after Johnny Cepeda Gogo, a Superior Court judge in Santa Clara, California, launched a campaign to collect the signatures in March last year.
"The purpose is to honor all...who had to go through the camps, and they lost their freedom, they lost their liberty, they lost their livelihoods," Gogo told Kyodo News.
"Another important goal is to teach our future generations, but also to teach our fellow community members who don't know about this wrongful incarceration," Gogo said.
Since the launch of the flag-signing project, he has collected more than 1,000 signatures from across the United States.
Through an executive order issued on Feb. 19, 1942, by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the incarceration of around 120,000 Japanese-Americans was carried out under the rationale they might spy for Japan or sabotage the war effort.
In remembrance of the 80th anniversary, U.S. President Joe Biden released a statement on Friday saying, "We reaffirm our commitment to 'Nidoto Nai Yoni,' which translates as 'Let It Not Happen Again.'"
"Despite never being charged with a crime, and without due process, Japanese-Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and communities and incarcerated simply because of their heritage," Biden said.
The number of 48-star vintage flags used in Gogo's campaign with such signatures increased to five, three of which had already been donated to other facilities. The 48 stars represent the number of U.S. states at the time of World War II.
The idea for the campaign came about after Gogo had learned about Fred Korematsu, a second-generation Japanese-American who fought a legal battle against the 1942 executive order, which Roosevelt signed following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
Korematsu filed a suit against the federal government after being arrested for refusing to comply with the internment order but lost his legal fight in 1944.
His conviction was vacated in 1983 after another trial where a San Francisco court recognized the internment program discriminated against Japanese-Americans based on race.
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