Chapter 7
Governmental apologies and
political reconciliation
Promise and pitfalls
This chapter examines the use of governmental apologies as a means of achieving political reconciliation, enhancing community, and facilitating peace. It considers some of the prominent examples of such apologies, discusses the scholarly literature on the topic, and analyses one case in detail, namely the apology from the United States to Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II. I argue that this one example demonstrates both the promise and pitfalls of using such apologies for political reconciliation.1
Mass media reports of apologies have been commonplace for some time now. Beyond the apologies of poorly behaved celebrities, athletes, and individual politicians, governmental apologies constitute another type of apology that is quite common. For example, in 1993, South African President F.W. de Klerk apologized for his party's imposition of the apartheid system of racial segregation in 1948, saying “we deeply regret it” (Lazare 1995). In 1995, French President Jacques Chirac apologized for the assistance that the Vichy government provided the Nazis in deporting 320,000 Jews to death camps. In 1997, British Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized for British indifference to the Irish potato famine that occurred 150 years earlier. During a Sunday liturgy in 2000, Pope John Paul II apologized for the Catholic Church's historical mistreatment of Jews, women, indigenous people, and others (Gibney and Roxstrom 2001: 912). In 2005, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing “to the victims of lynching and the descendants of those victims for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation” decades ago.2
According to some commentators, we are presently living in the “age of apology” (Brooks 1999). Indeed, although these apologies have occurred for centuries, lately they have occurred with greater frequency. The vogue for governmental apologies began roughly two decades ago, sparked in part by the democratic transitions in Central Europe and South Africa. The 50-year anniversaries of various World War II events also occasioned a significant number of apologies. The dawn of the new millennium also prompted some apologies, as groups like the Catholic Church sought to enter the new era with a clean slate.3 Regardless of the reason for their rise, governmental apologies are now a common and intriguing political phenomenon.
Governmental apologies are similar to regular, everyday apologies; just as individuals apologize in their personal lives, so do governments in public life (Tavuchis 1991: 48). There is no official or widely agreed upon definition of governmental apologies, and different scholars conceptualize the topic in different ways. Janna Thompson offers the following useful definition: “A political apology is an official apology given by a representative of a state, corporation, or other organized group to victims, or descendants of victims, for injustices committed by the group's officials or members” (Thompson 2008: 31). This definition certainly captures much of what governmental apologies are, but it conflates governmental apologies with the broader category of political or public apologies. Political apologies could include actions by leaders and groups who are politically important but might not hold official positions in widely recognized governmental entities. For example, apologies by the Pope or terrorists are certainly political but not governmental in the traditional sense. Similarly, apologies by transnational corporations are certainly public and can be important for many people, but they are generally not entirely political, let alone governmental.
Within the category of governmental apologies, Melissa Nobles distinguishes between apologies offered by a head of state and a head of government. She claims that the former tend to be mere “verbal utterances” while the latter are the products of more deliberative processes and often include compensation (Nobles 2008: 5). That characterization may overstate the differences, but apologies that are supported by a government obviously carry more weight than apologies that are presented by only a part of it.
Given the vagaries of such apologies, it is probably best to construe the topic broadly, so as not to exclude important or noteworthy apologies that might not qualify on any given strict definition. For purposes of this study, I shall focus mainly on governmental apologies and exclude apologies that are more clearly just political or public. I shall exclude apologies that are by non-political groups, or by individuals who are clearly speaking only for themselves or about their own conduct absent any broader political implications.4
Regardless of how exactly one chooses to define governmental apologies, what is the point of such apologies? They seek to ameliorate past wrongs and to help heal old wounds, to pave the way for a more inclusive and peaceful future. Persistently divided societies with deeply resentful groups are not ideal. In countries that have experienced great wrongs, even if the conflict has abated and life is relatively peaceful and perhaps prosperous, an inclusive and robustly democratic community may require that past wrongs be addressed and atoned for, that psychological wounds be encouraged to heal. In short, history often matters more than we realize, and a bright future may require dealing with a painful past. Governmental apologies can help with this. For example, John Torpey conceives of apologies as occupying a space between reparations and memory. He posits a typology with a series of concentric circles that “progress from a ‘core’ of what has come to known as ‘transitional justice’ – typically involving criminal trials, political purges, and truth commissions – through reparations and restitution of a material kind, to apologies and statements of regret, and finally to a concern with ‘collective memory’” (Torpey 2003: 6).5
In terms of the popular slogan “no justice, no peace,” governmental apologies seek to address the former, thus making possible the latter. As Alex Boraine argued, governmental apologies can offer an attractive middle ground between the alternatives of blanket amnesty and criminal prosecution (Boraine 1998). Under an amnesty, victims or their families may be tempted to resort to vigilante justice against perpetrators freely living in their midst, and prosecution can be impractical in societies in which various sides and large groups have blood on their hands. When those responses are problematic, apology may offer a good alternative and a way forward. Evidence that an apology has been effective may be a lack of criticism of it for being ineffective, insufficient, or inappropriate, and the absence of future calls for apology or reparation, but the ultimate proof of effectiveness is a reduction in tension and an increase in community well-being.
How do governmental apologies work? They can be understood as a central step in a process that runs from wrong to right, from injury to healing. They are usually issued in response to a call or a demand for an apology; they generally consist of an admission of wrongdoing, an expression of remorse, a promise not to do it again, and a plea for forgiveness; and hopefully they ultimately lead to reconciliation and an enhanced sense of community. Not every apology works quite that way or explicitly contains each of those elements, but many do.
In part, such apologies work because they contain a public acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and victims often find that the simple fact of publicity is a critical precondition to moving on from alienation to reintegration. Publicity is the prime attraction of truth commissions, like South Africa's well-known Truth and Reconciliation Commission. However, placing atrocities and other wrongs in the public record is only part of what makes governmental apologies work. Governmental apologies generally go further than mere publicity, as they often contain emotional elements and invoke norms of dignity, community, and belonging. By saying – often explicitly – that a wrong should never have occurred and in promising that it will never recur, apologies invoke a shared community – whether our common humanity or as members of a particular nation – that was wrongly torn asunder and that should be made whole again, reaffirmed, and strengthened.
Typology
One may divide the many hundreds of governmental apologies into various types, both structurally and substantively. Structurally, one might distinguish among apologies within a state, between or among states, of from a state to an international non-state group. Each of these types has its own particular dynamics and difficulties. Substantively, there are several main types of governmental apologies. The substantive categories described below may not neatly accommodate every apology, but they reflect the broad variety of governmental apologies.
One such category is diplomatic apologies, which often concern mishaps with ships or aircraft. For example, when Germany sunk the Lusitania in 1915, Woodrow Wilson demanded and received an apology. In January 2001, the U.S. apologized to Japan after an American submarine collided with a Japanese fishing boat. More recently, Turkey demanded that Israel apologize for violently intercepting a Turkish vessel bound for Gaza in July 2010. Those official apologies may be related to broader political concerns, but they are mostly limited to the specific circumstances that prompted them and may thus be of limited importance. Other diplomatic apologies are forced and may thus constitute a special or attenuated category. For example, in 1968 the U.S. grudgingly apologized to North Korea for the Pueblo incident in order to obtain the release of 82 captured seamen, and in 2001 the U.S. issued a quasi-apology to China for a fatal collision between an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in order to gain the release of 24 crew members.
Apologies for and about terrorism are another substantive type. Terrorist groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), its offshoot group the “Real IRA,” and the American leftist group the Symbionese Liberation Army, have issued apologies for some of their actions, and the Libyan government has made several apologies and paid compensation for its role in terrorist acts. There are also apologies by individual terrorists, like the Palestinian terrorist Abu Abbas for hijacking the Achille Lauro in 1985 and the leader of the “Toronto 18” group of terrorists for planning a series of bombings in Canada. Such apologies can be important, but they are prone to criticisms about whether the individual authoritatively speaks for the collective or only for himself. There are also apologies for failing to prevent terrorism. For example, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in June 2010 for intelligence lapses that led to the bombing of an Air India plane in 1985. Two-and-a-half years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke dramatically apologized during congressional testimony to the families of the victims of the attacks for failing to prevent them.
Apologies for events from World War II comprise one of the biggest substantive categories of governmental apologies. Germany has engaged in a number of apologetic actions for the Holocaust and other matters. For example, West Germany paid reparations to individual Holocaust survivors and also the state of Israel as part of a process of Wiedergutmachung, or “making good again” via monetary payments to the victims of the Nazi regime. Individual German leaders have also issued apologies, and in 1970 Chancellor Willie Brandt dramatically fell to his knees at a memorial to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, to demonstrate German repentance. Similarly, multiple Japanese emperors and prime ministers have articulated apologies for Japan's various wartime misdeeds, but they have generally been less fulsome or forthcoming than many would like. Soviet President Michael Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin both apologized for the massacre of thousands of Polish prisoners by Stalin's secret police near the Katyn forest in 1939. Gorbachev said: “It is not easy to speak of this tragedy, but it is necessary” (Fein 1990).
Many governmental apologies concern the historical mistreatment of indigenous or aboriginal peoples. For example, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom apologized “unreservedly” to New Zealand Maori in 1995 for atrocities committed by British colonizers dating back over two centuries. This was arguably the first British apology for any aspect of its colonial rule. In 1998, Canada's Indian Affairs Minister expressed “profound regret” and said the government was “deeply sorry” to the country's 1.5 million indigenous people for decades of mistreatment, in particular for those who were removed from their homes and forced to attend residential schools in which they were subject to physical and sexual abuse. Also in 1998, Australia created a national “Sorry Day” to atone for its mistreatment of aboriginals. The day is commemorated every May 26. A top official of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs apologized in 2000 for the bureau's “historical conduct” of “racism and inhumanity.” In Canada, the Indian Affairs Minister apologized in August 2010 on behalf of the country for the forced relocation of Inuit families in the 1950s.
American apologies constitute another more or less distinct substantive category of governmental apologies. The United States has relatively few examples of governmental apologies at the national level, and many of them occurred during Bill Clinton's presidency. For example, in 1993, Clinton signed into law an apology for the U.S. overthrow and annexation of Hawaii in the nineteenth century. The law's stated purpose was: “To acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the January 17, 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and to offer an apology to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the United States.” The law also said that it sought “to provide a proper foundation for reconciliation between the United States and the Native Hawaiian people.”6
In 1997, Clinton apologized for the infamous Tuskegee experiment, a 40-year study in which some 400 African American men with syphilis were left untreated in order to study the disease's progression. Speaking in front of the study's eight remaining survivors, Clinton said:
What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry.
Mitchell 1997
On March 24, 1998, while in Uganda, Clinton offered an impromptu quasi apology for slavery, saying: “European-Americans received the fruits of the slave trade and we were wrong in that” (J. Bennet 1998a). One day later, he apologized for inaction in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, saying: “We in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred in Rwanda in 1994” (J. Bennet 1998b). In 1999, Clinton apologized for past American support of murderous right wing governments in Guatemala, saying that American “support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake” (Broder 1999).
Thus far, Barack Obama has proffered few apologies for American wrongdoing. However, his trip to Europe and the Middle East in April 2009 – just ten weeks into his presidency – to strengthen ties that were strained during the Bush presidency was derided by conservative critics, who saw the trip as an “apology tour,” in which the president became the “Apologizer in Chief,” wrongly seeking forgiveness for actions that required no apology (Media Matters 2009). Also, in October 2010, Obama apologized to the Guatemalan president for a U.S. medical study conducted in Guatemala in the 1940s in which 700 prisoners and mental patients were purposely infected with syphilis, just as in Tuskegee (McNeil 2010).
Scholarly debates
Journalists and scholars have taken note of many of the individual apologies and even the categories noted above, and there is a large and diverse literature on the topic especially if one construes it broadly.7 A great number of articles on the phenomenon have appeared in various mass media outlets, and there are lists of political apologies online.8 The relevant academic literature may be divided into several types, following traditional academic categories and disciplines, but much of the scholarly work on the topic is multidisciplinary, so the following categories are somewhat inexact.
Many academic works on governmental apologies concern their role in transitional justice and even international law. The title of John Torpey's 2006 book, Making Whole Again What Has Been Smashed, is emblematic of much of this work and alludes to the role of apologies in broader political processes. Roy Brooks's 1999 edited volume is an excellent collection of essays on the general topic, Elazar Barkan (2001) considers the place of restitution and compensation in transitional justice, Melissa Nobles (2008) compares apologies to indigenous peoples in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and in The Age of Apology (2008), Mark Gibney and three co-editors survey several of the main instances of apologies and the various controversies about them.9
Some of the scholarly attention to governmental apologies has noted their religious pedigree. This is not surprising, since the act of apology has often been associated with religious practices, such as Catholic confession and repentance and Judaism's Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and process of teshuvah. For example, Fabiola Azar et al. (1999) compare how different religious communities in Lebanon approach forgiveness. Everett Worthington's 1998 edited volume is also attuned to the theological underpinnings of apology and reconciliation, as is Walter Wink's 1998 book.10
A third branch of the scholarly literature on governmental and other mass public apologies situates them in a philosophic or political-theoretic context. Major theorists and philosophers whose work touches on apology or the related themes of forgiveness and memory include Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt, and Jürgen Habermas. Among academic authors, Robert Amdur discussed the costs of compensatory justice (1979), Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton's 1988 book debates the merits of the alternatives of forgiveness and grudge-holding, and Christopher Bennett (2008) analyses apology as a normative part of the process of punishment and restorative justice. Some recent theoretical accounts see governmental apologies in terms of Enlightenment norms of rationalism and liberalism, while others see them as invoking communitarian ideals more closely tied to Romantic political thought (Torpey 2006: 5).11
In sociology, Erving Goffman's brief 1971 study of apologies is seminal. He examines apologies in terms of social theory and contends that apologies are not primarily concerned with compensation but rather with the (re)affirmation of social bonds. Considerably building on Goffman's account, Nicholas Tavuchis's 1991 book is an outstanding analysis of apology and an excellent introduction to the general topic. Anthropologists have also written about apology. Some focus on the cultural differences in the practice of apology. For example, Spanish speakers supposedly apologize comparatively often, while Hebrew speakers seldom apologize (Renteln 2008: 64). Leticia Hickson (1986) also contends that apology works differently in different cultures and that it is often tied to social hierarchies and can be used to defuse anger and promote reconciliation, while Enright and Coyle (1998) claim that the development of reasoning about forgiveness is similar across different cultures.12
Another strand of the scholarly literature on public apologies addresses their psychological efficacy. Sean Tucker et al. (2006) have argued that, contrary to conventional wisdom, victims who receive apologies perceive the leaders who give such apologies to be stronger than leaders who do not apologize. Jane Risen and Thomas Gilovich (2007) find that victims are predisposed to believe an apology, to accept it, and to be forgiving. A recent study by Yohsuke Ohtsubo and Esuka Watanabe (2008) found that apologies that are costly to the apologizer are seen as more sincere than apologies that a transgressor could easily provide.13
Others deal with the rhetorical or linguistic aspects of apologies. This includes J.L. Austin's (1962) classic treatment of apologies as a main type of “expressive” speech act. Halford Ryan's 1988 edited volume examines apologies as oratorical confrontations, and Robin Lakoff's 2001 chapter on apologies and discourse analysis examines different perspectives on the topic and argues for the need for scholars to be open to interdisciplinarity in both theory and method. Robert Weyeneth (2001) claims that apologies for historical wrongs involve a declaration of accountability to those who were wronged and a promise to improve the relationship in the future, and Erik Doxtader (2004) theorizes about the nature of the reply to an apologetic overture and its role in achieving reconciliation. In her 2005 rhetorical study of Japanese apologies for World War II, Jane Yamakazi examines multiple instances of these apologies and argues that, while the dominant rhetorical theory perceives such actions as attempts to facilitate “image restoration,” the apologies are in fact more complex and involve the construction of a new self-identity and moral affirmations.14
There is also a legal literature that touches on apologies. For example, while many people fear that giving an apology might prompt law suits, as it would indicate an admission of wrongdoing, a study of personal injury lawsuits found that a fulsome apology by a defendant made the injured party more likely to accept a minimal settlement. This suggests that beyond money, victims care a great deal that the wrongdoer understands that his or her action was wrong (Robbennolt 2003).
Japanese American internment
While the academic literature noted above tends to focus on specific aspects of apologies, it may be useful to examine one example of a governmental apology in some detail in order to better understand how such apologies work and to evaluate their potential to facilitate and to enhance peace. The U.S. apology to Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II is one of the relatively few U.S. apologies, and it is arguably the most significant American one. Like many other governmental apologies, it concerns the treatment of minority groups and actions during wartime.15
The Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and the U.S. declared war on Japan the next day. As the nation prepared for war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was persuaded that Japanese Americans posed a security threat, possibly constituting an “enemy within” or a “Fifth Column” that would engage in espionage or sabotage against the United States. On February 19, 1942, FDR issued Executive Order 9066: “Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities,” the Secretary of War was authorized to designate areas from which people could be excluded. The executive order did not mention Japanese Americans per se, but they were clearly its target. Based only on their race and ancestry, their government perceived them as suspect or disloyal and potentially dangerous.16
The forcible exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans began one month after the order as Congress passed a law making it a crime to disobey military restrictions in the areas which the Secretary of War designated pursuant to the President's directive. The government called for the exclusion and internment of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Initially, Japanese Americans were sent to a dozen temporary detention centers run by the War Relocation Authority. Within a couple months, the internees were moved to what the government termed “concentration camps” located in deserts and other remote, desolate areas. Roughly 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were interned in the camps. Most of them were American citizens, and many had lived in the United States for several decades or more. The exclusion order said that internees who could demonstrate their loyalty would be allowed to return home, but the government never established a process for that course of action (Minow 1999: 95). The exclusion of Japanese Americans on the West Coast lasted until December 1944, and the last camp did not close until 1946, well after World War II ended. The internees suffered greatly during this time. Entire communities were uprooted and effectively destroyed. Many internees had to sell homes and businesses at great financial losses, many had their education interrupted, and all had to withstand difficult conditions in the camps.
After their release from several years of captivity, the internees went back into American society and tried to reconstruct their lives. There seems to have been little or no immediate cry for an apology or other way of making up for the terrible experience of having being imprisoned for several years based only on their race. Most academic sources indicate that the origins of what eventually became a movement for redress are obscure. However, on one account: “The roots of the redress movement lay in the camps themselves, with the inmates who demonstrated, conducted strikes, wrote letters, and otherwise challenged the incarceration” (Ishizuka 2006: 114). Another suggests that Japanese Americans’ alleged cultural desire to be inoffensive (the “enryo syndrome”) made the community reluctant to agitate for redress (Weglyn 1976: 274). Yet another account claims that the movement for apology and rectification can be traced to the success of the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which inspired Japanese Americans to push for redress of their own experience with governmental racial discrimination (Torpey 2006: 87). Regardless of the precise causes, some Japanese Americans – especially those who were younger, whose American roots extended beyond the first and second generations – gradually started to push for redress, and the movement began in earnest in the 1970s (Torpey 2006: 85).
The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), which was founded in 1929, played a major role in pushing the government to acknowledge that the internment was wrong. A quarter century after the camps closed, grassroots groups in the Pacific Northwest began to ask for redress. On July 10, 1970, a resolution of the JACL's Northern California–Western Nevada District Council officially called for reparations. Still, some members of the Japanese American community remained conflicted about the idea of reparations or an apology, as some former internees thought that it would be humiliating to have to explain their position, while others felt that it would be too painful to relive their memories (Keaney 1999). Nevertheless, more and more people came to support the idea.
The first real success in the drive for redress came in 1976, when President Gerald Ford officially declared Executive Order 9066 terminated, 34 years to the day after it was issued. President Ford's action was merely symbolic, but it was important nevertheless. In his statement on the matter, he called the internment a “mistake” (Shriver 1995: 165). In 1978, the JACL founded a National Council for Redress to advocate for monetary redress and asked Congress for a governmental apology and payments of $25,000 for each internee. The first congressional bill for monetary restitution was introduced in 1979 by Representative Mike Lowry. It called for an apology and payments of $15,000 plus $15 per day of internment, but the measure did not advance (Kashima 1982: xxiii).
In 1980, Congress established an official commission to study the issue. The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was “to review and analyse the official government contention, historically accepted, that the exclusion, forced removal, and detention of Americans of Japanese ancestry were justified by military necessity” (Kashima 1982: x). Some advocates saw the creation of the Commission as a needless delay, but others saw it as a way to build support for redress by documenting the violation of basic rights (Keaney 1999).
The Commission held public hearings throughout the country in 1981, and 750 witnesses testified in ten cities. In 1982, the Commission concluded that the government's policy of exclusion and internment had been wrong. The Commission's report, entitled Personal Justice Denied, claimed:
Executive Order 9066 was not justified by military necessity, and the decisions that followed from it – exclusion, detention, the ending of detention and the ending of exclusion – were not founded upon military considerations. The broad historical causes that shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.
Kashima 1982: xi
In 1983, the Commission officially recommended that Congress pass legislation providing for an apology and reparations of $20,000 for each surviving internee.17
The Commission's recommendation for an official apology and compensation was nearly unanimous – one member supported the apology but opposed compensation – but it took five years to persuade Congress to enact its recommendations (Keaney 1999). This was because of ignorance and political apathy: even though the Japanese American community felt very strongly about the apology, the issue did not really register for other Americans or for most members of Congress.18 Furthermore, many veterans’ groups were opposed to an official apology. Some people even defended internment on the grounds that it served to protect Japanese Americans from violent attacks by other Americans (Keaney 1999). Legislation to enact the Commission's recommendations gradually attracted more and more support in Congress. This was largely due to the diligent work of Japanese American members of Congress: Representatives Norman Mineta and Robert Matsui – both of California, both of whom were interned as children – and Senators Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga – both of Hawaii. Japanese American congressmen – particularly Senator S.I. Hayakawa of California – had pushed to create the Commission, and now they worked hard to build support to legally enact its recommendations (Shriver 1995: 165).
The long battle for legislation to apologize and pay compensation was helped by two developments in the judicial branch. First, three infamous cases in which Japanese Americans were convicted for violating their detainment were vacated or effectively reversed. In Hirabayashi v U.S. (1943), Yasui v U.S. (1943), and Korematsu v U.S. (1944), the U.S. Supreme Court had determined that the wartime federal denial of due process and other basic rights of Japanese Americans was constitutional. However, in January 1982, the defendants in those three cases sought to have their old wartime convictions vacated through a petition of coram nobis, a little known legal tool that permits courts to reconsider judgments on the basis of newly discovered facts.19 For Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu, the new facts were the Commission's findings. All three defendants ultimately succeeded in having their convictions vacated. Second, in 1983, the National Council for Japanese American Redress filed a class-action suit on behalf of all internees. The suit slowly wound its way through the U.S. judicial system for five years, before it died when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear it. These two legal battles drew media attention and helped build support for the redress legislation (Hatamiya 1993: 165).
In the end, Congress endorsed the Commission's recommendations, as the House and Senate approved legislation authorizing an apology and monetary payments. On August 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 into law. The law began:
The purposes of this Act are to – (1) acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of United States citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II; (2) apologize on behalf of the people of the United States.”
It also stated that it was intended to “discourage the occurrence of similar injustices and violations of civil liberties in the future.” The law provided for an official government apology and $20,000 for surviving inmates alive on that day, as well as a $1.25 billion education fund. At a signing ceremony for the legislation, Reagan said:
No payment can make up for those lost years. So what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong. Here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.
Tavuchis 1991: 107
On October 9, 1990, the first redress payments were issued, beginning with the oldest survivors: 107-year old Mamoru Eto was the first person to receive a check. The checks were sent with a letter from President George H.W. Bush:
A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation's resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II. In enacting a law calling for restitution and offering a sincere apology, your fellow Americans have, in a very real sense, renewed their traditional commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice. You and your family have our best wishes for the future.
Shriver 1995: 166
By most accounts, the apology was well received and highly effective.20 According to some Japanese American leaders, it led to “a collective sigh of relief” (Bishop 1988). Congressman Norman Mineta – who was interned when he was ten years old, and who later became Secretary of Commerce and also Transportation – said of the apology: “It will always mean more to me than I can ever adequately express” (Knight 2008). Mineta also said: “There has never been a moment when I loved this country more” and that the redress was “the best expression of what this nation can be and the power of the government to heal and make right what was wrong” (Japanese American National Museum 1996). Decades after the apology, Japanese Americans continue celebrate the anniversary of the apology: in 2008, scores of Japanese Americans gathered in San Francisco, San Jose, and elsewhere to commemorate its twentieth anniversary (Knight 2008).
Difficulties
The example of the U.S. apology for Japanese American internment may have broader implications for other governmental apologies. However, we should be cautious about generalizing from this one case. After all, whether or not one is persuaded by the various academic arguments about “American exceptionalism,” the U.S. political system is in many respects different from other countries, if not unique. Moreover, this apology had its own idiosyncrasies, beyond its broader political context. Nevertheless, this apology demonstrates many of the difficulties that other apologetic efforts often face.
First, there is the critical issue of timing. For governmental apologies to be most effective, they should occur neither too soon nor too late. If an apology is given while the wrong is still being committed, it cannot be effective. If it comes centuries after the fact, its effect is likely to be minimal. The apology to Japanese Americans fell between those extremes but towards the long end of the range, occurring almost 44 years after the internment ended. In part, this was because it took a while to convince people outside the Japanese American community that there was anything for which to apologize. Because it took a long time, some of the victims were no longer living; the relatives of some 40,000 internees who died before Reagan signed the bill into law were not entitled to payments.21 This raises the thorny question of intergenerational guilt. When the apologizers and those whom they apologize to are not the original parties, the apology can seem awkward. As an editorial in the Montreal Gazette that criticized Canada's apology to Inuits put it: “Saying ‘we're sorry’ on behalf of people now dead … to people who are no longer around to hear, amounts to no more than sanctimonious and politically-correct cant” (Montreal Gazette 2010). On the other hand, the persistence of the state and the continuation of its authority over time arguably make such apologies appropriate. Regardless of one's own views of such matters, the timing of an apology is often a tricky and controversial issue.
Furthermore, the timing of the internment apology was such that the status of Japanese Americans in U.S. society had significantly changed. Within three decades of their internment, Japanese Americans had largely integrated into the American mainstream, so that the victimized group was no longer marginalized or oppressed. Indeed, the average levels of education and income among Japanese Americans surpassed the U.S. national averages by the 1970s. However, those achievements masked the psychological stress that many experienced (Robinson 2001: 250). For some, assimilation meant that they could no longer remain quiet about their mistreatment (Torpey 2006: 86).
These considerations point to the relationship between apology and power. This may be seen in two ways. First, apologies typically are not forthcoming if the victimized group remains at the margins of society. When victims achieve some degree of power, however, their demands become harder to ignore, and apologies often follow. Second, many skeptics of apologies contend that an apology is a sign of weakness. That view underestimates the difficulties and costs that many apologizers face, but it suggests another aspect of power in apologies: part of what makes apologies work is that the original wrongdoer, who was and perhaps still is in a position of strength or power, makes himself or herself weak by offering an apology to the once weak victim who is then empowered in that he or she can choose whether or not to accept it, to grant forgiveness, and to reconcile. In short, the process of apology reverses a power imbalance.
Beyond timing and power, a third lesson of the U.S. apology to Japanese Americans concerns the question of (in)adequacy. Simply put, sometimes saying “sorry” is not enough. Sometimes monetary compensation and criminal proceedings may also be needed. Depending on one's point of view, such measures either undermine or complement an apology.22 Debates about the amount of monetary redress are inevitably contentious. For example, one former Japanese American internee was offended at the small size of the amount, as the government's payment of $20,000 for stealing four years of his childhood meant that his country placed a price of just $5,000 on each of those years (Lazare 1995). In contrast, Aiko Yamamoto, who was interned from age six to nine, said the payment did not matter: “It was more symbolic than anything… It was the apology” that really mattered (Knight 2008). JACL spokesperson Ben Takeshita said that while the money “could not begin to compensate a person for his or her lost freedom, property, livelihood, or for the stigma of disloyalty,” it showed that the government's apology was “sincere” (Bishop 1988).
Fourth, this particular apology was both complicated and complex. It involved all three branches of the U.S. federal government, including multiple presidents. There was also relevant action at the state level: in 1973 the state of California erected a sign at the site of the Manzanar detention camp proclaiming: “May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again.” This suggests that apologies may require the assent and participation of many different political actors and institutions. Indeed, government apologies seldom result from the desires or actions of any one person. It also suggests the broader point that apologies may need to be repeated or re-enacted or remembered, even by different individuals and groups in government: apology is not always a simple one-time occurrence.
Again, the above factors that complicated the apology to Japanese Americans often complicate other apologies. There are often various difficulties beyond these, too. For example, there are often questions about representation and legitimacy, as the individuals or groups who are giving and receiving the apology must be appropriate. Apologies by or to individuals or groups who are not primary or authoritative but in some sense lesser may serve only to highlight the lack of an appropriate apology. There can also be a question of sincerity, as apologies that are forced or expedient may not be credible. There is also the question of whether the act of apology might just reignite smoldering controversies that might perhaps be better left alone.
Given the many difficulties that the U.S. apology for Japanese American internment faced, it is certainly a hard case. Yet the fact that the apology happened and was effective despite the difficulties noted above suggests that governmental apologies can work even in difficult circumstances and thus can be a valuable and broadly applicable means of addressing historical wrongs, reintegrating aggrieved communities, and enhancing peace.
Conclusion
This chapter examined the use of official governmental apologies to facilitate political reconciliation. After noting some basic types and prominent examples of such apologies and reviewing the literature on the topic, it examined the U.S. apology to Japanese Americans in some detail. This example shows how difficult it can be for political apologies to be effective. An official governmental apology is seldom easy. Also, sometimes the circumstances or scope of an historical wrong are such that it can never be fully righted, by an apology or any other means. After all, what words or deeds could possibly make up for the Holocaust or centuries of slavery and discrimination?
Still, the apology to Japanese Americans, like many of the other examples noted here, also shows how effective such apologies can be, despite the many obstacles they face. Under the right circumstances, a carefully executed apology can work wonders. Even with the great number of governmental apologies that have been given, there is still no lack of historical injustices that might benefit from a good apology. For example, 65 years after World War II, the perception of Japan's lack of complete contrition for its various wartime deeds continues to hamper its relations with its Asian neighbors. Turkey's attitude toward the alleged Armenian genocide nearly a century ago complicates its present day efforts to join the European Union. In the U.S., the long history of racial discrimination and oppression continues to haunt the country; even in the age of Obama, a century and a half after slavery was abolished, the issue of reparations or some other type of redress or comeuppance for slavery has not gone away. This chapter suggests that even though apologetic efforts face significant difficulties, they can be a potent means of helping to reconcile aggrieved groups and to facilitate peace.
Notes
1 The use of “promise and pitfalls” is my own idea, but Govier and Verwoerd's 2002 journal article is similarly entitled “The promise and pitfalls of apology.”
2 From the 1880s to the 1960s, several thousand African Americans were lynched or publicly hanged by vigilante mobs in order to support racial hierarchy. Multiple U.S. presidents lobbied for anti-lynching legislation, and the House of Representatives passed several bills to make lynching a federal crime, but the legislation was repeatedly blocked in the Senate. According to the Washington Post, the Senate's measure marked “the first time the body has apologized for the nation's treatment of African Americans” (Thomas-Lester 2005).
3 The Nobel-winning Nigerian author Wole Soyinka perceived “a fin de millénaire fever of atonement” (Torpey 2006: 1).
4 For the nature of the apologies of individual politicians, see Ryan (1988) and Slansky and Sorkin (2006).
5 Similarly, Charles Maier suggests that reparation politics entails negotiating among various “re” words, like “retribution, reparation, remembering, recording, reconciliation” (Torpey 2003: viii). (He might include “restitution” and “recompense.”)
6 United States Public Law 103-150. November 23, 1993.
7 However, Aaron Lazare (1995) complained: “In my search to learn more about apologies, I have found surprisingly little in the professional literature.”
8 There is a database – to which I contribute – of political apologies and related actions at Wilfred Laurier University: http://political-apologies.wlu.ca. Many of the items in that dataset were originally in a chronological list that I was commissioned to compile for the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture, and Community in 1999, which I revised in 2003: http://www.upenn.edu/pnc/politicalapologies.html. See also www.perfectapology.com.
9 Other notable works that address the role of apologies in transitional justice include Barkan and Karn (2006), Celermajer (2009), Cohen (2004), David and Choi (2006), Dodds (2003), Gibney and Roxstrom (2001), Lind (2008), McGary (2003), Marrus (2006), Miller and Kumar (2007), Minow (1999), Rosenblum (2002), Torpey (2003), and Verdeja (2010).
10 Recent scholarship that considers the religious dimensions includes Girard (2002), Krause (2001), McCullough (2001), and Rye (2000).
11 Other philosophical or theoretical works include Digenser (1998), Garrard (2002), Gaus (1991), Harvey (1995), Ricci (2003), Sarat and Hussain (2008), Smith (2005, 2008), Thompson (2000, 2001, 2002), and Waldron (1992).
12 Other major works on the anthropological or cultural aspects of apologies include Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), Murata (1998), Olshtain (1989), Sugimoto (1997), and Takaku et al. (2001).
13 See also Govier and Verwoerd (2002) Lazare (2005), Ohbuchi et al. (1989), Schlenker and Darby (1981), Weiner et al. (1991), Worthington (1998), and Zillman and Cantor (1976).
14 See also Dodds (2003), Hatch (2003, 2006, 2009), Hearit (1995), and Wilson (2004).
15 For a brief discussion of this apology that focuses on its role in public discourse and compares it with three other prominent apologies, see Dodds (2003: 141–9).
16 FDR's executive order was prepared by the War and Justice Departments, and it was likely influenced by the government's investigation of the Pearl Harbor attacks. FDR appointed Chief Justice Owen Roberts to head the investigatory commission, and although the commission's official report said nothing about espionage activity by Japanese Americans, Roberts was reportedly very concerned about the issue and spoke to the president about it. The media began to run stories about it (Robinson 2001: 95). Moreover, just two days before FDR issued his order, Senator Thomas Stewart introduced a bill to imprison all Japanese Americans (Robinson 2001: 106). In addition to the Japanese Americans who were interned, three other groups were also targeted. First, more than 2,200 Latin Americans of Japanese descent were forcibly taken to the U.S. from thirteen Latin American countries and detained. The U.S. requested their extradition for security reasons, but many were deported because of economic resentment on the part of other Latin Americans. Second, thousands of German and Italian Americans were also taken into custody and some detained. Their numbers were only a fraction of the Japanese Americans who were interned, but 600,000 Italian Americans were classified as “enemy aliens” and forced to register and carry identity cards and were restricted in their movements. Third, hundreds of Aleuts from western Alaska were removed from their homes in 1942.
17 The Commission's financial recommendations were based on its estimate that – in 1983 dollars – between $810 million and $2.0 billion was lost in income and property (Kashima 1982: xii, 456).
18 Congressman Matsui's district was only 9 per cent Asian American at the time, and no district had an Asian population of over 20 per cent (Keaney 1999).
19 The Supreme Court limits the use of coram nobis to instances of “fundamental error” or “manifest injustice,” a very high burden of proof (Irons 1989: 7).
20 On September 22, 1988, Canada instituted a similar form of redress, just six weeks after the U.S. system was enacted (Daniels 2003: 8). Additionally, while most of the internees from Latin America were deported to Japan, some managed to gain American citizenship. The Japanese Latin American internees were excluded from the 1988 U.S. legislation, but in 1999 the U.S. settled a 1996 class action civil rights suit on the matter (Mochizuki v. U.S.A.), promising an apology from President Bill Clinton and payments of $5,000 to each surviving internee. Some plaintiffs rejected the settlement as inadequate (Ng 2002: 109; Zeuthen 1999).
21 According to some sources, the decision to limit compensation to survivors was part of a conscious effort not to set a precedent that could be invoked by people seeking reparations for slavery (Daniels 2003: 5–8).
22 For example, Taft (2000) contends that the market commodification of an apology subverts its moral character.