[PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was a reporter for the Daily Astorian (in Astoria, Oregon) and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as an Oregon state government manager and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing pubic policy – to what I write. If you are reading this, thanks for doing so and please don’t hesitate to respond so we can engage in a dialogue, not just a monologue.]

There is a saying that those who don’t know or understand history are doomed to repeat it.

Point made.

Having just returned from a river cruise down the Seine in France to the D-Day killing fields at Normandy, the admonition to remember history has been on my mind lately.

What I saw at the site of the Omaha Beach landing in Normandy left a set of vivid images that surely will last for the rest of my life. My father served in World War II, but was in North Africa at the time of the D-Day invasion. I also do not know of any relatives who were involved in D-Day landings.

Still, it was sobering to stand on the promontory looking over Omaha Beach, which is exactly where Germans stood in 1944 and mowed down about 95 per cent of the American troops who landed in the first wave. The carnage prompted the Omaha Beach commander, General Omar Bradley, to want to retreat and send troops, instead, to Utah Beach. But he could not reach the supreme commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, so he never received permission for the change in plans.

What happened then is the stuff of history. American, Australian and British and other troops landed on the five D-Day beaches and managed, despite huge losses, to push inland eventually to free France from German occupation. The successful D-Day landings in 1944 also represented the start of the end of the war.

My thoughts also went to what prompted the need for the D-Day landings in the first place, which claimed thousands of lives of Allied troops. It was the horrific rule of Adolph Hitler, including his goal to conquer Europe, rule the world, and exterminate all Jews.

When I returned to this country from the river cruise, I managed to find a new book on the war entitled, “1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History” by Jay Wink, a writer known for his research-backed approach to recounting history.
It is a good read – good in the sense of the contributions by the author to an understanding of what led up to D-Day. It contains extremely graphic descriptions of the actions by Hitler and his goons to kill Jews with almost unimaginable treachery, including on the city streets and, eventually, in the concentration camps.

My thoughts then moved to the question of whether something like the German atrocities under Hitler could happen in this country. Well, the answer is yes and one partial indication of this is what “we” did to Japanese Americans in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. With the Pearl Harbor bombings fresh in the minds of Americans, I suppose it is possible to understand what prompted the internment of Japanese Americans. But history sheds new and unfavorable light on what “we” did.
At least it could be said that “we” did not go farther and try to exterminate these Americans on the heels of rounding them up and putting them in camps.

In a piece that ran in the October 18 Oregonian newspaper, a local Oregon author, Mark Matsushima wrote this, under the headline, “Where hostility to immigrants can lead,” with this tagline, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

“Pundits and politicians paint a grim picture for our nation when it comes to immigration and the taking in of refugees. What harsh and demeaning things do we hear nearly every day? “They” sneak across our borders to take away jobs from “real Americans,” have “anchor babies” who should be denied birthright citizenship, are criminals, carry diseases, don’t look like “us,” refuse to integrate into society because they celebrate the customs, language, foods and dress of their homeland(s). Worst of all, they are a threat to our security and way of life because we cannot trust where their loyalty lies. Deny them citizenship, no property rights, round them up, put them in camps, and send them back where they came from!

“Am I talking about the United States of 2015? Yes and no.

“Take any current immigrant or refugee group of controversy — Mexican, Central American, Syrian — and substitute it for any past group — Irish, German, Italian, Chinese, Southeast Asian, to name a few — and you will find the same misguided, prejudicial, hurtful and dangerous characterizations and demands.

“A visit to the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center and the Japanese American Historical Plaza in downtown Portland demonstrates just how dangerous this can be. Before World War II, Japanese Americans, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, were already heavily discriminated against in the state of Oregon. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, discrimination gave way to mass incarceration without due process of law of men, women and children only because they were one-eighth or greater Japanese ancestry. They were forced from their homes, schools, businesses and farms with little notice. Most ultimately were sent to either the Minidoka internment camp in Jerome County, Idaho, or to an “enemy alien” camp at Crystal City, Texas. Surrounded by barbed wire and machine guns, citizens born here were faced with the very real possibility of being deported to a country they had never been to and knew very little about.”

So, I come to one more thought. What Donald Trump, incredibly a Republican candidate for president, has recommended when it comes to immigration strikes me as filled with hatred and gross exaggeration.

What he wants to do is deport all immigrants, a move which would require tearing kids from their parents, sending all immigrants back across some border, spending billions of dollars to do so, and scrapping the U.S. Constitution in the process. Not all immigrants are, as Trump contends, rapists and pillagers. Many of them are like many of us – immigrants to this country.

I hope and pray that all of us will learn lessons from history and not let the Trump approach to immigration take hold in America.