Letters to the Editor: Bill Barr needs some history lessons. He should start with Japanese internment

Los Angeles Times Opinion
·1 min read
Barracks at Manzanar, where about 10,000 Japanese Americans were interned, as seen in 1942.
Barracks at Manzanar, where about 10,000 Japanese Americans were interned, as seen in 1942. (Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: Atty. Gen. Bill Barr made a wild claim in asserting that the coronavirus stay-at-home orders were the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history since slavery. (William Barr under fire over comparison of coronavirus lockdown to slavery," Sept. 17)

To follow Barr's preposterous reasoning, he forgets FDR usurping the civil liberties of Japanese American citizens — by forcibly relocating them to internment camps.

I have a friend in Hanford who suffered in one of those camps in Arkansas. As a young girl, her family was uprooted and hauled off there.

Barr needs an American history lesson.

Mark C. Salvaggio, Bakersfield

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To the editor: I understand that Barr believes the use of fire hoses on civil rights marchers in '65 was to prevent spontaneous combustion.

Jeffrey Teets, Lakewood