Rafu Shimpo: Marine Paid Price for Speaking Out about Injustice of Incarceration Camps

US Marine Robert E Borcher died knowing the people whose liberties he tried to protect will never forget what he did.

Borcher wrote a letter from his hospital bed during World War II to the American Legion which had whipped up racial hysteria against Japanese Americans during World War II and strongly supported their forced evacuation to incarceration camps.

Borcher’s letter to the American Legion was reprinted in Time Magazine.

“American citizens, those of Japanese ancestry, are being persecuted, yes, persecuted as though Adolf Hitler himself were in charge … We find that the California American Legion is promoting a racial purge,” Borcher wrote. He vowed to fight “this injustice, intolerance, and unAmericanism at home!”

Court martial charges were brought up against Borcher and a mark of bad conduct remains on his record.

Reading his letter in Time and hearing of his plight, many Japanese Americans wrote Borcher personal letters of thanks. Earlier this year, while he was in a nursing home, Borcher’s son Bob uncovered those letters in his father’s scrapbook in Minnesota.

Rafu Shimpo reports that Bob made it his mission to track down some of those Japanese Americans who took the time to thank you father.

That lead to a new round of emails and expressions of gratitude for Robert Borcher. He died in March a day before his 94th birthday knowing he had touched a lot of hearts. His son plans to donate all the letters to the Manzanar National Historic Site.

You can read some of those letters in Rafu Shimpo.