Individuals and groups claiming to be the victims or the inheritors of governmental misdeeds have stepped forward in increasing numbers and frequency since the end of World War II and demanded formal acknowledgment of wrongs done and rectification from governments around the world.¹ Provoked by charges of injustice and the accompanying demands for compensation, polities around the globe have been debating the merits of various claims and the rightfulness of current political bodies assuming responsibility for past political misdeeds. An official expression of remorse for past governmental acts, once unheard of, has become almost commonplace during the past decade or...

For a nation famously unconcerned with its history, the last third of a century has seemed almost like an uninterrupted indulgence of mythmaking and nostalgia creation. The bicentennial of our revolutionary birth was commemorated; the bicentennial of our constitutional foundation celebrated; the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights feted. These celebrations coexisted uneasily with another kind of return to the early history of the United States. American Indian tribes also have been returning to North America’s history, albeit with a markedly different intent. From the late 1960s to the present, American Indian tribes have stepped up their efforts to convince...

This chapter examines the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, a crowning moment in the short history of post-World War II claims for reparations. In addition to explicitly acknowledging the fundamental injustice of the government’s actions pursuant to Executive Order 9066 and apologizing for them, the law provided reparations to U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry who were forcibly evacuated, relocated, and/or interned during World War II.¹ More than forty-six years after the internment began, the U.S. government agreed to provide $1.25 billion to compensate Japanese Americans harmed by Executive Order 9066. The 1988 law marked the first time...

As we have seen in the two preceding chapters, contemporary calls for national apologies, with or without material compensation, and the fiery debates within the United States provoked by these calls, exhibit a tension in American political thinking regarding the relation of the present to the past. This tension, typical of a revolutionary nation, has deep roots in American thought and continues to complicate our relation to political ancestors and their deeds. Our political identity—that is, who we imagine ourselves to be politically—typically is conceived in two dimensions: space and time. Defining oneself as a member of a...

The preceding chapters have shown that, contrary to most accounts of the relation between memory and politics, memories may divide as well as unite members of political collectivities. Further, Chapter 3 suggests that it may be both just and politically pragmatic for the American political body to respond to the memories that drive members apart. We now turn to explore in greater depth the obstacles to a political response to the past wrongs that underlie divisive memories. The chapter examines the concept of political responsibility for past political wrongs and the primary arguments raised in the United States against such...

Sins of the Parentsargues that though very few, if any, present-day American citizens may be said to be directly implicated in the U.S. government’s past misdeeds, they may still bear political responsibility to take action regarding historic wrongs such as the illegal appropriation of American Indian lands, the internment of Japanese Americans, or slavery and the Jim Crow system established after slavery was outlawed.¹ This chapter examines in detail the justness and political practicality of the novel contemporary phenomena of national apologies as a response to past political wrongs. First, the chapter situates the American debate over national apologies by...

Much ofSins of the Parentshas been devoted to an examination of the concepts underlying the question of how the U.S. government should respond to calls for it to apologize and provide compensation for past governmental misdeeds. Chapter 3 of the book argued for a conception of the American polity in which the ambiguous history of the United States cannot be simply forgotten, but rather must be interpreted and responded to as it necessarily informs present political identity. Chapter 4 argued for a conception of political responsibility intrinsically linked to political identity; some political responSibilities derive from oneʼs identity...