Zinke's attempt to use a Japanese greeting has drawn fire from lawmakers
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is under fire for a flippant response to a question from a Hawaii congresswoman about Japanese-American internment camps.
Democratic Hawaii Rep. Colleen Hanabusa asked Zinke on Thursday about why the Trump administration had cancelled funding for a program to preserve the history of internment camps that held people of Japanese ancestry — most of them Japanese-Americans — during World War II. She also discussed how her grandfather, an American citizen of Japanese descent, had been placed in an internment camp.
“Oh, Konnichiwa!” Zinke, a former Montana congressman, responded cheerfully.
Konnichiwa is a Japanese expression that roughly translates to “good afternoon.” This prompted Hanabusa to shoot back that it was still morning, which meant “ohayo gozaimasu” would actually be the more appropriate greeting.
Over 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent were placed in internment camps during World War I I in an effort to remove them from the West Coast. The Roosevelt administration, fearing a Japanese invasion after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, issued an executive order calling for the relocation of Japanese-Americans to the camps.
