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.
