Harris ad suggests Trump will send Asians back to interment camps

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Harris invokes Japanese internment camps with Trump in new ad targeting Asian Americans

The Harris-Walz campaign released a new TV and digital ad on Saturday linking former President Trump to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and other acts of anti-Asian hate.

The Harris-Walz campaign rolled out a new TV and digital ad on Saturday invoking the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and other acts of anti-Asian hate, comparing them to former President Donald Trump.

In the 30-second ad, titled "Our America," the Harris campaign accuses Trump of having an "outdated vision of America" that "has no place" for Asian Americans. 

The ad features symbols of American freedom, including the Constitution, purportedly "under attack by Trump and his extremist allies," the Harris campaign said in a news release.

The Harris-Walz campaign rolled out a new TV and digital ad on Saturday invoking the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and other acts of anti-Asian hate. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images, left, Harris-Walz campaign, center, Amil Krzaczynski/AFP right.)

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The ad "alludes to moments when Asian Americans were denied their civil rights – such as the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit," the campaign said. 

"We have a choice between someone who wants unchecked power and has an outdated vision of America that has no place for us… Or a president who will respect all Americans, who will never view us as ‘others,’" the narrator says. 

"Protect our democracy and our communities. Vote."

The ad features men, women and children of Asian descent, including a purported Iraq War veteran giving a salute. The video is appearing on television in battleground states as well as across an array of digital channels like Meta, Snap, YouTube and radio, the Harris-Walz campaign says.

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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a rally in Houston on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, sent around 117,000 people of Japanese descent to internment camps, the majority of whom were American citizens. 

Roosevelt issued an executive order on Feb. 19 of that year, coming two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. When the internees were taken to the camps, they could bring only what they could carry.

Nine of the camps were shut down by the end of 1945 following a Supreme Court decision, with the final camp closing in March 1946. 

Chin, 27, was an American draftsman of Chinese descent who was fatally assaulted in San Francisco in a racially motivated assault by two White men following a fight at a strip club. Federal authorities said two autoworkers blamed Chin for layoffs at car factories due to Japanese imports. 

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After Chin left the club, the two men tracked him down at a fast-food eatery and attacked him, authorities said. Chin later died at a hospital.

There was a sharp increase nationwide in anti-Asian hate crimes with the onset of the pandemic and the ad seeks to link these attacks to Trump with #StopAsianHate posters being broadcast behind a group of children.

The new ad comes as Vice President Kamala Harris ramps up her attacks on former President Donald Trump, calling him "increasingly unhinged and unstable" as well as a "fascist" earlier this week. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

"The choice for Asian American voters in this election couldn’t be clearer. While Trump surrounds himself with loyalists to emulate the dictators he admires and intends to wield unchecked power to serve himself, Vice President Kamala Harris has only ever had one client: the people," Andrew Peng, the Harris-Walz 2024 Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander spokesperson said in the release.

The new ad comes as Harris ramps up her attacks on the former president, calling him "increasingly unhinged and unstable" as well as a "fascist" last week.