When and from whom have you experienced forgiveness in your life?

The United States has made quite a few transgressions, and it may not be that forgiveness always takes the same form. I have had two wonderful friends who, as American citizens of Japanese descent, had been interned in camps in the desert during WWII, and their families lost everything they had. My one friend taught me much of the history, including the history of the apology. She said in the camps it was hardest on their parents, because they were not allowed to vote within the camp, so it turned things upside down, where the children were in charge. It was interesting to me that of all the things they endured, this one in particular stuck in her mind. It taught me that often it is dignity lost that is the most important part. Another thing she taught me was how internment was not equally applied, that the Hawaiian and others not on the west coast were not interned, as she said because the internment was really about agricultural competition on the west coast. She felt it important that this point of history was understood. She told me about the congressional committee, and how hundreds of survivors were able to make statements to the committee. Some years after committee recommendations were made, the survivors of the camps received money from the government in recompense for what they lost. It was only $20,000 per person. She described it as a token, a beginning, not that the money much mattered after forty-some years. They had lost farms, homes, belongings, their future. But what the survivors most wanted, was the public acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an apology from the President of the United States which was made in 1988 by Ronald Reagan. Since then, federal money has been allocated for the preservation of one of the camps as a museum, and it has been much visited.

Though the path to forgiveness will look different, there are some key points that are likely to be the same. There must be public acknowledgement, there must be dignity restored, there must be a correction to history, and the means to teach future generations the truth.