Julie Otsuka

Because Trump will take military action to go after the “enemy within”

Because when Trump tells you he might take military action to go after the “enemy within,” you should believe him. His language hits very close to home, as over 110,000 Japanese Americans, including members of my own family, were locked up by the military during WWII for this very same reason—being the suspected “enemy within.” No Japanese American was ever found guilty of a single act of espionage or sabotage. And yet, three years of my mother’s childhood were spent behind barbed wire in a concentration camp in the middle of the desert in Utah. Such a waste. And this was under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the most revered and progressive presidents in our history. Imagine what could happen under the second presidency of Donald J. Trump.

Democracy can vanish in an instant. It’s only as good as the people who defend it. I take Trump at his word. This is why I am voting for Kamala Harris.

Julie Otsuka is the author of The Swimmers, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, The Buddha in the Attic, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and finalist for the National Book Award, and When the Emperor Was Divine, winner of the American Library Association Alex Award.