Rep. Doris Matsui of Sacramento was born in the desert of southern Arizona, in an internment camp that was so big and isolated, its conditions so extreme, that its three subdivisions were nicknamed Roastin’, Toastin’ and Dustin’ by its Japanese American residents.

Her mother’s parents had been rounded up from their farm in California’s Central Valley and forced to live in the Poston War Relocation Center. Her parents met and courted in the desert. Years later, Matsui would marry a man who had spent three years of his boyhood in another internment camp.

Decades later, as Donald Trump prepares to take office, Matsui is reflecting on that history, while connecting the fear that prompted her parents’ internment to feelings now directed by many — including Trump — toward Muslim Americans. Her choice to speak out marks the latest chapter in the Democrat’s unusual life and journey to politics.

“I feel that it is absolutely imperative for me to stand up and remind people of our history,” Matsui, 72, said in an interview. “The fear that drove the decision to unjustly place Americans of Japanese descent into the camps is the same type of fear that drives this type of rhetoric about a Muslim registry.”

The rhetoric that shook Matsui escalated in November, after the election, when Carl Higbie, a former spokesman for a super PAC that supported Trump, said the internment camps that held tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II were a legal “precedent” for a potential U.S. registry of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries.

Back to Gallery Matsui sees familiar fears behind Trump’s anti-Muslim... 2 1 of 2 Photo: Mike Kepka, By Mike Kepka/special to the Chronicle 2 of 2 Photo: Mike Kepka, By Mike Kepka/special to the Chronicle



“We’ve done it with Iran back awhile ago. We did it during World War II with the Japanese,” Higbie said on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show, arguing that a registry proposal would be constitutional.

Kelly pushed back: “Come on, you’re not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope.”

“I’m not proposing that at all,” Higbie said. “But I’m just saying there is precedent for it and I’m not saying I agree with it.”

In December 2015, shortly after announcing a campaign proposal to ban all Muslims from immigrating to the U.S., Trump referred during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to proclamations by President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II that labeled Japanese, Germans and Italians “enemy aliens” who could be detained.

“You certainly aren’t proposing internment camps, are you?” asked host Joe Scarborough.

“I am not proposing that,” Trump said. “It was tough stuff, but it wasn’t internment. We’re not talking about the Japanese internment camps. No, not at all. But we have to get our head around a very serious problem, and it’s getting worse.”

Trump has since shifted, saying he would begin “extreme vetting” for immigrants from countries impacted by terrorism, though the original Muslim ban proposal remains on his campaign website.

For Matsui, the idea that the treatment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s is anything but a cautionary tale, and that it could be used to justify a crackdown on Muslim Americans, feels startling and personal.

“It saddens and disappoints me that this has been brought up so much over the last year,” she said. “I thought we had learned from our mistakes.”

Muslim American leaders in Northern California say Matsui’s stance is important.

“For the Muslim American community it is very comforting. It’s a challenging time,” said Basim Elkarra, head of the Sacramento chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “She has the street cred. Her community has gone through these challenges. ... She’s gone through these challenges.”

Matsui grew up in the Central Valley before attending UC Berkeley. It was there she met her husband, Robert Matsui, who had with his family been uprooted from Sacramento as an infant and forced into the Tulelake internment camp in Siskiyou County. After a stint on the Sacramento City Council, Robert Matsui was elected to Congress in 1978, serving until his death in 2005.

He helped push legislation, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, providing an apology to the more than 100,000 people sent to internment camps as well as more than $1 billion in reparations.

It was during this fight that Doris Matsui began hearing stories about the camps from her family and countless others. In the years prior, the topic had been rarely broached.

“You got to hear what actually happened, what they had to do — emotions came out,” she recalled. “A lot of what I know came from those testimonies.”

Her father told her the food was terrible and privacy non-existent in barracks made of flimsy wood walls. To keep the sand and air from coming through holes in the wood, she said, residents posted newspapers on the walls. There were no vegetables or flowers, so the internees planted them.

“They wanted to return to their old lives as Americans, so they did what they could to get through the experience,” she said.

Weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Robert Matsui discussed his childhood at a conference in Boston. He recalled the time a teacher pointed him out in class, asking him about his family’s internment and wondering if he could describe it to the other students.

Matsui denied he had been in a camp, but later, he said, a student who was a close friend wondered if he was a Japanese spy, asking, “Was that why you were in jail?”

After the Boston speech, an audience member posed a question: Could the same thing happen to Arab Americans? Robert Matsui told the crowd no — that both parties’ political leaders were determined not to fan the flames. He cited then-President George W. Bush’s visit to a mosque six days after 9/11, when he said Islam is a religion of peace.

But the lawmaker from Sacramento added a warning: Things could change. “It’s going to be up to all of us to make sure that the political leadership remains as they have been in this case,” he said.

In 2005, Robert Matsui died of a rare bone marrow disorder. His wife, who had worked in the Clinton administration, was urged by Democrats to run for the seat. She did, won handily in a special election, and is now serving her sixth full term in Congress.

Now, after the emergence of Trump, who has questioned whether Muslim Americans fully embrace the country, Doris Matsui is co-sponsoring legislation that would ban any registration of individuals by religion. A similar bill has been proposed in the Senate.

“Our constitutional principles are what make America exceptional,” Matsui said. “By protecting the religious liberty of Muslim Americans, we are protecting the integrity of our founding document both now and for future generations.”

She is not alone among Japanese Americans describing their experience in World War II as a warning about the creep of fear. Actor George Takei, of the original “Star Trek,” was 5 when his family was taken from its home in Los Angeles to an internment camp.

“I have spent my life trying to ensure something like this never happens again. But dark clouds once more are gathering,” Takei wrote in an online petition he launched to support Muslim Americans. It has nearly 150,000 signatures.

“It starts with a registry, with restrictions, with irrationally ascribed guilt, and with fear,” he said. “But we know well where it might lead. National security must never again be permitted to justify wholesale denial of constitutional rights and protections.”

Matsui said she will attend Friday’s inauguration, even though dozens of her colleagues in the House are boycotting.

“I did not make this decision lightly,” she said. “I will attend in support of our democratic process and the peaceful transition of power.”

But she plans to do what her husband recommended in his speech in Boston more than a decade ago: use her political standing to push back.

“During different times in our history, different groups of people have been marginalized,” she said. “Because of my history and background, I know I have a duty to speak up in this moment. Future generations are listening.”

Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz