SHE WAS only twelve years-old at the time, but Lillian Kimura still remebers that day in March 50 years ago when she and her family were herded into Manzanar, one of several internment camps scattered across the West Coast.

Kimura and over a hundred thousand other Japanese-American citizens were falsely told by Earl Warren (who was attorney general of California at the time) that these barbed-wire outlets were a military necessity, that they were not being punished but protected, that Japanese Americans would thank the government later for the abrupt curtailment of their most basic human liberties.

Japanese Americans didn't believe these half-truths then, and they don't today.

They survived these camps better than could be expected. Those of the older generation perhaps repeated to themselves the Japanese expression shyoganai--that one should make the best of an impossible situation.

But this did not take away the hurt and anger that Kimura and others in these internment camps felt when their rights were stripped away, when the country they would fight and die for--as many of them later did--labeled them the enemies.

Rather than acknowledging these human rights abuses, many Americans have chosen to commemorate the internment's 50th anniversary with a hatred and cynicism similar to that which motivated the internment itself. Judging from the recent nationwide spate of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian hate crimes, racism remains as insidious today as it was 50 years ago.

THIS NEW, more subtle form of racism is cloaked in part by fallacious economic arguments. The Japanese, the reasoning goes, are to blame for our recent economic stagnation. Their trade practices are not only discriminatory but hostile to Americans. They are suspiciously buying up large chunks of American real estate, even our movie industry.

The underlying message is frighteningly clear: the Japanese can't be trusted. They're taking over our country.

This basic distrust is articulated in the language of war and conspiracy. The Japanese don't contribute to the U.S. trade deficit with superior products--they are carrying out some master plan. Japanese investments--which actually employ hundreds of American workers--begin to take on the overtones of a plot.

Looking at recent book titles about Japan, a disturbing pattern emerges: The Coming War with Japan, Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and its Threat to America.

Then there's the recent book by Pat Choate, Agents of Influence,which claims Japanese thought is beginning to take control of our universities. American professors, corrupted by Japanese research money, don't reveal the Japanese for who or what they really are.

But Japan, of course, is not the source of all our economic problems. While there is much that is unfair about the United State's economic relationship with Japan, most of our woes can be traced to our domestic troubles.

We don't often read about the considerable progress Japan has made in opening its markets over the last decade--its imports, most might be surprised to know, are the third-highest in the world. We don't hear that Japan pours huge sums of money into long-term domestic investments like infrastructure and education.

These realities were completely ignored during President Bush's recent trip to Asia. More intent on political posturing than negotiating an agreement, Bush brought with him three of the worst examples of American business--the CEOs of America's top automakers. Intended as a show of American strength, the Bush's decision to bring these corporate gluttons to Japan must have made the Japanese laugh.

VEILED ATTEMPTS to paint Japan as an enemy rather than as a worthy economic competitor might serve to unite and even temporarily spur our country out of its economic malaise. But whether it succeeds or not, such political and economic deception has terrible consequences for Japanese Americans and other minority groups.