Forced journey.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The little Japanese-Ameri- can girl is the soul of innocence, wonder and vulnerability. She is standing on a pile of suitcases, reaching for a butterfly as she waits for the train that will take her and her family to an internment camp.

Dangling from her neck is a tag with a number assigned by local War Relocation Authority officials. Similar tags are attached to each piece of luggage in the small cluster that represents the hastily gathered belongings of her family.

The compelling scene is captured in sculptor David Clemons' proposal for a bronze artwork that is part of the proposed "Forced Journey" memorial to Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps during World War II.

A group of determined local activists, including several who were interned in West Coast camps such as Tule Lake and Manzanar, are working to build the memorial on a city-owned pocket of land east of the Hult Center in Eugene. The site is significant for reasons other than it was where ceramic frogs cavorted for two decades before their recent relocation because of vandalism. It's directly across the street from the site of the "civil control station" at 34 W. Sixth Ave., where local Japanese-Americans reported for transfer to internment camps.

The memorial project, which is the topic of an essay by former Eugene resident Jake Klonoski on the front page of today's Commentary section, deserves the full support of city officials, even though it has yet to run the formal review gantlet that the city recently created to consider public art proposals.

In addition to the 5-foot sculpture of the young girl, the memorial would include a garden, a walkway and three large standing stones displaying plaques designed by artist Kenge Kobayashi and writer Bob Kono, both Eugene residents who were interned in their youth. The plaques depict and describe the qualities of justice, perseverance and honor.

Justice: One narrative tells of the lengthy legal battle challenging the constitutionality of the internments. Perseverance: Another memorializes the 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were forced to live in primitive camps surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers. Honor: The third recalls the all-Japa- nese-American 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team, which emerged from World War II as the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.

Thanks to a $50,000 matching grant from the Spirit Mountain Community Fund, memorial supporters are already more than halfway toward raising the $100,000 they need for construction. (See the note accompanying Klonoski's essay to obtain more information.) The goal is to dedicate the memorial in February 2007 - on the 65th anniversary of the executive order that authorized the internments after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The memorial would tell a sorrowful but also powerful and inspiring story about the tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans who were unjustly deprived of their freedom, yet who, whenever given the opportunity, displayed remarkable courage and patriotism. It's also a story that has an unsettling relevance for our own times, as the nation wages a war on terror while striving to protect the freedom and civil liberties of people of Middle Eastern descent.

Most importantly, the memorial would instruct and inspire young Eugene residents, perhaps some as young as the bronze girl reaching for a butterfly, of the significance and fragility of our rights. And those of our neighbors and fellow citizens.