I think the author seeks to break the silence surrounding the internment of Japanese citizens during the Second World War because the act of ignoring our history and this shameful decision by the United States government is in some ways worse than the actual internment of those Japanese citizens. To ignore an injustice is a slap in the face to the people against whom it was perpetrated against. It conveys the feeling that what was done to them did not matter. Well, the author here is writing to show us that the forceful internment of the Japanese does matter and that we must confront our past in order to move forward.
If our country continues to be willingly ignorant of this great injustice then we have forsaken all of our principles upon which we stand for. How can we have an ounce of credibility when confronting our enemies for injustices committed against element of their society which they view negatively when we do the same thing. It is hypocrisy at a national level and it cannot be allowed to continue.
As far as this novel relating to the events of September 11th, I think the similarities between these two events are few. Really the only one I can see is that we were attacked by a foreign entity and many people died and even then Pearl Harbor was an act of war by a sovereign nation while the world trade center attacks were an act of terrorism by a group, which while harbored by some nations did not actually have control of a nation. To go even further I think the United States has actually learned a bit from their actions towards the Japanese. After the attacks of 9/11 all of the countries Muslims were not rounded up and thrown into camps, sure some had their civil liberties violated via phone taps by a scared government and had to endure prejudice perpetrated against it by an equally scared citizenry but this does not even come close to what the Japanese had to endure.
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