DENVER — Many of the Japanese Americans who gathered yesterday to remember the internment of 120,000 family members during World War II expressed concern about what they see as an erosion of civil liberties since the Sept. 11 attacks.

During a town hall discussion on the Patriot Act at a weekend conference organized by the Japanese American National Museum, San Francisco lawyer Dale Minami told the audience they shouldn't think denying people access to lawyers or a right to a trial is something that can't hurt regular law-abiding people.

"It did happen to you. It did happen to you in 1942," said Minami, who worked on a landmark case that led to the exoneration of a Japanese American who refused to report to an internment camp.

Fred Korematsu's conviction for violating the internment order in 1942, along with the overall internment policy, had been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944.

Many in the audience of approximately 100 people nodded at points made by Minami and fellow panelist Noel Saleh, a civil liberties and immigration lawyer. Some people in the audience and the meeting's moderator, retired California State University, Long Beach professor Lloyd Inui, wore the names of the camps where they had lived on ribbons below their name tags.

They also laughed when a white librarian in the crowd told them how her institution has been displaying a sign saying that the CIA hasn't requested any records as a way to get people to ask questions about the Patriot Act.

The 2001 legislation strengthened the authority of law enforcers to investigate suspected acts of terrorism and expanded their access to private telephone, e-mail, financial and other records.

The leaders of Los Angeles' Japanese American National Museum have spoken up in support of protecting the rights of Muslim Americans following Sept. 11. Inui said he didn't think any mass incarceration of people was likely again, partly because of the activism of Japanese Americans, who won a presidential apology and $20,000 in restitution for each internee in 1988. Inui, who was interned at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming, said he's more afraid that people who have unpopular views, regardless of their ethnic background, will be targeted.

"You're going to suffer if you don't learn from history," Inui said. "... It's an American issue, it's not just a Japanese American issue for us now and in the future."

Saleh, the former president of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, said the "climate of fear" of terrorism following Sept. 11 is not unlike the fear the nation experienced following Pearl Harbor. He said the eventual conviction of Jose Padilla shows that the U.S. doesn't have to give up the principles of its legal system to be secure.

Padilla, an American once accused of plotting with al-Qaida to blow up a radioactive dirty bomb, was sentenced earlier this year to 17 years in prison on unrelated terror support charges. The charges were filed against him in 2005 just as his legal challenges to continued detention without criminal charge were reaching the Supreme Court.

Saleh, a Barack Obama supporter, like many in the crowd, acknowledged he was disappointed that the Democratic presidential candidate has endorsed a congressional compromise on legal protections for telecommunications companies that aided the Bush administration's wiretapping.

U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., cautioned those upset with Obama's position to remain involved. Honda, who was interned at Camp Amache on Colorado's southeastern plains, said if Obama isn't elected, he won't be able to make changes that could help make government less secretive.

"When it's open and transparent, at least you can see the laundry," said Honda, who voted against reauthorizing the Patriot Act in 2006.

More than 800 people, including 50 teachers from 12 states, attended the conference at a downtown hotel focusing on the history of Japanese Americans in the interior West. Participants discussed oral histories and traced Japanese roots along with road trips to Camp Amache.

Other speakers invited to talk on a range of topics included Hawai'i's Sen. Daniel Inouye, the husband of the museum's director, Irene Hirano; "Star Trek" actor George Takei; former transportation secretaries Norman Mineta, a former internee, and Federico Pena, the former Denver mayor.