Japanese Internment: What Call Would You Have Made At The Time??

The internments were 100% racially driven. "Sloped eyed nips" yep, we have to lock those Jap bastards up before they kill us all. 100% bigotry.

No trial and no hearing, you have Japanese ethnicity and you live on the West Coast, boom you're suspect.

I'm Irish with an Irish last name. Say a madman bombs a British consulate in D.C. and the IRA takes responsibility; well we have to lock up all those "micks" now they might be sympathtic to the IRA. Nevermnd they are U.S. citizens, round them up and intern them against their will.

Same exact thing.

I'm locked up, with no trial and no hearing purely on the basis of my ethnicity.

It is wrong on many levels. If someone is a genuine threat to the United States and is sympathetic to an enemy and aids them. By all means lock them up once they receive a fair trial or hearing and evidence is reviewed.

I think many are missing the boat on this. The internment of AMERICAN citizens of Japanese ethnicity had no bearing on justice or keeping America safe, it had everything to do with xenophobia, hysteria and out and out racism. It is 100% un-American with virtually no proof it saved any lives or actually helped achieve a more secure mainland U.S.

FDR over-stepped the bounds on this.

He got it wrong.

Go after suspected spies, bug their telephones, follow them around, but locking up American citizens on the basis of their ethnicity with no evidence they are a danger to national security is positively un-Constitutional. It didn't even help defeat the Japanese, it used taxpayer and military resources to lock up, feed and guard American citizens with virtually no evidence they were sympathetic to and would aid the enemy.

Seriously, FDR damaged the United States on many levels, this is just one example of the complete ineptness of this man.

 

I never said that interning Europeans was okay either. Why would doing the wrong thing more often make it right?

The question asked was what I would have done. That would be present day me with present day principles. However, I can see a direct path from the fearmongering that led to the Japanese internment to the fearmongering that got us the Patriot act and the NDAA. It seems after we compromise our principles, it's easier the next time and even more so the next until we cannot be said to have any principles at all.

 

Benefits outwieghed the risks, having said that the Japanese Americans who went to fight in WW2 had an exempilary record.

 

Yes, as did my uncle and many Germans and Italians.

One thing to consider is that the U.S. had only the FBI as a civilian counter-intel organization; we had no national intelligence agency at all. The Navy had a small unit, I don't know if the Army had one at all. so there were no trained manpower or budget available to do all the 'right' stuff according to the standards of this nice PC Bubble the middle and upper classes live in now.

This also brings up a modern issue that might be worth discussing, re all the sniveling about 'domestic surveillance' and the like going on now. Such surveillance would play a role on being able to selectively round up the right threats more efficiently and reduce errors, would it not? Of course it would, and it does today. If you're going to throw your borders wide open, then you should best have something in place to protect those already here. Can't have it both ways, not these days, with the kinds of explosives, chemicals, weaponry, etc. running around in the hands of the worst psychopaths and criminal sociopaths the world has to offer.

 

Sorry, I don't have a violin or a Pete Seeger record available at the moment.

 

And the internment of Germans and Italians as well? President Roosevelt himself was of "New York Dutch" descent.

And relatively few were "locked up", the vast majority were simply "relocated" away from coastal areas and had to live in the camps because they had nowhere else to go. Only a small percentage were actually "imprisoned", the rest were simply "relocated" and had nowhere to live except in the camps.

However, a great many did leave the camps. Many worked in farming, others in business. Many even joined the military and served in some of the highest decorated units in the history of the military. Not exactly something that happens to "prisoners".

People like Jimmy Sakuyama, Engineer and Draftsman for the Tucker Aviation Corporation in Michigan.

Remember, I only care about accuracy and truth, not propaganda either way.

 

FDR was elected three times. Rightwingers just need to get over it; the Republicans had no comparable leader to offer, so FDR's flaws aren't a real 'talking point' these days, and for the same reasons.

 

Certainly that's true if the Constitution may be properly construed as a suicide pact. Otherwise, surely in wartime it is within the purview of the federal government to implement reasonable measures to eliminate clear and present dangers to the objectives stated in the Preamble, no?

Really? Not one of those Japanese was loyal to Hirohito?

Really??

 

Remind me never to buy a car from you.

 

Fear — not evidence — drove the U.S. to place over 127,000 Japanese in concentration camps for the remainder of the war.

President Ford issued Proclamation 4417 on 2/19/1996 formally ending Executive Order 9066 and I quote

Most historians regard the internment of Japanese-Americans living in the West coast, solely on the basis of race, to have been a wrong.

The Supreme Court decided in Ex Parte Endo that a citizen could not be imprisoned if the government was unable to prove someone was disloyal. Meanwhile another decision allowed the government a loophole to criminally punish that citizen for refusing to be illegally imprisoned.

I don't object to internment if evidence is provided a foreign national or American citizen is disloyal. In reality what occurred was rounding up anyone with Japanese ancestry, citizen or not, who happened to be living on the West coast at the time.

I'll say again, I don't understand those defending this, particularly those who claim to be Constitutionalist Conservatives. It was a progressive, FDR, who initiated the executive order to formally indict anyone of Japanese descent living on the West coast, with no evidence of their disloyalty beyond their heritage.

Of course it's very easy for a bunch of caucasians on this board, to pretend this was all about securing America from potential subterfuge by those loyal to the Emperor back in Japan.

The U.S. detained a total of 11,507 ethnic Germans, overwhelmingly German nationals not U.S. citizens.. The government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few in internment camps run by the Department of Justice. You cannot compare this to what Japanese nationals and U.S. citizens had to endure including the loss of their freedoms. The Exclusion Zone mandated that the War Department excluded virtually all Japanese Americans from this area, both citizens and resident aliens.

I suggest those who support Executive Order 9066 study a little bit more of the history of what actually transpired prior to asserting it was war time and the right thing to do.

It was neither the right thing to do, nor did it help in defeating the true enemy of the United States, Imperialist Japan. Resources were devoted unnecessarily to intern over 127,000 individuals, including military resources that would have been better suited in fighting the actual enemy and/or finding and detaining actual spies and those loyal to the Emperor of Japan.

Historically, it was a mistake.
No one will convince me otherwise.

 

No. Not without some shred of proof who poses such a danger.

If you can name names and provide proof, that's one thing. To imprison people indefinitely based on suspicion is quite another.

An interesting note: Hawaii had the Niihau incident and still interned only 1500 Japanese more or less out of a population of 150k while they were under martial law. On the West Coast, martial law was not declared, virtually the entire Japanese population was interned or relocated.

 

You're dodging the question. Is it your opinion that there were no Hirohito loyalists among the Japanese who were interned, yes or no?

was a cipher, and I couldn't care less what he said.

Which has bupkis to do with its constitutionality.

 

Absolutism in anything is dangerous and short-sighted. War time powers necessarily have to abridge some rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_Incident

And, as the article in the OP points out, a large number of the Japanese were not citizens, and Japanese intelligence agents tryiing to recruit from their communities were never reported by any Japanese living here. So, yes, it's highly unlikely none of them were loyal to the Emperor.

 

FDR’s Failed Moral Leadership
Roosevelt was no humanitarian, despite what presidential historians say.

Source: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fdrs-failed-moral-leadership/

Over 120,000 were interned against their will purely on the basis of racial bias, judgment was made along racial lines...an egregious and contemptuous affront to our Constitution which calls for due process. There was no due process, no margin to allow the accused the rights to defend themselves and their loyalty. No evidence presented as indicative of their disloyalty.

FDR - Executive Order 9066; let that live in infamy.

 

If the racism here was all that extreme, there would have been no Japanese, Chinese, Africans, or any others here to intern in the first place, so this line of argument is obviously false. AS for FDR, obviously the majority of American voters at the time disagree with you, and did so three times.

So, would the majority of latino American citizens of the 1940's through to the present day who opposed illegal immigration count as 'racist xenophobes' as well? Cesar Chavez? How about these blacks, from the 1860's? ...

“ Fun Reconstruction Facts”

p.560, Ordeal By Fire – The Civil War and Reconstruction - James McPherson, Knopf, 1982.

 

These were not POWs. They were in many cases citizens. As such, they had rights. Rights that were guaranteed by the Constitution. The rule of law is not tested during easy times. The test is to guarantee rights even when it's difficult. If the rights of the Japanese could be taken away because it was expedient, how secure are anyone's rights? Not very. I submit the Patriot Act, the NDAA and the NSA's domestic spying program as current examples.

 

I never said throw the borders open. In fact, I am against that. That said, I'm also against domestic spying. Surely you see that the more information the gov't has, the more control it can exert. Ben Franklin said something about sacrificing freedoms for security. He said the people who do that wind up with neither freedom nor security.

 

I would have done it the same way Canada did, interned all Japanese nationalist/citizens ( Issei) . Their Canadian born children ( Nisei) were not interned. Some on the left would say that was cruel that the families were broken up.

The United States didn't want to break up the Japanese decent families so the American citizen children ( Nisie) of the Japanese nationals ( Issei) parents were interned together. Some on the right said that it was cruel to intern American citizen Nisei children. The Democrats were in control of Congress and FDR was POTUS. So the entire family would be interned.

You see the same thing with the left not wanting to deport illegal alien adults who have American born children. So I say, deport the parents and they can bring their children with them if they want.

Issei; The first generation of Japanese immigrants, born in Japan before moving to the USA. They were not citizens but Japanese citizens.

Nisei: The second generation, born in America to Issei parents who were not born in America.

 

Why did the government force them to sell their homes and businesses? I could understand why they viewed the Japanese as a threat at the time, but what was the point of making them sell their homes and punishing them if they didnt?

 

I have no (*)(*)(*)(*)ing idea why.

Greedy real estate agents maybe ?

Was it the federal, state, county or local governments that forced them to sell their homes and businesses ?

Were they forced to sell or were they pushed to sell being told if they didn't pay their county property taxes while being interned, they would loose their homes and end up with nothing, no financial gain ?

Maybe it was the smart thing to do, sell the home and end up with some cash profit.

I really don't know what the answer is, do you ?

I'm sure with a little research, the answer is there.

I had a friend in Nam who was from Gardena, California. He was third generation of Japanese decent. His father was Niesi and was interned and when he turned 17 years of age he joined the Army and served with the 442nd Infantry and served over in Europe during WW ll. After WW ll he became the first American of Japanese decent to serve with the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. By the early 70's he was a detective.

After Nam we kept in touch because he only lived a few miles from my hometown. We would drink beer, go out shooting guns on the weekend, etc. One day he invited me over to his parents house in Gardena, Ca. for dinner. I didn't know what to expect. I knew his parents were Nisei and were interned during the war and his Issei grandmother also lived there. Would the inside of the house look Asian, would I have to take off my shoes, what would they serve for dinner ?

Well it ends up when you entered the house it was furnished just like any other American house. Everything was Americana. Except for one big difference, the home was extremely clean. If I remember correctly we grilled some steaks for dinner. They and the house were as Americana as I was.

 

If people want to throw a pity party about injustice, throw one for the Guard and Reserve troops who lost their businesses, homes, and in many cases theri families while being called up to active duty, having to serve multiple back to back tours in ME. There was supposedly legal protections for their jobs and businesses being there when they returned, but it seems nobody in government deemed it necessary to enforce that legislation; certainly not any of the Peace At Any Price phonies LARPing as 'activists'.

 

Most were not actually "forced" to sell (as in "you can not own your business and must sell it"), but had to sell them because like most people they did not actually own them (not unlike a "forced sell" today where an owner sells before having it foreclosed). And unless they had others who could take up the responsibilities (rent-mortgage, taxes, management, etc) they had to sell them or risk loosing everything (or even going deeper into debt).

The problem here is the misunderstanding of what "forced" is. This means the legal sense where they have to sell it or risk loosing it due to outside reasons, not that they are actually "forced" to sell it because they have no choice. They sell it because the choice is to get something out of it or loose it all with nothing to show for it at all.

Remember, this only affected the Japanese who lived inside of the exclusion area, not all Japanese nationwide. If they had settled in Idaho or Wisconsin or Ohio this was not an issue. But if they were from say California and had to move to a camp because they had nowhere else to go they could not run their business anymore without somebody to turn it over to. What do you think would have happened if they did not sell it? Their taxes would not have gone away, nor would their rent or mortgage payments. And with no real income how would they have made those payments?

Also (then and now) many communities have "absentee owner" laws, which prevent somebody from simply closing up and walking away from a property they still own, even if they can pay the taxes and rent-mortgage while it is unused. If there is nobody taking care of the property it can be seized with no compensation at all to the owner then razed and/or resold entirely at the profit of the city-county.

 

Hell, I fell into that black hole myself about 25 years ago.

My wife and I were proud when we bought our first (and only) home in 1987. 3 bedrooms and 2 baths on an acre of land in North Carolina, even a stand of woods and a small creek in the back. And then the Gulf War struck.

While preparing to go I was injured, and when my unit went to the Sandbox, I was sent to California. We put the house up for sale almost immediately, and no takers. With 70% of Camp Lejeune going overseas the housing market crashed. We moved to California in November 1990, and tried to pay both rent in California and mortgage on a house we could not sell or rent for almost 6 months. Our savings was destroyed and we could not even sell it at a loss.

We finally gave up in May 1991, that month in the entire county there were a total of 2 house sales. And foreclosures were already on the rise because servicemembers were sending their families home "for the duration" and owners who relied on rent to make their mortgage payments now had empty houses. I talked to my agent for the last time in around August 1991 and she said about 1/3 of the subdivision we had lived in was VA loan foreclosed.

If I had not been ordered to relocate we would have been able to keep the house until the economy picked up again. But the military says move and you move. I have known quite a few others in similar situations over the years. If there was one thing I wish the VA would implement, that would be a clause letting you get your VA loan back if you are forced to move because of foreclosure due to military relocation.

 

We know why the draft ended, there are some in our society who don't want to serve be it during war time of peace time.

But the "New Left" who had just taken over control of the Democrat Party went further, they had a political strategy to prevent the American military to be used any more from stopping communist expansion in the world. This happened at the same time of creating the all volunteer military. The left believed that if the reserves and Guard had to be called up just to put 10,000 boots on the ground any place in the world, that the reservist and guardmen along with their families would revolt.

It was called "Total Force" a policy where the reserves and Guard have to be called up to even fight a small brush war. It was a political move of the anti war leftist.
This was the source I always used but unfortunately as of 2014 you have to be a member. < https://secure.afa.org/joinafa/logi...chive/pages/2011/february 2011/0211force.aspx > The "Total Force" policy was a left wing political move.

The reserves and guard have always been made up of older men who already had a family, a career and a life.

As we have already seen, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan and the second war in Iraq, it didn't happen. The reservist and the Guard reported for duty.

Since 1973 when the "Total Force" policy was adopted, I've opposed it. I believe that the reserves and Guard should be a reserve force when the country goes to war, a total war scenario. The reserves or Guard shouldn't have to be called up to fight low intensity wars.

The left also believed that if the reserves and Guard were have been called up to fight the Vietnam War in 65 or 66 that the reservist and guardsmen and their families would have taken to the streets. No they wouldn't, they would have showed up for duty and served.

 

There was the anti-Japanese movement in California organised by an Irish-American leader and Roosevelt's executive order was fuelled by anti-Japanese sentiment among white farmers who competed against Japanese farmers and politicians sided with anti-Japanese constituencies demanding their removal. In normal circumstances, these Japanese Americans could have returned to California but their farms and businesses were confiscated by the US government to allow white farmers to regain control of the state's agricultural sector, which was more problematic than the internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage. Aside from Japanese Americans, thousands of German and Italian Americans were also forced to relocate to internment camps at the time and there was an economic aspect to the internment policy, which was a wartime necessity.