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

http://www.ww2pacific.com/relocation.html

As for myself, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second if it were my responsibility at the time.

 

Looking back and quarterbacking is always difficult.

There had always been a lot of racism directed at Japanese Americans on the West Coast- and not so much in Hawaii.

We interned American citizens of Japanese descent on the mainland wholesale- while in Hawaii only those who were suspected of ties to Japan were interned. Hawaii was actually attacked, and much more likely to face future attacks than the mainland.

Neither did we intern American citizens of German descent, even after Germany declared war on us, and while German u-boats were off the American coast.

I think that FDR made the wrong call- but there was so much widespread fear- and racial discrimination against Japanese Americans- that I can understand how it was made- but it wasn't necessary, and actually hurt us- all of those productive people's talents and labor were wasted at a time when America needed huge amounts of labor.

 

Actually, we did inter Germans in WWII as well as evict them from coastal areas. And also Italians.

And the actual number "interred" was rather small, around 2,000. The majority were simply "relocated" to interior areas away from the coast. The camps for the majority were more along the lines of a refugee camp or "reservation" then a prison. But if you are taken away from your home in a city like Los Angeles where you were a mechanic or engineer and dropped into the middle of nowhere, what choice do you have but to simply live in the camp?

This had less impact on the German community, simply because a much higher percentage already lived away from the coast so no relocation was needed. And for the Germans and Italians you had larger 2nd+ generation communities that would sponsor them in the heartland and rural areas, so they did not have to live in the camps unlike the Japanese. German, Japanese and Italian immigrants living in say Michigan had no need to be relocated because the idea was to prevent espionage by their potentially helping spies entering by ship or submarine. But where most immigrants migrated into the central US, the Japanese clustered primarily in California and other coastal states.

Fact is, over 11,000 Germans and German-Americans were interred during WWII. And this does not count the more then 4,000 that were deported to the US from Latin American countries.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qckpw

And do not forget, those "Koreans" at the time indeed were Japanese. At the time of WWII Korea had been part of Japan for over 30 years.

 

The whole idea behind the US is equality before the law. When we violated this principle by interning Japanese citizens without charge, we negated one of the reasons for our existence. This has implications in the present day as well. When we use drone strikes to execute American citizens without trial we violate our principles. Prism is another violation as is the NDAA. Do you support warrantless surveillance, indefinite incommunicado detention without charge, and execution without trial as well? If not, explain the differences to me.

 

I doubt this would have happened if Republicans were in office.

 

And what did the Japanese do to the foreigners in areas they occupied?

I can tell you, it makes even the harshest US Internment camp look like a Club Med. The majority of "Comfort Women" were made up of foreigners who simply had the misfortune to be in areas that were occupied by Japan.

 

Hawaii was an island, and was effectively quarantined already. As for racism, American racism was, and is, pretty mild stuff compared to the rest of the planet's, so those arguments don't have much to do with history, really, except to make some false narrative claiming moral equivalences that don't exist in real life.

The Japanese in America for the most part were big fans and supporters of the Japanese conquests in Asia in the previous couple of decades, so a lot of the ‘racism’ experienced when Pearl Harbor came along was self-inflicted to a large extent and of course made their 'patriotism’ easily suspect and made the decision to intern an easy one. The interning only affected Japanese on the West Coast; few Japanese elsewhere in the country were interned. In any case, they were most likely safer in internment, as short a time as that was.

As Mushroom pointed out, this isn’t true. My family had an great uncle interned for a time; he went on to serve with Patton in North Africa and Sicily, and was briefly his driver. He didn’t have any snivels about it.

Maybe. Since so many were interned on the west coast, we’ll never know if there any sleepers; as for myself, I wouldn’t have wanted to find out , or be responsible for the consequences at the time, so it’s a moot point; we do know the Japanese intelligence arms before Pearl were actively recruiting agents among the American Japanese, and we know none bothered to report this activity, either, and this includes Hawaii, so again as a community they weren’t entirely hapless and blameless. It’s not like there was all kinds of manpower and time to devote to endless debating and trading trite little anecdotes and the like, just to appease modern sociologists and hippies in the modern era.

Based on the article, I would say he made the right decision based on what was known at the time. A little prevention of potential threats isn't unjustified, even if it isn't possible to tell if it worked or not if something didn't happen because of that preventive measure. That 'logic' would leave us still dealing with epidemics and famines, not to mention thinking it 'safe' to just wait until enemies were literally invading our shores before taking any action that might be percieved as 'racist' or 'fear mongering' or whatever is trendy with academics and absolutist wingnuts of the moment.

 

"NAMBLA" logic - an extreme absolutist position which demands that for logical consistencies sake that certain gross crimes be allowed, in order that no one might feel restrained.
Stirling S. Newberry


Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease.
Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816

So much for absolutist stances, and mindless runaway academic sociology re 'the whole idea behind American n stuff'.

 

Partially true.

As far as the Immigrants themselves (Issei) and some of the first generation born in the US (Nisei) this might be true. But remember, under Shinto of that time the Emperor was not just a ruler, but a physical embodiment of God. When you get to the Sansei (2nd generation American) and Yonsei (3rd generation American) this belief had pretty much completely vanished. They saw themselves as Americans first, Japanese second.

Remember, your normal 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation "Japanese-American" had no more support for Japan then say a similar generational American of German support would have for the Nazis, or an Iranian for the Ayatollahs of Iran. That kind of "Dedication to the Homeland" rarely lasts beyond the 1st generation, and most of the time dies in the first.

And think on that logically. If you are a grandchild of a German who emigrated to the US after WWII, how much dedication are you likely to have to Germany today? Hell, my own son generally forgets that he is "Latino" (we even had a big fight over that once) and that his mother was not even born in this country. He has no more interest in the affairs of Argentina then I do of Zimbabwe.

 

I don't disagree generally; I just doubt that at the time that all of them were loyal to the U.S., and I doubt it was widely known by our decision makers at the time they decided on interning. They chose caution over other issues, and revised their actions accordingly later, which as I think was the right policy to follow, then and now as well.

 

Great information- I knew that Germans(and Italians) had been 'interned' but was under the impression that those internments were only for those Germans and Italians were there was some basis of suspicion. If you have a good source for me to read more, please share.

 

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I have read about the fears of the times- and spoke with my grandmother and with my parents enough to get an idea of what the sentiment was at the time. I think that internment probably did protect some Japanese Americans from reprisals. I can understand why FDR made the decision that he did.

But looking back again in hindsight- on the grander scale- locking up American citizens like that without any due process was very un-American. That the order survived Supreme Court scrutiny was also something to be remembered.

I think overall it was the wrong thing to do- though I can understand the rational and sentiment that led to it.

Oh and don't be so quick to discount the racism- we on the West Coast at times can feel superior to the South when it comes to history of racism, since we don't have the same history of racial discrimination against African Americans, but on the West Coast, racism ran towards blatant anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese policies.

 

I wouldn't have put Mr. Miyagi in there. Apparently Pat Morita actually got put in one of those camps.

 

it was a time in America where racism was common in public discourse.

That this abjuration of the constitution was enacted in a time of great fear and anger merely demonstrates how "flexible" the foundational rights of citizens actually are.

Guilty because of the way you look or where your daddy was born is the antithesis of the American way, and the entire concept of human rights.

 

If they were only concerned about Japanese Americans being spies, then why did they force them to sell their homes and buisnesses? Why werent they allowed to keep those things so they could have them after the war ended?

 

Don't be so quick to go thinking that!

There is a reason why cities like LA seem so segregated today. Hispanics in East LA, Chinese north of Downtown, blacks in Compton and Watts. These were the areas they were allowed to live and own homes. The city actually had mandated racial segregation in where people of different races could live until 1917. And even though declared illegal, it still continued for decades longer.

http://www.streetgangs.com/academic/intocompton.pdf

Do not feel quite so proud that the "West Coast was different", this happened nation wide. I am old enough to remember what "White Flight" was, and I remember the outrage in a great many areas of California when blacks and other ethnic minorities tried to move into some neighborhoods.

In fact, California has more members of the KKK then Alabama does. And there have been some pretty large incidents over the years. Like a 15 March 1980 rally in Oceanside:

And do not even get me started on the history of the Antelope Valley in the White Supremacist movement.

 

I am aware of much of what you posted- yet that really doesn't change the point I was trying to make- we Californians may think we are above the racism of the South but we have a very storied history also.

Our history of racism towards Chinese and Japanese goes back further- and deeper than our racism towards African Americans. Latinos? Might go back even further. Almost all of that has roots in economics- African Americans did not arrive in large numbers in California until relatively later, so many places were relatively less discriminatory towards African Americans than towards Chinese and Japanese up until the First and Second World Wars, which saw the migration of lots of African Americans to California, where they started to compete for jobs and housing.

 

I agree. Its not like we starved them, like our POWs had to suffer. We didn't know if we were gonna win that great war. We were fighing two enemies. We could not take the chance of sabotage by Japs, as they did in Hawaii. Good call. The right call. The intelligent call.

 

Southerners were just more open about it is the only real difference. Much like most of Europe likes to bury its antisemitism under the Nazi bed and pretend it wasn't a Team Europe enterprise to round up Jews and other undesirables and ship them off to Germany and Poland, the rest of the country likes to pretend it was all just a southern thing, especially those who like to peddle the Camelot Myth and the current identity politics the Democratic Party relies on now for votes instead of having any real platforms. They can't allow the fact it was a southern politician that got their Civil Rights bills passed and not that darling of the northeastern white shoe elites Kennedy to stand, for the same reasons they studiously avoid ever bringing up the fact that both he and bobby were McCarthyites of the first order. Selective 'history' at its finest.

They need these farces like the Zimmerman Demon and Officer Wilson to fire up their base, and never mind how ridiculous and unwarranted it is, it's about demagagogery and power, proving to your base you can persecute whites regardless of guilt or innocence. The media is especially outraged they couldn't get those two railroaded during an election cycle; it's an affront to their sensibilities about themselves and their entitlements.

 

Yes. Apparently few read the entire article, which was the point of posting it. Trying to avoid hindsight is hard for many, especially for those who want history to reflect some sort of morality play that fits their own ideologies.

 

The internment of Japanese-Americans is all on FDR, a Democrat. Executive Order 9066, it authorized the forced imprisonment of 120,000 Japanese American citizens in internment camps during World War II without trials or hearings. It was beyond all doubt un-Constitutional and the Supreme Court reversed it's initial support of the internment in it's decision, Ex Parte Endo, to make any future such actions... impossible.

I have no idea why folks on this thread are supporting it. FDR, almost single handedly, was responsible for the ruination of America with "The Great Society." We're still feeling the ramifications of the New Deal and the Welfare state to this very day. No doubt a Stalinist sympathizer, he gave Eastern Europe to the Soviets on a silver platter. Shall I continue?

The un-Constitutional internment of Japanese-Americans without a trial or hearing is the tip of the veritable iceberg in terms of the level of incompetence wrought upon this nation by this man.

I have no idea...none, why anyone of sound mind and love of our great Constitution would ever support the illegal Executive Order 9066 or anything FDR did for that matter.

 

What the Japanese do has no moral bearing on what the US did.

That conditions were better in US concentration camps doesn't justify their existence.

 

There probably WERE potential saboteurs among the Japanese (we know there saboteurs among German-Americans) and I can see situations were internment could have been for the protection of the Japanese. There could be a backlash against Muslims with a couple more large terror events. If backlash becomes the case, they may need to be interned.

 

So you're willing to toss ideas like equality before the law out the window in the name of convenience. Morality is subject to an expedience test according to you. Nice.

 

And we did the same things to Germans and Italians. We even accepted holding them for other nations (who likely would have simply executed them or placed them in actual prisons if we had not taken them).

You can pontificate all you like, but trying to behave like people 79+ years ago should have behaved exactly as we would today is a big mistake. Armchair Quarterbacking history is always a mistake.