Interesting Read... Options

[Blakjak]

Anybody read Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? I'm about halfway through it now and I find it very interesting. Druid you're from Kansas right lol. No, but it really is a thought-provoking read, something I think everyone should try and muscle their way through.

*I know this isn't about the War on Terror but it deals with politics so I thought it would be relevant.

This post has been edited by Blakjak: 06/27/05 4:55pm

[Druid]

Japanese-American Interment is a great example of revisionist history.
Look through the page you linked to, not a single mention about German or Italians. I think most people would be surprised to find out Japanese actually made up the minority of people deemed Enemy Aliens.
Germain 300,000
Italian 600,000
Japanese 115,000

Now guess the reason why there is little or no mention of German and Italian interment. Simple, the Germans and Italians didn't sue for reparations.
Another point often missing is the fact for those who WERE U.S. citizen, were given the opportunity to give up their citizenship, if they did they many were allowed to go back to Japan.
You would think a site dedicated to how wrong interment was would also mention other groups also effected, but it doesn't. I find that very strange.
Add to that, the numbers people cite when they talk about interment sound worse than they really were. Not sure the percentage but a large amount where never locked up as most people would image when they think of interment, almost a quarter where simply relocated and prohibited from entering the pacific coast states.
Two years ago on another forum was a discussion about possible interment of Arab-Americans. A Canadian blasted America for trampling citizen's rights because of interment during WW2. I was amazed that he didn't know Canada did the same thing during that time.

I don't really know if interment was the right decision or if it was even necessary but I do know it wasn't a simply case of prejudice as some revisionist make it out to be. The revisionist tend to overlook that several intercepted and later decoded messages from the Japanesse miltary mention information recieved from spies inside of America or the fact every ship that sailed from pacific ports was attacked, this numbers was almost cut in half after interment.

[holden_caulfield]

Japanese-American Interment is a great example of revisionist history.
Look through the page you linked to, not a single mention about German or Italians. I think most people would be surprised to find out Japanese actually made up the minority of people deemed Enemy Aliens. You would think a site dedicated to how wrong interment was would also mention other groups also effected, but it doesn't. I find that very strange.

There's nothing wrong with a website devoted specifically to Japanese internment, just as there is nothing wrong with a website devoted specifically to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, though we all know that Russians, Gypsies, Communists, and other undesirables suffered just as badly. So I can't see how this is deemed revisionism or even strange. I think you're playing word games. I could go one step further--you would think a website dedicated to revealing the injustice capable of human beings would also mention other groups affected, like Sargon's brutal oppresion of the Sumerians, or Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. So really, I don't think a Japanese website devoted to Japanese internment is that inappropriate.

Now guess the reason why there is little or no mention of German and Italian interment. Simple, the Germans and Italians didn't sue for reparations.

Well bravo for the Germans and Italians who didn't sue, but that's beside the point. They really should have. It's like saying that the only reason the blacks were able to repeal the oppressive poll tax and Jim Crow laws was because they were the only minority group having the guts to publicly fight them when, in reality, the Jim Crow laws affected lots of minorities. Given that the Irish, the Chinese, etc., didn't make such an organized stir against these laws, does that make them [the laws] any more pallatable?? So what if the Japanese were the only ones to sue, what's at stake here is the actions of the government. The internment of the Italians and Germans is equally disgusting.

Another point often missing is the fact for those who WERE U.S. citizen, were given the opportunity to give up their citizenship, if they did they many were allowed to go back to Japan.

Actually no, this point was not passed over, at least not in my high school. There's a movie about a young man who returned to Japan to fight the Americans because of his anger and disillusionment (the movie takes the slant that he made the wrong choice).

In any case, how can the exchange of US citizenship and extradition to Japan for an "avoidance of internment" fair? Follow my logic:

1) These are US citizens, and so they are, by law, entitled to the fair and equal treatment, application of laws, rights, etc., as any other citizen of this country, regardless of his race, age, etc.

2) Executive Order 9066 explicitly reveals that its purpose is to to expedite the American prosecution of war. What's implied is why the war was being prosecuted in the first place: to protect American defense facilities and, a fortiori, American citizens.

3) Here Roosevelt's logic is bizarre--to protect American citizens, he will force American citizens to choose between two equally repulsive alternatives: A) relinquish their Constitutional rights and be forced to live in "relocation centers," whereby they are divested of most of their assets, or renounce theiry citenship to the US and relocate to Japan.

Alternative A is what happened to 110,000 Japanese-American citizens (I don't know where you got your numbers, but I used Encarta and a site for the Asian American Studies department at UCLA), it is patently unfair and even, dare I say it, un-American. Alternative B is just absurd. The administration might as well have offered to relocate them to Nigeria or Turkey. People assume that sticking a Japanese-American in Japan is a smooth operation. Many of them, especially the younger generations, didn't even speak Japanese. Nice. And what about the fact that, like most Americans, Japanese-Americans were pro-war and against Japanese imperialism?

Add to that, the numbers people cite when they talk about interment sound worse than they really were. Not sure the percentage but a large amount where never locked up as most people would image when they think of interment, almost a quarter where simply relocated and prohibited from entering the pacific coast states.

I strongly disagree with your numbers, and I've already cited where I got mine. True, many of them were not 'locked up' behind barbed wire fences, although that is our strongest impression. Many were forced to live in closed communities where they were "simply reloacted and prohibited from entering pacific coast states." Oh, gee, that's it? Well now that you put it that way, they've got nothing to complain about! Let's just take all the Iraqis living in Los Angeles, Iraqi-American citizens that is, and disperse them throughout Texas, just to make it harder for any would-be saboteurs to operate. Nothing too serious, certainly not any barbed-wire camps. We're civilized, after all.

Two years ago on another forum was a discussion about possible interment of Arab-Americans. A Canadian blasted America for trampling citizen's rights because of interment during WW2. I was amazed that he didn't know Canada did the same thing during that time.

Beside the point. I met a German who was blasting our Guantanamo camps, and he knew nothing about what his own country had perpetrated in the forties, and you know what? It really doesn't matter. Either way the camps are unacceptable. I ask you, what if the Canadian had known about the disgracful actions of his own country? Does that alone make his assertion any more or less valid? no.

I don't really know if interment was the right decision or if it was even necessary but I do know it wasn't a simply case of prejudice as some revisionist make it out to be. The revisionist tend to overlook that several intercepted and later decoded messages from the Japanesse miltary mention information recieved from spies inside of America or the fact every ship that sailed from pacific ports was attacked, this numbers was almost cut in half after interment.

I have no idea where you got the idea that the every ship from the Pacific port was attacked. Every ship? Cut in half? Again, I strongly doubt your claim, but I might open up if you can cite some kind of reliable source which can conclude not only that the attacks were decreased after the relocation (which i doubt), but also that THE TWO INCIDENTS WERE VERITABLY CONNECTED (I really doubt). The Japanese had spies. Hell, everyone has spies. That doesn't mean, "Let's go lock up Americans if they are the same ethnicity as the nations we are fighting." The Russians had famous spies in the fifties who were not Russian, but Jewish--and they were motivated not by any social or ethnic or even political factors. They were motivated by money. Hey, who isn't these days?

I agree with you, however, that prejudice was not the only motivation, but it was a VERY LARGE ONE. The internment of the Germans? Prejudice. And the Italians? Prejudice. Like you said, the Japanese were not the only ones to suffer such indignity.

To a certain extent, internment can serve as a measure of protection. I mean, look at all the prejudice against "Japs" that was present during WWII. Many may have been killed by racist citizens who were upset about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

To a great extent, rounding up all the blacks and locking them up in Alaska would reduce hate crimes in New York by 100%. I mean, look at all the prejudice they suffer now, some have even been killed by racists citizens. Ridiculous.

Look, my last point, Druid, is your mentioning that the numbers aren't as bad as they really were. And though I doubt even this, you may be right. We have a culture which tends to exaggerate the dramatic. In light of this, however, I also offer this: Even if Roosevelt had done this to just one citizen, it would be just as wrong. We live in a country of precedents, and that's what makes this place so great. But it is also what makes our precedents so important, because what applies to one man applies to all men--we are, after all, equal under the gaze of the Law.

"An injustice somewhere is a threat to justice anywhere." MLK from Gandhi.

Quotes, btw, can be used to distort anything and support any position. But sometimes they are poignant.

--hc