> But he was also behind the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans because, as Mr Stimson put it, "their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese".
The internment of Japanese-Americans is a blight on United States history [1], as is the gold rush era Chinese Exclusion Act [2] ("the first law implemented to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating" to the United States), as was the 1950s "Red Scare" [3] (where accusations of being Communist spies were made without evidence.)
As the United States enters into a (likely multi-decade long) second Cold War and potential painful economic decoupling, it's worth knowing this history so that the real problems the United States has identified with the Chinese Communist Party can be addressed in accordance to the values the United States exposes.
Especially with the presumption of innocence (innocent until proven guilty) when it comes to individual people's lives, and the principle that everybody is created equal.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent "Distrust and Verify" [4] reformulation (of a famous Russian proverb) should definitely be applied widely to counter the Chinese Communist Party threat, but great care must be taken to ensure America's core values are always respected. Cold Wars are very dangerous and vastly increase the risk of nuclear escalation, so it's vital we all understand what's at stake.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act