George Takei recalls his childhood in an internment camp
bbc.com
bbc.com
This image so affected me that I once saw a copy of the book left behind at a coffee shop and had to thumb through it to see it again.
With all the editing of history curricula that states like Florida are doing, I hope it survives. It’s is a dark chapter in American history that wasn’t that long ago.
[0]https://www.mrginn.com/uploads/8/5/4/6/85468970/chapter35.pd...
Shameful. This country took its own citizens, locked them up, stole their land and shot their dogs — without a trial.
https://www.paloaltohistory.org/japanese-american-internment...
Does it mean “we are not of enemy nationality”? Or does it mean “we are foreigners in the US and our nationality is enemy nationality”
One way of fulfilling requirements for some scout ranks is to partake in community service programs, so perhaps they’re running errands for their community by hanging this sign up. It’s a haunting image.
> "A Jap's a Jap. It makes no difference whether the Jap is a citizen or not." - — General John L. DeWitt, Commander, Western Defense Command, 1942
> "I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp." — Colonel Karl Bendetsen, Administrator, Wartime Civil Control Administration, 1942
- https://amhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/non-flash/removal_proc...
They also didn't really care about German or Italian ancestry, there were millions of such people and almost none were imprisoned. Nearly all Americans with Japanese ancestry were imprisoned, and most were American-born citizens.
I have no doubt that the internment had local support at the time. More, I suspect I would have been more for the idea than I care to think on. Glad to see we aren't pretending it didn't happen.
It is a totally accurate term but it felt like a strong change after calling the Nazi camps by that name.
But the American ones brought them into isolation, not primarily the other things. The terminology is now messy.
Example, a TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeBKBFAPwNc
An older friend was married to someone who was held in Manzanar. I drove by with them in the 2000s and the mood was somber. His life got a lot better after the war and he was able to spend most of his retirement fishing off of the coast in San Diego but it’s hard to forget that your home country saw you as a threat even while a child.
More broadly I object to this very modern attitude wherein people in the past who did things we consider wrong today were evil bigots. Which is not to say they weren't wrong.
I think a good lesson here is that wrongness is not a monopoly owned by just one political ideology.
What do you want? For us to say “ah well, that’s just how it was back in the day”? You’re the one incapable of nuance if you want to put everything FDR did into one bucket or the other.
My evidence for this belief is the fact that Japanese-Americans represented a third of people living in Hawaii, more than 150k of them, yet in Hawaii only ~1800 Japanese-Americans were interned. About 1%. This, despite the fact that Hawaii was closer to the war than the rest of America, and despite the fact that the Niihau incident occurred in Hawaii. Interning a third of the population of Hawaii simply wasn't practical, so in Hawaii they had to exercise much more discretion.
Furthermore, some people believe that Executive Order 8802, which forbade ethnic and racial discrimination in defense industries, was intended more to prevent discrimination against German-Americans and Italian-Americans than against African-Americans. Supposing that is true, it evidences the perception of FDR's administration that discrimination against German-Americans, despite their skin color, was a plausible scenario and would harm the war effort if permitted.
Further evidence for the plausibility of ethnic discrimination against Germans, despite their skin color, is easy to find during WWI. Across America and the UK, German families (including the Royal Family..) changed their names to conceal their German origins. Schools stop teaching German, businesses were renamed, sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage" (freedom fries, anyone?) The Red Cross even forbade people with German last names from joining.
tl;dr: The federal government recognized the potential appetite for discrimination against German-Americans, but forbade this because German-Americans were a very large portion of the population and excluding them would harm the war effort. At the same time the federal government perpetrated discrimination against Japanese-Americans, except they exercised more discretion in Hawaii where Japanese-Americans were a very large segment of the population.
> At the same time the federal government perpetrated discrimination against Japanese-Americans, except they exercised more discretion in Hawaii where Japanese-Americans were a very large segment of the population.
Hawaii, not a US state at the time, was largely occupied by the US military prior to Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor its residents were subject to martial law and their civil rights were suspended. The situation there was not analogous to the situation on the mainland, so I wouldn't use it to draw any conclusions.
> the only reason
Your thesis isn't wildly off-base, but how often is anything done by humans done for one single, solitary reason?
This isn't the reason relatively few Japanese-Americans were interned in Hawaii. Compare it to Alaska. Like Hawaii, Alaska was an incorporated US territory. Japanese-Americans were ordered out of Alaska or interned.
The reason general internment didn't happen in Hawaii is because:
> "The powerful businessmen of Hawaii concluded that the imprisonment of such a large proportion of the islands' population would adversely affect the economic prosperity of the territory.[74] The Japanese represented "over 90 percent of the carpenters, nearly all of the transportation workers, and a significant portion of the agricultural laborers" on the islands.[74] General Delos Carleton Emmons, the military governor of Hawaii, also argued that Japanese labor was "'absolutely essential' for rebuilding the defenses destroyed at Pearl Harbor."[74] Recognizing the Japanese-American community's contribution to the affluence of the Hawaiian economy, General Emmons fought against the incarceration of the Japanese Americans and had the support of most of the businessmen of Hawaii.[74]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
Japanese-Americans were a third of Hawaii's population, so interning them all would have been a disaster for Hawaii's economy and harmful to the war effort. That's why it didn't happen in Hawaii. German-Americans, unlike Japanese Americans, were a very large portion of the population in all states and territories, not just Hawaii. The needs of economy and war obviously wouldn't tolerate the internment of all German-Americans, so it didn't happen.
If you think general internment of German-Americans would have been implausible regardless of population size, because the Germans were white, you need to remember that perception of race has never been a rational matter. During WWI, Germans were racially 'othered' in the UK and US by assertions off Germans being "asiatic Huns" and similar nonsense. Nevermind that you couldn't visually distinguish an average German from an average Anglo, racial othering is obviously not bound to rationality. This inclination to racially other the enemy is only tempered by substantial ethnic overlap between the two warring parties. Where there is substantial ethnic overlaps, discrimination will be officially discouraged and resisted because it impairs the war effort (e.g. Executive Order 8802). Where there is little ethnic overlap, racial or ethnic discrimination often become convenient to the government and becomes officially sanctioned.
What I was driving at, which sort of complements what you quoted, is: what would have been the rationale of sending all those Hawaiian Japanese-Americans to an internment camp in the midwest to be watched over by military police when they were in Hawaii, under martial law, being watched over by military police?
General Delos Carleton Emmons, the military governor of Hawaii, also argued that Japanese labor was "'absolutely essential' for rebuilding the defenses destroyed at Pearl Harbor."[74] Recognizing the Japanese-American community's contribution to the affluence of the Hawaiian economy, General Emmons fought against the incarceration of the Japanese Americans and had the support of most of the businessmen of Hawaii.
The interesting thing is, in a 100% wartime economy with full employment, depriving the economy of the labor of all those other Japanese-Americans in the continental United States was hurting the war effort as well. Not as acutely as tearing a big chunk out of the Hawaiian economy would, but still, not very rational.
> If you think general internment of German-Americans would have been implausible regardless of population size, because the Germans were white, you need to remember that perception of race has never been a rational matter.
I think internment of German-Americans would have been less likely, not implausible or impossible. The differences of Japanese-Americans in terms of dissimilar appearance and less shared culture would have greased the skids of racism, as it were. And yes, it's fair enough to point out that it doesn't always work that way and sometimes really, really similar groups engage in ethnic othering.
It was objectively wrong then, and it is wrong through all of time.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/harvest.html#:~:text=The%20Wor....
You yourself are describing the people rounded up as Japanese (yes, with a qualifier). They were people more likely to have loyalty to an enemy state, weren't they? It was certainly a blunt tool; and not an issue I've looked at in detail; but do you expect FDR to have done nothing?
Interesting for me to consider whether UK was right to round up Germans for WWII, rather difficult when that includes the Royal Family, but they did imprison something like 10% of "Germans" living in the UK (I don't know if they were British, just visiting, naturalised, or what).
If either of those is "yes" then we're just looking at where the line is.
Would you accept imprisonment if you knew it was keeping 1000 murderers off the street?
Do people who support Nazism deserve to get punched? Even if they're innocent of any crimes (a very oft heard sentiment from people who would otherwise say they value the rule of law)?
Nothing about war is OK, but sometimes we have to compromise on what we'd like to happen. I think it's interesting to try and be honest with oneself and ask where the line is.
Would I automatically lock up adults who described themselves as associated with an enemy country, when at war, probably not; but I wouldn't give them every freedom either. Indeed during times of war it is normal to curtail general freedoms. Would I consider it unjustifiable to lock up people who appear to be associated with an enemy country, also probably not. I guess I consider that sometimes it is acceptable, morally, to lock innocent people up ... no justice system could [barring future technology that can provide certainty on past events] ever lock anyone up without such a consideration.
I'm interested if you or others have anything to try and develop my thinking in this area. Thanks.
If nothing else, this goes to show how far the scale is tipped in favor of right wing ideas and policies in the states and still is. The fact Biden, a fairly conservative politician, can be called a "Communist" with a straight face is an indictment of the American education system.
The labels don't even mean anything after a while. You can actively be enforcing fascist policies and still be labeled a socialist due to a population wide inability to understand what words mean.
those people have a pretty hypocritical and one-dimensional way of looking at history
> More broadly I object to this very modern attitude wherein people in the past who did things we consider wrong today were evil bigots.
but not me, I'm awesome
Social issues change over time but the also correlate with otherwise unrelated social/political/economic issues so trying to apply political issues from 80 years ago into the modern era is going to lead to some incongruous positions.
Maybe we should stop pretending these people who did some good things for the country were perfect gods. You can praise their accomplishments while still pointing out their flaws.
Ask most people what the defining characteristics or deeds of Washington of Jefferson and they respond with the points above.
Are those the most impactful or noteworthy characteristics of those individuals? I don't think so. Perhaps they are interesting context for understanding their other deeds or the human condition, but certainly not the primary impact they had on history.
They weren't the opposition, they were a key part of the coalition.
Lots of professional-class liberals today consider "populism" to be a dirty word. Would they have been Hoover Republicans in that era?
Random observation. The US has almost forgot that before WWII that Pols, Italians, eastern Europeans, Irish, etc were distinct. And Asians were even farther out.
I know for a fact that my silent generation dad feels prejudice against Chinese. Even though he hates it's there. My grandmother was an antisemite though oddly not prejudiced against Mexicans or blacks. That whole family was salt of the earth. And half were unreformed bigots as well.
People are weird. The past is not the present.
There were anti-racist people at the time, even in his own cabinet, who resisted the calls for internment.
Were most of his policies based on the betterment of the oppressed? Absolutely.
Did he oversee one of the most objectively bigoted things that happened in 1942? Absolutely.
Was Roosevelt a bigot? I do not know.
But, is it fair to say that he was a reactionary bigot? Maybe.
That's the thing about people. They're very, very rarely one thing to the exclusion of all else. Violent racists can be outstanding community members on a very local scale. Extremely inclusive pacifists can be assholes to the people in their lives.
I think "reactionary bigot" is just a commonplace phrase often said perfunctorily, but I'm not sure the meaning of the original comment would change if the word "reactionary" was deleted. The argument over the word seems pedantic in the context. The original point is that Takei faced multiple forms of bigotry in his life.
The definition of reactionary is "opposing political or social liberalization or reform".
Whereas internment was a reaction, indeed an overreaction, to the war with Japan, based on the bigoted fear that Japanese-Americans were loyal to Japan rather than to America. Not exactly the same.
But getting lost in pedantry instead of just moving through common usage when in regular human discourse is useless. There is no reason to walk down that road, other than to obfuscate any point the other person is trying to make behind a smoke screen of pseudo-intellectualism.
Sort of like I tried to do with those last two sentences.
Uhuh. Sure you do.
Most charitably, my guess is you've developed a persecution complex which has you hearing a comment like (as an example) "the US would be better off if the GOP just disappeared" as "we must murder all conservatives".
Meanwhile, one side of the political spectrum appears more likely to inspire actual politically-motivated violence, and it's not the one you seem to be pointing the finger at:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122593119
> In short, our individual-level examination found that among radicalized individuals in the United States, those adhering to a left-wing ideology were markedly less likely to engage in violent ideologically motivated acts when compared to right-wing individuals.
...
> When compared to individuals associated with a right-wing ideology, individuals adhering to a left-wing ideology had 68% lower odds of engaging in violent (vs. nonviolent) radical behavior (b = −1.15, SE = 0.13, odds ratio [OR] = 0.32, P < 0.001). On the other hand, the difference between individuals motivated by Islamist and right-wing causes was not significant (b = 0.05, SE = 0.14, OR = 1.05, P = 0.747). Expressed in terms of predicted probabilities, the probability of left-wing violent attack was 0.33, that of right-wing violent attack was 0.61, and that of Islamist violent attack was 0.62.
Which, of course, is just more data backing up the many many analyses that right-wing violence is by far a greater threat than left-wing violence (this is from 2020):
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-u...
> Overall, right-wing terrorists perpetrated the majority—57 percent—of all attacks and plots during this period, compared to 25 percent committed by left-wing terrorists, 15 percent by religious terrorists, 3 percent by ethnonationalists, and 0.7 percent by terrorists with other motives.
...
> Our data suggest that right-wing extremists pose the most significant terrorism threat to the United States, based on annual terrorist events and fatalities.
In fact, it's become institutionalized as this point. A recent poll showed that '30% of Republicans agree with the statement, “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.' Alarming? I'd say so.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/01/05/a...
So, hey, let's pretend for a moment that you are in fact surrounded by crazed lefties that talk to you about exterminating you and your family over your political views. There's one big difference between them and folks on the American right: They're far less likely to actually do anything about it.
There's something about human nature that makes us want to think of influential people as saints but rarely do they live up to that standard. We'd be far better off if we could banish this tendency from society.
The fact that some of the political leaders who approved that did other things doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold them accountable for a venal act – I would argue the contrary since they’re otherwise praised and it’s important to remember that our heroes are not perfect and should not be copied without improvement. One can make similar statements about how, for example, programs like social security or the GI bill were both good for many people of lower class backgrounds but also carefully designed and implemented to benefit black people less than white people.
Those countries didn’t attack directly in full force like the IJN did, by orders of magnitude. European Axis sunk a few American supply ships in international waters aiding their enemies.
There’s also the Niihau incident, which directly informed the response.
Truth is folks then had a tiny fraction of information that we have today—including hindsight. It’s unclear you would do any better in the same circumstances.
(Also, a few supply ships is whitewashing somewhat – hundreds of Americans traveling on civilian vessels were killed by the German navy and there were dozens of American flagged ships sunk prior to Pearl Harbor. No, not what the Japanese navy did but more than enough to have served as grounds for war if the US wasn’t trying so strenuously to stay out.)
The point I was trying to get at was that if you were faced with the same life-threatening decisions you'd likely decide the same. And if different it would only because of random chance. Not because you are smarter or more virtuous than FDR & Cabinet.
Shit, Truman had to decide to drop a nuke on the basis it would save more lives in the long run—with incomplete information. I don't envy those decisions at all.
And it’s the inability to forget that kept a citizenship question off the 2020 census[0], a reminder of the long lasting impact the internment still has on the US.
[0]https://www.npr.org/2018/12/26/636107892/some-japanese-ameri...
What was the question in particular?
"Is this person a citizen of the United States?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Commerce_v._New_...
Now, maybe you believe that citizenship shouldn’t be a salient category for treating people differently, but that’s an entirely different argument that has nothing to do with internment.
It’s curious that the NPR article doesn’t take exception with the question on the census that’s actually related to internment, which is dividing up American citizens by race and ethnicity.
We had a foreign exchange student from Japan with us for 9 months. When the school year wrapped up I rented an RV and the whole family (6 of us including the foreign exchange student) road-tripped around the western U.S. By chance Manzanar showed up as a point of interest in our vicinity and, a little awkwardly, we made it another destination.
I am not sure what our foreign exchange student thought. Perhaps it didn't really register for her — another country and all that. I am not sure how affected I would be if I saw something similar in Japan. It made quite an impression on me and my wife, however.
Instead of Star Trek being the apex of his career or life, it's now just one part of an immensely well-lived life.
Let's not pretend the opposition to the vaccine mandates in the US was entirely rational. It was mostly a circus of derangement and paranoid delusion. The only question is whether enough time will pass until the next pandemic for culture to have moved on, or if we can just expect half the country to oppose vaccinations on general principle from now on.
If you believe otherwise, it's because you listened to the cranks who were controlling the "skeptic" narrative and ignored the evidence to the contrary, because that's where the meme of the vaccines being untested and rushed came from.
They went through the same process yes. That does not make taking a brand new COVID vaccine in the height of a hyper-politicized pandemic the same as taking the for example MMR vaccine that has been used for decades. There are all kinds of reasons to be skeptical of the former more than the latter that need not be driven by crankery, and you’re only undermining your presumed desire to appear on the side of science by suggesting otherwise.
It's a good thing that isn't the argument I made, then.
>That does not make taking a brand new COVID vaccine in the height of a hyper-politicized pandemic the same as taking the for example MMR vaccine that has been used for decades.
Yes, it kind of does. The vaccine was tested. It's safe. No, that doesn't mean there isn't risk, there is always risk, but risk doesn't mean it could be poison for all anyone knows. There was little reason to be skeptical about it (or any more skeptical than of other vaccines, which is to say not very skeptical) besides giving in to the FUD being spread by the anti-vax crowd telling people it would make them infertile or drop dead of a heart attack after a few days.
Well it could perhaps be accused of being a reductive summary, but surely you see how it could have come off like that?
> The vaccine was tested. It's safe. No, that doesn't mean there isn't risk, there is always risk, but risk doesn't mean it could be poison for all anyone knows.
There is a vast bit of difference between no risk and poison for all anyone knows. Safe (as in unlikely to kill you or cause you lasting harm in the short term)? Yes, that’s evident. Worth the risk over the disease for those not at risk? By my reading of the data that’s far from clear. And again comparing 50 years to a few months of data.. I just don’t see how you can’t see the difference.
Again, your position doesn’t resemble anything scientific.
The science can speak for itself. My position isn't even about the science so much as the psychology and politics of risk aversion and paranoia around this specific vaccine. I assume you take flu vaccines, maybe tetanus if you have to travel, or chickenpox. People get vaccinated against Hepatitis B at birth. None of those had 50 years of clinical trials before release, there's a new flu vaccine every year.
People act like pharmaceutical companies never encountered anything like COVID before and just started mixing beakers of random chemicals together in a mad panic and jabbing people on the street with them, but research into coronaviruses and mRNA vaccines was already going on for decades. The infrastructure and science was already there. Technology improved. The vaccine was tested, it went through blind trials, it was approved using the same process as other vaccines.
And this is the scientific position, which you could easily avail yourself of. Science isn't the reason people don't trust this specific vaccine, because science doesn't support that fear.
Well you’d think so, but here we are with different views about what is a reasonable position on what it says.
You’re continuing to straw man things here, we may just be at an impasse.
> Science isn't the reason people don't trust this specific vaccine, because science doesn't support that fear.
Skepticism of mandates is fully supported by the science.
It's crazy to me that the twitter-sphere was so happy to overlook his own admitted past because he was on their "side".
The graphic novel "They Called Us Enemy"[1] goes into more details of his childhood for anyone interested.
He was a Marine at Pearl Harbor during the attack, he never really talked about it. I wish I knew him better, but I was always afraid of him growing up. "We don't wake grandpa up when he's napping, he might accidentally kill us."
If a war breaks out between the U.S. and China, what policies (if any) would the government potentially implement differently to its residents of Chinese descent?
For the last several decades (my lifetime) it's always seemed that no matter where in the World you might be, if the country is not an enemy of USA, there's a chance you [I mean, a person, not me specifically] could be whisked away to perpetual imprisonment in USA, for something perhaps as trivial as copyright infringement and the local government would just kinda shrug.
Perhaps it's closer to failure to follow due process, rather than habeus corpus.
Maybe that's not a balanced view of USA's projection of soft power. It mirrors the fear some in USA have of rogue cops.
Does it feel to you like the World, or just USA, had improved here? Tribalism seems as strong as ever.
In cases it also includes dual nationals. I guess they're declaring 2 classes of Americans. Way to go.
"it could happen again"
any asian american (chinese or otherwise) would tell you the same. most others would insist that it's impossible.
i don't think it's a coincidence that scalia is italian and has this opinion.
Nothing. There are no regrets there but now that things are stable (kinda), it's a good idea to have remorse to calm down people.
> If a war breaks out between the U.S. and China, what policies (if any) would the government potentially implement differently to its residents of Chinese descent?
That will depend on the perception of the US government for these people, for the popular opinion and for the revenge mentality level of the current ruling class. Remember, this happened very recently. They were all labeled "Oligarchs" whatever that means. They were not oligarchs yesterday or when they bought the properties? But now they are "enemies" so everything is justified as such. And the people applauded!
The report was widely published and cause mass hysteria against what was perceived at treacherous Japanese Americans.
Unfortunately, the media really pushed that narrative.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/04/us/ex-aide-calls-japanese...
> "John J. McCloy, former Assistant Secretary of War, today defended the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II as ''reasonably undertaken and thoughtfully and humanely conducted.'' Mr. McCloy, one of the key Government officials who oversaw the relocation program, said he might again support the wartime resettlement of United States citizens because of their national heritage."
It's true that there were actual Japanese government agents operating in the USA at the outbreak of WWII, but they were comparable in number to the German and Italian agents who were also US citizens. An overview of the Japanese government's activities from the Office of Naval Intelligence is here (Office of Naval Intelligence, 1941)
http://www.mansell.com/eo9066/1941/41-12/IA021.html
In comparison to internment of 112,000 Japanese-Americans ancestry (and seizure of property), some 11,500 people of German ancestry and three thousand people of Italian ancestry were incarcerated on suspicion of being foreign agents, out of a population of 1.2 million German-Americans and 2.4 million Italian-Americans.
https://encyclopedia.densho.org/German_and_Italian_detainees...
Conclusion: the Japanese internment program was just another example of blatantly racist government policy, of the same kind that motivated Nazi 'master race' thinking. Incidentally, McCloy was also a primarily responsible for the early release of Nazi industrialists from prison in post-WWII Germany.
https://player.fm/series/david-tennant-does-a-podcast-with/g...
TLDR: The first thing that happened in WWII for the United States was the attack on Pearl Harbor. The second thing is a Japanese pilot crash-landed on Ni'ihau on his way home from bombing Pearl, and a Japanese immigrant and a couple Japanese-Americans decided to take his side and help him (treason, of course). In the end a couple people were shot.
Edit: I'll add some discussion from below to the top-level comment, I think it improves it.
In a situation where you have no data (hostilities just started), this incident being one of the first things that happen is, in fact, quite striking. And, critically, these people weren't spies or saboteurs. They were rando civilians who, without premeditation or contact with enemy government, decided on the spot to help the enemy. If you were a commander in that war you would rightly find it terrifying. It is, we might say, a bad look.
I bring it up in response to the story because it's an obvious part of the narrative about Japanese internment camps in the U.S. in WWII that is suppressed because it is inconvenient and uncomfortable. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, though.
Obviously, this event makes the actions the U.S. government took look more justifiable. The fact that it happened so quickly after hostilities started is also striking. The idea that Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans are more likely to turn against their adopted country than, say, German or Italian immigrants seems more plausible in this light, and that helps understand the decisions made by people in power (in addition to stuff you already know, like Japanese is a very different language to English and culture to American, far more different than either German or Italian, and Japanese people and other East Asians are much more easily visually distinguished, etc.).
And, I will reiterate, in my mind it doesn't justify interning tens of thousands of citizens on the basis of ethnicity. It seems obviously wrong to me, either you're a citizen and you get the same rights as everyone else, or you're not. Discriminating on the basis of ethnicity is...racism? Not quite, but I suppose that's the word people use. It is a stain on the country's history.
Why is that treason "of course"? Seemingly, they were unaware of the events and just tried to help a fellow human being. That should never be treason.
Also, since you bring it up as a response to the story, are you justifying interment camps for specific ethnicity based on one event? Otherwise your comment seems borderline off-topic.
I bring it up in response to the story because it's an obvious part of the narrative about Japanese internment camps in the U.S. in WWII that is suppressed because it is inconvenient and uncomfortable. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, though.
Obviously, this event makes the actions the U.S. government took look more justifiable. The fact that it happened so quickly after hostilities started is also striking. The idea that Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans are more likely to turn against their adopted country than, say, German or Italian immigrants seems more plausible in this light, and that helps understand the decisions made by people in power (in addition to stuff you already know, like Japanese is a very different language to English and culture to American, far more different than either German or Italian, and Japanese people and other East Asians are much more easily visually distinguished, etc.).
And, I will reiterate, in my mind it doesn't justify interning tens of thousands of citizens on the basis of ethnicity. It seems obviously wrong to me, either you're a citizen and you get the same rights as everyone else, or you're not. Discriminating on the basis of ethnicity is...racism? Not quite, but I suppose that's the word people use. It is a stain on the country's history.
On reflection, I think what really grinds my gears is that shaping the public consciousness with lies and half-truths is so effective...
I'd also consider the Red Scare and McCarthyism - fear of Communists used as a proxy to harass and suppress Jews and homosexuals and purge them from society.
Every time the US experiences a test of its values it seems to abandon them immediately. The cultural fear and hatred of the other goes too deep.
> The pilot then told the Haradas about the attack and the two agreed to help him. Nishikaichi and Yoshio Harada overcame a guard and escaped to destroy the plane and papers, then took Niihauans Benehakaka "Ben" Kanahele and his wife Kealoha "Ella" Kanahele prisoner.
A small handful of people aided a Japanese pilot once during wartime, so that's an important part of the discussion as to the forced relocation and detention of—checks notes—125,284 people following the mass theft of most of their possessions?
Naw. Y'all act like there weren't any German or Italian spies and saboteurs in the US during WW2.
In a situation where you have no data (hostilities just started), this incident being one of the first things that happen is, in fact, quite striking. And, critically, these people weren't spies or saboteurs. They were rando civilians who, without premeditation or contact with enemy government, decided on the spot to help the enemy. If you were a commander in that war you would rightly find it terrifying. It is, we might say, a bad look.
In fact, we make the exact same normative claim in the end (that internment was wrong).
Japanese Americans also willingly enlisted into the U.S. military to fight the Japanese. They reportedly fought harder, fiercer, and put on riskier missions. But this wasn’t used as counter evidence against internment. Because again, internment is based on unreasonable, reactionary bigotry, and literally nothing else.
Black Americans were commonly assigned as cooks, orderlies, and other roles outside the normal military structure. It's why Black American veterans were largely excluded from the GI Bills after the war.
Folks really don't grok how overtly racist the US could be within living memory let alone further back. Too bad US schools don't teach it adequately and are poised to suppress that history even further of late.
With teaching, there is always the question of what the priorities are, and what the emphasis is in terms of message.
Out of curiosity, what do you think the lesson students should take away from the Japanese internment is?
Here is the section on it from a standard US history textbook that was posted elsewhere in the thread:
https://www.mrginn.com/uploads/8/5/4/6/85468970/chapter35.pd...
"It wasn't bad because it happened to Black folks or Jews or American Indian tribes. 'Never again' shouldn't mean, 'Never again exactly how it was done last time.' It was horrible because they were human beings. It was horrible because folks went out of their way to stop viewing them as human beings. And here are some reasons why people back then (and today) justified these acts, so that when similar conditions arise again—because while history does not repeat, it certainly rhymes—we can learn to recognize and hopefully prevent these atrocities before they start next time!"
That's the lesson I'd love to have taught. That no is perfect. History is the diary of a madman. Learning not just facts but also the motivations/context of historical events, so as a society we can potentially help avoid future problems and move along with less needless suffering.
Learning that Nazis aren't cartoon villains does negate the necessity of choosing to highlight they were horrifically bad in the historical timeline.
Simply judging is indeed insufficient for learning but it is also a necessary component. Otherwise you get folks who even today assert that "slavery wasn't that bad," "the Civil War wasn't about slavery or racism," "I think nationalism is a good thing," and "our race and culture are under attack due to immigration and white genocide."
I'm not making the claim that the conclusion that WWII U.S. governments came to was right (in a moral sense), or correct (in that it was going to reduce the probability of sabotage given their knowledge at the time), I'm making the claim that knowing about Ni'ihau makes their actions make more sense. It is an important piece of context. It allows you to better-understand their state of mind and the state of the world while they were making these decisions.
But not all cultures fall victim to the madness, typically not when they learn and acknowledge the sins of the past.
Not holding those living today for the sins of the father, but also not shying away from pointing out the sins of the father.
Japanese Americans (including citizens) were first ordered not to leave the protected areas and then while that order was still active were told that if they stayed in the protected areas (which included huge portions of the west coast) that they'd be interred. They had their property stolen and were forced into terrible conditions (often sleeping in literally barns in the beginning) by virtue of racial prejudice.
Italian and German Americans faced no such situations, despite the ridiculous "oh we have no data so maybe they are threats" argument applying equally well to them.
It doesn't look like Japanese internment was under the auspices of the Alien Control program, because [0] refers to, "By the end of the war, over 31,000 suspected enemy aliens and their families, including a few Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, had been interned at Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) internment camps and military facilities throughout the United States."
Whereas I think >100,000 Japanese were incarcerated.
0: https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/enemy-aliens/w...
The internment of Americans of Japanese descent was under the auspices of the War Relocation Authority: unlike the internment of citizens of Germany, Italy, and other enemy states, which was based on status as enemy aliens (hence “Alien Control Program”), not ancestry. The somewhat sloppy common reference to the former as “Japanese" internment makes the two different programs seem more similar than they were.
I wonder why Japanese Americans get this kind of outpouring of support we see in the thread in a way that German Americans would never get, having been shit on for not one but two world wars.
That you’re being currently downvoted for mentioning this fact is itself concerning.
Because nothing like what happened to US citizens of Japanese descent happened directly at government hands to citizens of German descent. German-Americans were not involuntarily interned (aside from people, including US citizens, of Japanese descent, only nationals of enemy powers were involuntarily interned; the only German-Americans who were interned were family members of enemy aliens, and that only because the government chose not to forcibly separate them.) Internment of aliens owing allegiance to an enemy state in a time of war categorically different than doing so to your own citizens based only on ethnicity.
I would say that it is very reasonable to argue that "...they are so distant from anything that might actually remotely justify the action...", but that does not imply that "...there is a very good reason they aren’t highlighted..." is the actual reason Ni'ihau isn't highlighted. I'm still pretty convinced it's because it's inconvenient, awkward, uncomfortable...not because those events and the context they were part of made a bad justification for trampling the rights of 125,000 people.
As I think about it more, the thing I'm stuck on is more like...Ni'ihau and the stuff you mention, and the context that makes for, all make the people involved seem more reasonable, less kind of...crazily racist and afraid...a little less cartoonishly evil. And a lot of people these days don't like that. They want an "other", an enemy that is simple and easy to hate. Clear right and wrong. Red and Blue, D and R, Tory and Labour. And I think that's childish and wrong and bad in almost all circumstances. Pointing out Ni'ihau amidst the self-flagellation about Japanese internment in WWII makes that sort of person look at something he doesn't want to look at, but that he looks at it is good for him and for the rest of us.
Doesn’t change the fact that it was the wrong choice. They are are two different subjects.
That's actually the definition of racism. It's extremely clear-cut. Why do you think the word doesn't apply?
> noun
> prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized
A new variety of 'I'm not racist, but'.
The impact of American culture to residents was probably close to zero.
'Watching people meltdown over a Black Santa in the Mall of America. "Santa is white!" Well, in our interment camp he was Asian. So there.'
It's crazy to me that the twitter-sphere was so happy to overlook his own admitted past because he was on their "side".
Freedom of the Press is often curtailed as well. If Martial Law is declared watch out. It usurps just about everything.
Additionally, today, we have agencies who consider Americans enemies of the state, just not in broad strokes, though we do see some semblance when people try to paint certain segments of today's America as being unpatriotic or "divisive" in broad strokes.
https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/02/10/1466917...
Imprisoning Japanese Americans during WWII was very wrong, but it wasn’t anywhere near the abject horror of Nazi concentration camps.
The words are generally synonyms, but I think the distinction is important.
“Concentration camps” existed before WWII, at least back to the Boer War. The US “internment camps” were concentration camps in the usual historical sense.
In the case of the German exterminatiom camps, “concentration camp” was a euphemism.
The extermination camps were usually next to concentration camps, where the survivors could live to work in the extermination camp. Some of the confusion is that the complexes are called "concentration camp" like Auschwitz which had 40 individual concentration and extermination camps. Probably because the concentration camps came first and exterimination camps were added on.
Hypothetically, how many instances of sabotage/war-like acts by Japanese Americans would have to happen before the internments would be justified?
I also wonder how much of a impact the Niihau incident had on the decision to do internments. Literally the first Japanese-Americans that had an opportunity helped a pearl harbor attacker terrorize Niihau.