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.
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.
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.
Doesn’t change the fact that it was the wrong choice. They are are two different subjects.
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.