What Do You Think Of The Japanese Civilans In American Concentration Camps

Now a few months back my stubborn history teacher Talks about how mean we treated the japanese In The Concentration Camps America built to house Japanese Citizens After The Sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. I think this pathetic how we say we treated them mean. First of all id like to mention the Baton Death March. Its When all the soldiers captured on the Philippines (Sorry if im wrong but i think thats where they came from And my horible spelling) Were made to march to the POW camps. They had to walk miles with out any breaks and without water and food. If they fell They were killed. Back Home In American In our concenttration camps The japense probably had better lives then the normal Civilians. President Roselvelt Did the right thing. Racism or not war is war and you cant have the ememny Gather through our most important citys.

Some of you might not like my views. I Respect that. If you have questions Please Ask But here are some ones i have heard before.


Is a Japanese Middle Class family really going to be a spy?
Well yes. You never know. Even a small child could be one. If they have eyes and ears and they are your ememny they are dangerous.

What if we locked up all Iraq People
(not to be rasist) I think we should. Since 9/11 our country sleeps only thinking of what the next terriost attack will be. There will be none if we dont let them in our country and keep them under our eye.



I do not mean to offend anyone by this. Im just saying how the teachers that teach history put these flase statments into our brain and i think its a insult to history and the veterans who fought in world war 2.

 

This is a complex issue and those who pass negative judgment on the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and those who defend the government's actions in interning Japanese Americans, usually get the issues wrong.

First of all, there was an extensive and active Japanese espionage system on the US west coast employing both Japanese nationals and US citizens as operatives. John Prados in his book "Combined Fleet Decoded" confirms this and provides detailed evidence of this spy rings activities. Second, when Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, authorizing military commanders to set up "military exclusion zones" from which all, or some, people could be excluded, he was acting under legal Constitutional authority and the US Supreme Court so ruled in 1944. The problem was that many military commanders authorizing such exclusion zones did so indiscriminately and civic leaders used this as an excuse to lobby for the removal of Japanese Americans for economic reasons or because of racial animosity.

Of the approximately 110,000 Japanese interned, about 62% were American citizens, who, under the Constitution were entitled to due process, which was denied them. Among other things, these citizens suffered economic harm, and to date, about $1.6 billion has been dispersed in compensation. It has been reliably estimated that 90% of US citizens of Japanese descent were loyal Americans, and 75% of Japanese nationals were loyal to America. This still leaves something like 17,270 people of Japanese ancestry who were potential spies and espionage agents. Was this a group of sufficient size to cause problems on the West Coast? I would think so, especially if they were mixed in with the loyal Japanese population.

There was no easy solution. The government feared that catching and prosecuting spies would be difficult or impossible, especially since to successfully pursue prosecution might entail revealing information in court that would hurt the war effort. The fact that some government officials and civil leaders used the exclusion zones for their own economic or racial reasons is shameful, but it must be acknowledged.

The camps themselves, unlike the civilian internment camps run by the Japanese, met standards of international law, but often were not pleasant places in which to live, especially at first. After a few months, interned American citizens were allowed to resettle in areas not declared exclusion zones. Eventually, beginning in late 1943, Japanese American families were allowed to return to their hometowns provided an American family could be found to sponsor them.

Interestingly, there were pro-Japanese groups formed in some internment camps and when the US passed a law allowing Japanese American citizens to renounce their citizenship, 5,589 opted to do so. Later, the ACLU successfully challenged these renunciations because they were made "under duress".

In summary, internment of Japanese Americans was probably a wise precautionary move, but the process was ill-planned and executed, and it included many people who were victims of racial animosity and others who were denied their constitutional rights. The fact that it was thought necessary to complete the process rapidly probably accounts for many of the wrongs, but it cannot be denied that there were people who used the process for their own advantage. There has been a lot of misinformation disseminated by groups either condemning internment or defending it and one shouldn't pass judgment without doing some serious study using reliable and impartial sources to get at the truth.

 

And, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in between what either partisan side would have you believe. Seems to be a recurring theme in history.

 

a brutal policy though
but in those times us had a lot of segregation...so doesnt amaze though

 

Brutal? No more brutal than drafting teenagers and ordering them into war zones where it was virtually certain that many would be killed or maimed for life. Governments do brutal things all the time, and most especially in wars where national existence is perceived to be at stake. Every belligerent in the war interned civilians and most under much worse conditions than in the US.

 

Brutal? As compared to what? What do you consider as being brutal?

 

My point is war is war. Im Afrid to think of what The Japense Would of done if thier were A group of Americans in Japan. War is War. War is Brutal. I think Roesselvelt did the right thing

 

I think brutal might be too harsh a word, but I get your point, it's a tough thing to have to deal, but then again a tough thing to do as well. But this attitude of act first and think later is one of caution, you know, if we don't do this, what will they do to us? Although a lesser point, some degree of protection was needed for them as well, can you imagine the feelings after Pearl Harbor, and then finding out that your neighbors brother just killed hundreds of men there! That could have been very bad.
Let's not forget either that the US was not the only country to "intern" persons of a foreign persuasion! A quick check of google revealed many countries who did the same thing. Japan did as well.
I think that this comes down to fear, fear of what might happen if they don't take precautions!

 

Britain also interned Axis civilians in WW2 (in our case it applied to people of German and Italian descent as well).
I think in both cases (US and UK) it was an over reaction. The idea response would have been to check the backgrounds of these people and only intern those who's loyalty was in doubt ( by 1941 the British had started to do this, and were releasing those it considered no threat to Britain)

 

I understand you leaning toward isolation, but what of the Iraqi’s such as the Kurds that came here legally in flight from the harsh hand of Hussein?

It is a simple comparison of how the Japanese treated the Allies verses the treatment of detained Japanese in the U.S. A better comparison would perhaps be the treatment of U.S. citizens in areas such as the Philippines. Good point about the German decent, but Japan attacked and attacked without declaring war.

Had we not engaged in such reaction and some of those that were detained were successful in espionage, it is likely we would be asking why preventative measures weren’t exercised.

 

It was a hard time for people in the 1940s. There were choices to be made and when the choice is made, people will be hurt either way.
There was a war on and generally, if one looks like the enemy, those guys will be treated like the enemy. Us against them. That's been going on for centuries. It's appalling but that, to put it in the most basic term, is human instinct. This is is still happening today in many different forms. The best we can do is to learn from the mistakes made. This can't be prevented, it can only be mitigated.
I personally think that this kind of question is good for the forum. It forces us to reflect on what happened in the past so we, in our own little ways, can do something to lessen the chances of such an event occurring again.

 

A small trivia note: Dwight Eisenhowers brother, Milton, was a undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture. He was the burecrat who got stuck with the responsibility for accquiring the land for the camps, contracting the construction, contracts for feeding & medical care... I dont know how long he had that job.

 

Why is just the internment of Japanese always mentioned? Are history teachers truly that clueless? There were also large numbers of German and Italian US citizens and non-citizens interned too. Not only that, but some of these were held longer in interment, well after the war ended in some cases, than the Japanese.

Today, the reason I think this is largely so is because in the US Liberal and Leftist academics dominate thought and teaching at most universities. For them, including the Germans and Italians would dilute the anti-US, racial message of mulitculturialism they wish to purvey. It is their dictatorship of vitrue and upholding of the "party" line that is important, not the truth.

Internment of German Americans in the United States during World War II

Also note how these German and Italian internees did not get reprerations like the Japanese did either.....

 

Of course this subject has been brought up before back in March,

http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/22977-japanese-american-internment-camps.html

I posted this in the thread,


We all know about the internment of Japanese American's during WWII.
Did you know "3,000 Japanese, Germans, and Italians from Latin America were deported to the United States, and most of them were placed in the Texas internment camps? Twelve Latin-American countries gave the United States Department of State custody of the Axis nationals. Eighty percent of the prisoners were from Peru, and about 70 percent were Japanese."
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/WW/quwby.html
Another part of the story;
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/Canada/internment/intro.html

 

It appears that not only the US had Internment camps for the Japanese.

Japanese-American Internment
http://www.internmentarchives.com/index.php

source:
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/394209/all


Internment Camps in Australia during WW2

http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/pow/pow.htm

Japanese-Canadians Internment Camps during WW2
http://www.yesnet.yk.ca/schools/projects/canadianhistory/camps/internment1.html

 

As for the Canadians. They confiscated West Coast fishing boats and licences and re-distributed them to the more "ethnically correct". And as far as I know the Japanese-Canadians were not compensated for this then or since. And I also didn't realize that the Canadian government rounded up the Japanese-Canadians and put them to work. And they separated the sexes too. The US didn't do that.

 

Seems like an appropriate moment to mention this incident that happened during the autumn of 1944.During the fierce fighting in the vosges mountains of eastern france,the 1st battalion 141st infantry had been cut off for six days with food water and ammunition running out, the troops given the task off breaking through to them? 442nd combat team japenese american troops better known as nisei!

 

LOL. Well I hate to break it to some here. NOT ALL countries are Lily white in thier behavior during the war.