Sotomayor assails WWII Japanese-American internment

While Bob makes some good points, imprisoning 100,000 american citizens because a tiny few may be spies is simply wrong. This is supposed to be the land of the free, not the land of the free so long as persons of your ethnicity do not make war on the country.

Pointing out a wrong does not mean that those in power were evil, just that they made a mistake. Such things happen in war. The pressure of war can cause decision makers to do things that they normally would not.

That being said, judging someone 65 years out is pretty ridiculous. None of us were under the same strain that the governmental authorities were so we should keep that in mind when criticizing someone from the past.

 

...imprisoning 100,000 american citizens because a tiny few may be spies...

Thanks for the input, but here are a few corrections. It's a repeat from my initial post, but in case you missed it:

Approximately two-thirds of the ADULTS among those evacuated were Japanese nationals--enemy aliens. The vast majority of evacuated Japanese-Americans (U.S. citizens) were children at the time. Their average age was only 15 years. In addition, over 90% of Japanese-Americans over age 17 were also citizens of Japan (dual citizens)under Japanese law. Thousands had been educated in Japan. Some having returned to the U.S. holding reserve rank in the Japanese armed forces.

Nisei born before December 1, 1924 could nullify thier Japanese citizenship by submitting formal notification to the Home Minister. Those born afterwards would lose their Japanese citizenship within two weeks of birth unless their parents registered them with the Japanese Consulate.

Thus, after 1924, older Nisei could renounce their Japanese citizenship while the parents of those born after 1924 needed only to do nothing, and their children would have no legal ties with Japan.

However by 1933, only 8% of Nisei born before 1924 had renounced their Japanese citizenship, and by then, also, some 40% of Nisei born after 1924 had been registered at the Japanese Consulate so as to acquire Japanese citizenship.

Further, in 1938, it was announced that children of dual citizens (Sansei) were eligiable for registration as Japanese subjects.

As for imprisoning, at no point was the government interested in "locking up" the evacuated Japanese. From the beginning if the evacuation should occur the plan was to relocate them to areas in the interior with suitable farmland where the majority being in agriculture could continue producing for the war effort.

From the begining religious, social service and even the JACL demanded that if the evacuation should occur the Japanese shouldn't just be "kicked out" of the combat zones.

The government should be responsible for feeding, housing, providing employment and medical care for the evacuated people - and assiting them in re-establishing themselves in the interior - in as humane an environment as could be provided.

That is just what the government did with the Relocation Centers.

 

...because a tiny few may be spies is simply wrong.

Well, the unofficial Ringle ONI report states a 75% loyalty rate amongst the west coast ethnic Japanese population.

That could also be a read as a 25% disloyalty rate.

 

and let's not forget the famous "no-no" boys, and the percentage of Niesi males of draft age who said they would NOT serve in the US military under any circumstanes.

 

"...the percentage of Niesi males of draft age who said they would NOT serve in the US military under any circumstanes."

Selective Service Special Monograph Number 10 which was published after the war (1953) is a source for this. This publication covered "Special Groups" who served during WWII and Chapter IX was titled "Japanese Americans." In that chapter on page 122 was the following statement:

"In the continental United States, fewer than 1500 Japanese Americans volunteered although there were 19,000 citizens of military age within the War Relocation Authority Centers and approximately 4,000 outside the centers."

That would be a total of 23,000 of whom only 7% (1,500)volunteered.

On the other hand, the WRA publication "The Evacuated People" (1946) mentions only 1,208 volunteers from the ten relocation centers (of whom only 805 were actually selected to serve) plus "several hundred" voluteers from outside the centers. Estimating a total of about 1100 (805 plus an estimated 300 from outside the centers) out of a total 23,000 of military age, comes to 5%.

So, I would say the percentage of JA volunteers was somewhere between 5 and 7% of those of military age in the continental U.S., in and outside the centers.

The 100th/442nd fought and died for America, too. Those who returned found their fellow veterans who demanded they not be allowed in the American Legion (at least in my town). It was ugly here.

That said, it needs to be acknowledged the Japanese Americans who served were the exception and not the rule.

 

The internment was a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor and racism. Denying the racist element, in my opinion, is bordering on revisionism.

Bob Guercio

 

Does anybody know for certain that the holocaust really happened or is it a myth fabricated by Jews to garner sympathy for the establishment of the state of Israel?

The West Coast evacuation had nothing to do with the Holocaust, Bob. The Japanese were fighting the racial holy war, not the Americans.

And it is revisionism, pure and simple, when statements are made that race was not an issue regarding the interment of Japanese Americans!!!

The revisionism started in 1976 when younger leaders of the JACL started lobbying the government regarding this history. The 1988 bill says millions of taxpayer dollars will be spent each year as the "Civil Liberties Public Education Fund" (controlled by Japanese Americans) to "re-educate" the American people regarding this history. California Congressman Mike Honda for year has received at least $1 million and other states are getting a lot of money, too. That's why this history is constantly in the media, all kinds of programs being taught in our schools, etc....

Unfortunately it's not the 100% truth.

As the distinguished British Diplomat turned historian George Samson once wrote such attitudes towards history, "...belonged to that class of historical work, all too common in the last few decades, of which the purpose is not to discover or expound truth but to promote one of those perversions of systematic thought which are known by the suitably ill-sounding name of "ideologies".

Bob G. says: The moderators are not doing their job or they would have ended this thread long ago.

I'm being civil. The moderator said there were some "dodgy" comments. I would curious to know what they are.

 

Keeping well out of this, except to point out that debates about the wartime internment of illegal aliens in Britain never happen over here. The majority of people realise they were extraordinary times calling for extraordinary measures, and aren't likely to happen again.
I doubt if there's any political capital to be made now.

 

A couple of problems with your post.

First, merely being a citizen does not make one a spy. Many of these people had lived here for years and considered themselves more American than Japanese. That they did not fill out the paperwork renouncing their japanese citizenship is irrelevant. For all we know they could have forgotton or maybe retained it out of respect for their heritage. But respect of heritage DOES NOT make one a spy.

Second, from the reports of the persons actually imprisoned, things were not so great. Your attempt at trying to make it sound like it was a gay old time is historical revisionism at its worst.

The fact is that the actions were illegal and inhumane. No amount of spin by you or anyone else can change that. FDR purposefully violated the Constitution out of irrational fears. Period

 

First, merely being a citizen does not make one a spy. Many of these people had lived here for years and considered themselves more American than Japanese. That they did not fill out the paperwork renouncing their japanese citizenship is irrelevant. For all we know they could have forgotton or maybe retained it out of respect for their heritage. But respect of heritage DOES NOT make one a spy.

Yes, but what evidence is there of your comment?

For this we have evidence:

There were the thousands in the the numerous Japanese "Patriotic Socieities. One with 7,200 members was the Zaibei Heimusai [Japanese Military Service Men League] described in the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Division's report No. 336.8 of October 14, 1941 which stated: "Each member gives...to the Japanese War Fund and others engaged in intelligence activities. This includes military age Nisei as well as Japanese aliens. Y650,000.00 were sent to Japan as of May 1941."

In addition the report tells of the Imperal Comradship Society and states that the two organizations "have pledged to do sabotage (railroads and harbors) in time of emergency..."

The report said that there were over 60 local chapters of these two organizations.

Look, there's nothing wrong with taking sides in a war, but to change the facts after the war is over is bogus.

 

Just because a governmental report says something that doesn't make it so. How many times has a secret governmental report said something and was totally off base? Countless times.

When one considers that there was no acts of sabotage that makes the report look ridiculous.

Furthermore, what FDR did was ILLEGAL according to the Constitution. Nothing you write can change this most elemental fact.It was a gross violation of the Constitution, something the President is obligated to protect.

Besides, were all these people located on the West Coast? If they were apart of some devious scheme would they not have been placed all over the country? The US's industry was located in the interior, so why no "agents" there? The Japanese planned the attack on Pearl Harbor to the last detail. One would think that if they had any intention of sabotaging the US's industry that they would have had their agents placed in a position to do so.

 

I will only address the portion of; "...what FDR did was ILLEGAL...", since it is in error. I think that the constitutionality of the Internment was addressed in 1944, and found to be constitutional. The dissenting votes mostly pointed out that it was done in the absence of martial law being declared. Implying that if martial law had been declared, it wouldn’t have even been questioned.

See:

Digital History

While this incident surely isn’t America’s shinning hour, using the lens of hindsight to condemn it is also less than appealing. Justice Black’s opinion made sense at the time:

Compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direct emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.

As I said, not our finest hour but under the stress and fears of the time-frame most likely more understandable. I also find it enlightening that the Korematsu case while it has been "overruled in the court of history", it has NOT been overturned by the US Supreme Court. This next is from "Wiki" but I believe it is accurate none the less:

The Korematsu decision has not been explicitly overturned. Indeed, the Korematsu ruling is significant both for being the first instance of the Supreme Court applying the strict scrutiny standard to racial discrimination by the government and for being one of only a tiny handful of cases in which the Court held that the government met that standard

See:

Korematsu v. United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The sublink on Strict Scrutiny shows this:

Strict scrutiny is the most stringent standard of judicial review used by United States courts reviewing federal law. Along with the lower standards of rational basis review and intermediate scrutiny, strict scrutiny is part of a hierarchy of standards courts employ to weigh an asserted government interest against a constitutional right or principle that conflicts with the manner in which the interest is being pursued. Strict scrutiny is applied based on the constitutional conflict at issue, regardless of whether a law or action of the U.S. federal government, a state government, or a local municipality is at issue. It arises in two basic contexts: when a "fundamental" constitutional right is infringed, particularly those listed in the Bill of Rights and those the court has deemed a fundamental right protected by the liberty provision of the 14th Amendment; or when the government action involves the use of a "suspect classification" such as race or national origin that may render it void under the Equal Protection Clause. These are the two applications that were anticipated in footnote 4 to United States v. Carolene Products.

Goto:

Strict scrutiny - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As to the point of them being only on the west coast, you are mis-reading it. The fact is that only those ON the west coast were excluded. Japanese-Americans and those living in America without citizenship (Issei) were NOT excluded, nor intered. I think the mileage was 400 miles from the coast, but it might have been 500. The reason I think it was 400 is that those of Japanese ancestry living in Spokane Washington were NOT intered. Many chose to move to the camps on their own when their former neighbors made their lives rather unpleasant in their former home towns.

As to their locations, the census of 1940 showed that, out of a total of 126,947 registered peoples of Japanese ancestry in the entire continental United States, 112,353 were living in the three Pacific states. California alone had 93,717 Japanese, or nearly three fourths of the national total.

Of the west coast Japanese in those states, 40,869 were foreign born aliens (Issei) ineligible for citizenship through existing naturalization proceedings, and 71,484 were American-born (called Nisei) and therefore United States citizens. And as Bob U. has pointed out, a great number of them were children who would have little choice in any event but to follow their parents.

 

Read this from Justice Murphy:

"That this forced exclusion was the result in good measure of this erroneous assumption of racial guilt rather than bona fide military necessity is evidenced by the Commanding General's Final Report on the evacuation from the Pacific Coast area. In it he refers to all individuals of Japanese descents as "subversive," as belonging to "an enemy race" whose "racial strains are undiluted," and as constituting "over 112,000 potential enemies ...at large today" along the Pacific Coast. In support of this blanket condemnation of all persons of Japanese descent, however, no reliable evidence is cited to show that such individuals were generally disloyal, or had generally so conducted themselves in this area as to constitute a special menace to defense installations or war industries, or had otherwise by their behavior furnished reasonable ground for their exclusion as a group.

Justification for the exclusion is sought, instead, mainly upon questionable racial and sociological grounds not ordinarily within the realm of expert military judgment, supplemented by certain semi-military conclusions drawn from an unwarranted use of circumstantial evidence....

No one denies, of course, that there were some disloyal persons of Japanese descent on the Pacific Coast who did all in their power to aid their ancestral land. Similar disloyal activities have been engaged in by many persons of German, Italian and even more pioneer stock in our country. But to infer that examples of individual disloyalty prove group disloyalty and justify discriminatory action against the entire group is to deny that under our system of law individual guilt is the sole basis for deprivation of rights.... To give constitutional sanction to that inference in this case, however well-intentioned may have been the military command on the Pacific Coast, is to adopt one of the cruelest of the rationales used by our enemies to destroy the dignity of the individual and to encourage and open the door to discriminatory actions against other minority groups in the passions of tomorrow.... "

He hits the nail on the head.

 

He hits the nail on the head.

Six other Supreme Court Justices didn't think so.

 

Doesn't make them right.The Supreme Court also ruled against Dred Scott and Homer Plessy.

 

This is understandable considering the horrors that Britain was subjected to on the home front compared to the United States.

Considering that decisions were made with, almost literally, bombs falling all over the place, one tends to be less critical.

Bob Guercio

 

I believe that debating the Japanese internment is almost pointless at this juncture in history. Would the USA in 2009 intern a class of people based on ethnicity as broadly as it did in the case of the WWII Japanese internment -- clearly no. Was it wrong to intern the Japanese during WWII? Yes, I think it was.

But that is from my perspective almost 70 years later. We can look back on history and judge it, but what good does that really do us? It is far better to assess history from the perspective of using it to direct our current decisions. I don't believe there is any risk that the USA or any other western nation will adopt a policy of ethnic internment so debating the merit of the Japanese internment is moot.

With respect to the current hearings, I would have preferred the questions to have been phrased in the context of Guantanamo because that is where our future justice will most greatly influence American behaviour vis a vis any kind of internment - foreign combatants for the most part in this case.

 

I'm not so sure about this!

In my opinion, the Bush administration cultivated a hatred in this country for Arabs, including Arab Americans, in order to promote the Iraq war. It is my belief that if things in the Middle East really got out of control, Arab Americans could possibly suffer the same fate as the Japanese Americans during World War II.

Evolution has not advanced our species significantly since 1941 and we are just as prone to paranoia, hysteria and panic today as we were then!

It could just prevent us from making the same mistake again!

 

Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. How diffrent would our song be if we knew there was spy's on the west coast and something such as the West Loch explosion happened in San Diego Harbor? During war something as small as a cigarette could kill hundrends.

I'm with David, Wrong: Yes, Illegal: No should we have: maybe, maybe not. No use arguing it now since it's over and reperations were paid long ago