Topic: WW2: California Sorry for Japanese American Camps - too little too late? (Read 403 times)

Well, of course there'd be no need to imprison the Japanese citizens living in the USA. You could arrange to return them to Japan. But given that these people had been in the USA for 20+ years, maybe their alliegence to Japan was very weak.

War is about creating impossible choices and optimizing tragedy and suffering.

I missed this excellent post. The analogies are valid and very good examples about modern day shoring up of support for right wing extremist ideologies coming from the present US administration and looking back at exactly what constituted an enemy by the then US administration during the time of world war two.

You are right, Mike the bank robber is as absurd an example as it can get but under the US administration of that era it was the policy they applied - they imprisoned all Mike's in essence.

Those are I think pretty decent arguments and examples.

The duties and responsibilities of a Japanese citizen coud be determined by looking at the directives of Emperor Hirohito to his people, both in Japan and abroad, including the USA. The simple reality is that he directed them to be enemies of the US. That includes:

...an 80 year old fisherman from Okinawa
... a teenage pacifist from Kyoto
...a nurse from Tokyo
 
You said...

You can't assign guilt to these people, or declare them a threat, just because the pilot was Japanese. That's racism.

Yes, you certainly can declare them a threat, if Hirohito instructed them to be a threat. So it's not racism, not at all.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying this is nice or fair. Not at all. And we're a lot closer on the issue of the Japanese children who were American citizens than we are on the Japanese citizens abroad. At the same time, the net effect of the actions taken by the US and it's allies in WW2 can be summarized easily. We're not forced to speak Japanese and German today. Or serve in their armies. You see, we knew what kind of people we were dealing with under Hirahito. We'd been helping the Chinese fight them for several years. We had the facts on what's now called the Nanjing Massacre or Rape of Nanjing, which was 1937.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre#Rape

...an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Imperial Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000,[7][8] and perpetrated widespread rape and looting.[9][10]
Since most Japanese military records on the killings were kept secret or destroyed shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945, historians have been unable to accurately estimate the death toll of the massacre. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo estimated in 1946 that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the incident.[11] China's official estimate is more than 300,000 dead based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal in 1947.

...Case 5 of John Magee's film: on December 13, 1937, about 30 Japanese soldiers murdered all but two of 11 Chinese in the house at No. 5 Xinlukou. A woman and her two teenaged daughters were raped, and Japanese soldiers rammed a bottle and a cane into her vagina. An eight-year-old girl was stabbed, but she and her younger sister survived. They were found alive two weeks after the killings by the elderly woman shown in the photo. Bodies of the victims can also be seen in the photo.[53][54]

...The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women, including some children and the elderly, were raped during the occupation.[55] A large number of rapes were done systematically by the Japanese soldiers as they went from door to door, searching for girls, with many women being captured and gang raped.[56] The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation[57] or by penetrating vaginas with bayonets, long sticks of bamboo, or other objects. Young children were not exempt from these atrocities and were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them.[58]


Our pilots flew to support China against the Japanese atrocities. Before World War 2.

Most citizens are civilians, i.e. non-combatants. We are edging into Geneva Convention territory here.

A kamikaze pilot in a Japanese war plane howling down on a US ship is certainly the enemy.
But what about an 80 year old fisherman from Okinawa who just wants to catch fish to sell in the local market, and live quietly with his family?
What about a teenage pacifist from Kyoto who protests about his government attacking Pearl Harbor?
What about a nurse from Tokyo who twenty years previously emigrated to the US and married a Texan rancher, but never became an official US citizen?

You can't assign guilt to these people, or declare them a threat, just because the pilot was Japanese. That's racism.

In my country there have been attacks on Muslims because people think: Terrorist attack. Terrorists were Muslims. Therefore all Muslims are terrorists. It's the same thing.

To take it to the point of absurdity: imagine a situation where a man named Mike robs a bank. The answer isn't to imprison everyone in the country whose name is Mike.

If the bigoted racist US government of the day decided to send Japanese citizens to concentrations camps then that might hold some sort of reasoning when debating the issue but what is morally indefensible is when you have a government sending its own citizens to concentrations camps because they might help the enemy during the war.

That's a quite interesting point of view. Another country does in Pearl Harbor, kills thousands of US Citizens, declares war n the US, and is universally understood to be the enemy, but citizens of that country are not the enemy. Since a country is comprised of citizens, I think a lot of people might have a problem with that.

Regardless of that, the link I provided provides the actual thinking and reasoning for these historical realities. So there is no need to shroud the desire to generate virtual signaling based on false pseudo-history. None whatsoever.

^Jollygood summarises the situation very well and succinctly here.

The extracts you cited are interesting and do give an insight into both a wartime mindset and a 1940s mindset. The problem I have with them, and with your example above, is the word 'Japanese'. Whether or not these thousands of people are legally US citizens is an irrelevant technicality. Morally they are US citizens if they have settled and made a life in the country. What we do with your example family is to let them live their lives as normal, without fear of bigotry or prejudice or persecution, in a free country. Once you start labelling this group is American, this group is Japanese, then it becomes an abstraction and you lose sight of the actual people involved. And huge numbers of people at that.

I've been to Germany and I've been to Japan. The people there are people, just that. We may have different cultures and traditions, but fundamentally we are the same everywhere. In wartime there is forced conscription, and normal people are made to fight to the death against one another. Doesn't mean they want to do that. Doesn't mean that suddenly all these normal people across the world who happen to have Japanese ancestry become a threat. And it doesn't mean that we should label them as 'Japanese', when that is being used as a synonym for 'enemy'.

I have not read the documents in their entirety. There may be some evidence that supports your claims, but the overall tone is logical and focused on military necessity. In the context of fighting a war, there is no such thing as seeking "legal proof of wrongdoing."

Here is an example of the way people were thinking and making decisions at that time. Note the military logic in the third paragraph.

Notwithstanding the fact that the county maps showing the location of Japanese
lands have omitted most coastal defenses and war industries, still it is plain from
them that in our coastal counties, from Point Reyes south, virtually every feasible
landing beach, air field, railroad, highway, powerhouse, power line, gas storage
tank, gas pipe line, oil field, water reservoir or pumping plant, water conduit,
telephone transmission line, radio station, and other points of strategic importance
have several — and usually a considerable number — of Japanese in their immediate
vicinity. The same situation prevails in all of the interior counties that have any
considerable Japanese population.

I do not mean to suggest that it should be thought that all of these Japanese
who are adjacent to strategic points are knowing parties to some vast conspiracy
to destroy our State by sudden and mass sabotage. Undoubtedly, the presence
of many of these persons in their present locations is mere coincidence, but it
would seem equally beyond doubt that the presence of others is not coincidence.
It would seem difficult, for example, to explain the situation in Santa Barbara
County by coincidence alone.

In the northern end of that county is Camp Cook where, I am informed, the
only armored division on the Pacific coast will be located. The only practical
entrance to Camp Cook is on the secondary road through the town of Lompoc.
The maps show this entrance is flanked with Japanese property, and it is impossible
to move a single man or a piece of equipment in or out of Camp Cook without
having it pass under the scrutiny of numerous Japanese. I have been informed
that the destruction of the bridges along the road to Camp Cook would effectually
bottle up that establishment for an indefinite time, exit to the south being im-
possible because of extremely high mountains and to the north because of a num-
ber of washes with vertical banks 50 to 60 feet deep. There are numerous
Japanese close to these bridges.

Given the time line of the Japanese emigration to the US (closed in I believe 1924, those in the country remained Japanese not US citizens) it is likely that much of the land in question actually was owned by Japanese citizens.

Regarding your concern about those Japanese who were second generation or third and thus US citizens, would you have separated parents from children? And if so or if no, who would be judged a security risk?

May I give you an example? Japanese parents, age 45 and 51, four children, grandmother age 72. All children are American citizen by birth, the others are Japanese citizen only by law. Instead of just virtue signaling, explain what you would have done with this family unit that's morally and ethically superior to what we did. Assume wartime conditions, of course.

Whether the number of Japanese Americans imprisoned during that period was larger or small than 80,000 does not and cannot negate the fact that they were forced in to concentration camps in which many were mistreated and many died because of medical negligence and worse.

History shows they were target because a racist administration was unable to control the narrative after the hostile atmosphere created in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbour attack. It has been stated instead of trying to act in a positive manner leading to protect all its citizens, the administration of the day decided to give in to bigotry and hatred and without any legal proof of wrong-doing against them sent its own citizens to concentration camps because they had Japanese ancestry. The behaviour shown by the then US administration was just wrong and cannot be condoned by anybody.

Makes sense to me, then. We had 80,000 "Japanese citizens by being born here" to Japenese citizen parents.

Of those some were dual citizenship and some were only US.

This may be of interest.

https://archive.org/stream/nationaldefensem29unit/nationaldefensem29unit_djvu.txt

I understand your point but the thread was started with a view to ask about Japanese Americans and not Japanese. If I wanted to ask about other nationals being imprisoned without trial I would have started a thread about it or mentioned it in the OP but I want to stay on track.

As I understand what happened, for the first generation immigrants (about 1/3 of the 120k) none of them were. Of the 2nd generation, those would have citizenship by way of the abused "born in the USA, you an instant citizen" old rule. Of those, procedures vary as to whether they were instantly a citizen of the parents' country. Some countries it is instant, others there is an application procedure.

So you've got 40,000 Japanese citizens in the US and Japan started a war with us.

Welcome to the nasty, dirty, unfair real world. Whatever you do, you're fucked, and they are fucked.

@Spendulus: We may disagree here, but I think that if I hadn't invoked the spectre of Trump, then we might more or less have the same conclusion: an apology is not sufficient; the best form of reparation would be to step up the fight against endemic racism and xenophobia. I may believe that Trump is part of the problem, but I will concede that he is at least partly a symptom as well as a cause.


You do raise an important point here. A line must be drawn, but where? Let the Japanese citizens do whatever they want. Okay, but what about those Japanese citizens who have no children and no roots in the US? Those who are in the US temporarily, perhaps on holiday, and had zero intention of staying? What about Japanese holidaymakers who are also Japanese army officers? What about those who are Japanese military intelligence officers? Those who are influential figures in Japanese industry and society?

My point I suppose is that with each increase in potential threat, we reduce the numbers dramatically: most Japanese citizens who are also US citizens must be trusted, and would in any case have little power to influence the war. Japanese army officers who happened to be on US soil are perhaps a different case. If we focus on those Japanese citizens who do constitute a genuine threat, we are likely left with a handful. In which situation these cases can be judged on their individual merits. The important point here is that we are making the distinction not because they are Japanese, but because they are in the enemy army. We are judging not with a blind racial distinction, but instead with genuine reason.

But instead of this, what they actually did was go with a simplistic broad-brush approach that dealt harshly with a huge number of innocent people on the basis of ethnicity. This sort of decision is fundamentally counterproductive and works to inflame tensions within a country, promoting racism and xenophobia and fostering division at a time when everyone should be pulling together.

We agree on this much, right?

Further, it's highly relevant that 1/3 of the count were Japanese citizens. What should have been done with them? Deport them? Let them do whatever they wanted?

I can understand why Muratsuchi introduced the bill, it was a good thing that it all went well. Maybe he was driven by some form desire to ensure all this could happen before the November 2020 elections just to shed some light on exactly what is happening elsewhere along party lines.

Nobody can really blame him or any other politician that sounds warnings about Trump. After any sitting President is making divisive comments to the extent that Trump has it stands to reason some politicians will have no choice but to draw from analogies as and when they become relevant.

As a nice counterpoint to the story of Frank Emi, you may be interested to read about the very different wartime experience of another Japanese American, Daniel Inouye. There's an excellent obituary here, too.

A second generation Japanese American, Inouye was born in Hawaii and attending university there at the time of Pearl Harbour. He signed up for the US army immediately after the ban on Japanese Americans was lifted. He was part of the famous 442nd regiment, the most decorated regiment in US army history, and composed almost entirely of Japanese Americans.

Inouye was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. His most famous battle was in Italy in 1945. He was running towards a German position, with a live grenade in his hand. Just as he was ready to throw, a German grenade hit him and almost entirely severed his throwing arm. Using his other hand, Inouye freed the grenade from the clenched fist of his useless throwing arm, and managed to throw it through the bunker window before it went off. Unbelievably, he continued the attack, killing another German before eventually passing out.

Apologies if everyone is already well aware of his story, as he was a very prominent politician, played a role in the Watergate investigation and chaired the Iran-Contra hearings, and towards the end of his life became president pro tempore of the Senate, and so third in line in the presidential succession - I am not American, so it was new to me.

If you're interested, there's a slightly irreverent but informative and entertaining brief look at both of their lives in the Drunk History TV programme: Frank Emi and Daniel Inouye.

The resolution was introduced by Albert Muratsuchi, a Democratic State Assemblyman of Japanese descent.
Feb 19, 1942 was the day that Roosevelt signed the order to incarcerate the Japanese Americans. Every year, Muratsuchi has introduced a bill to mark Feb 19 as a day of remembrance. But this year, he introduced the resolution instead.
I think that's why they're doing it now, just that this year he's pushing a little further than he usually does. Possibly because we are nearing the 80yr anniversary, and he wanted to do it this year instead of next as 2020 is an election year. Don't know - just speculating here really. I wouldn't want to inflame things again, but there is a direct reference to Trump's actions in the quote below.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/17/us/california-apology-japanese-internment-trnd/index.html

Cnut has articulated himself in an excellent manner throughout and has not deliberately been economical with the truth at all. Even you keep aside non US citizens that were sent to prison camps during that period and look at just the American citizens of Japanese decent and focus on that - then the question remains the same. Why is the California state assembly doing this now?

Absolutely it's a "deeper agenda." Part of the new "woke left" is an attempt to create the appearances of their having a moral-ethical voice that dictates when people should do things and when they should say things. That's simply an attempt to gain power over others.

Part of this is dictating when one group should apologize to another. In this context, facts and truth are in the way, and go out the window. For example, take the argument articulated by Cnut in this thread.

He did not tell you that 1/3 of those put in the camps were Japanese citizens, did he? Most of the others were children of the Japanese citizens.

If there was an actual, serious effort to "make things right" what it would consist of would be to give Asians a fair chance in university admissions – There they are still being discriminated against in favor of essentially, racial quotas; eg preference given to blacks with lower test scores, and whites from privileged backgrounds. Oddly it's the same people who try to tell you who needs to apologize to who, and what pronouns you and I should use, that are complicit in the prejudice in college admissions against Asians.

Yes there were lots of things going on during that time, it was a different era and racism was much more overt than it is today across the globe. Having said all that what would be the aim of the California state assembly now? Just an apology and move forward or do you think there is another deeper agenda for making the apology now? (I use the word agenda with neither positive or negative connotations).