Thoughts on "Downfall ---" by Richard Frank
a425couple
the end of the Imperial Japanese Empire" and
decided to comment here on it.
One topic here on shwwwii that seems to always
get plenty of posts (both informed, uninformed,
and/or misleading) is the political decision to
use the A-bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
IMHO anyone interested in that topic should
definitely buy this book.
As Steven Zoraster writes, "This book will become
the standard against which all future study of the use
of atomic bombs against Japan is judged. The author
describes in detail the continuous flow of new information
to both the military and government bureaucracies of
Japan and the United States. That information, mixed
with prevailing ideology on both sides, helped determine
the course of the World War II in the Pacific during the
summer of 1945."
"About 100,000 civilians in Japanese occupied territory,
including the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, China, French
Indochina, and the Philippines, were dying because of
the war each month the war lasted."
This study could not have been nearly as thorough
until the huge amounts of decripts from Ultra and Magic
were released in the 1990s. Frank has studied them
along with the notes and diaries of the key players.
Very informative, and seems to me at the prices for
these used books now via Amazon and others - a true
"must buy"!
pbromaghin
> I've been re-reading Richard Frank's "Downfall,
> the end of the Imperial Japanese Empire" and
> decided to comment here on it.
>
> One topic here on shwwwii that seems to always
> get plenty of posts (both informed, uninformed,
> and/or misleading) is the political decision to
> use the A-bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
> IMHO anyone interested in that topic should
> definitely buy this book.
I can't remember how far he goes into it, but in light of it's content
the target choices, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, suddenly made absolutely
perfect sense. How is it not publicly obvious that the mainland
supply port and military headquarters (Hiroshima) and a major deep
water port (Nagasaki) on an island you are going to invade should be
wiped out of existence?
wjho...@aol.com
> I've been re-reading Richard Frank's "Downfall,
> the end of the Imperial Japanese Empire" and
> decided to comment here on it.
Judging from the synopsis of the book available on
Amazon, it was was written some 30 years ago before
the revisionists such as Gar Alperovitz and his
fellow-travelers captured the imagination of the media.
As with most other "pre-revision" scholars, Frank
concluded that the use of the A-Bombs were justified to
save both American and Japanese lives and he was
certainly not alone. Donald Kagan, Professsor of History
at Yale in a September 1995 article in "Commentary"
wrote: " Even at a low estimate, the ....planned invasions
(of Japan) would have brought 193,500 U.S. casualties...
"Quoting historian Robert J. Maddox ['Weapons for Victory:
The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years After'], Kagan Kagan
wrote, "as Maddox puts it, only an intellectual could assert
that 193,500 anticipated casualties were too insignificant to
have caused Truman to use atomic bombs."
Actually the U.S. casualty estimates ranged from the low
figure mentioned above to over four times higher plus an
equal number of Japanese, depending on who was making
the estimates and when. All agreed, however, that the figure
would be high.
> This study could not have been nearly as thorough
> until the huge amounts of decripts from Ultra and Magic
> were released in the 1990s. Frank has studied them
> along with the notes and diaries of the key players.
Yes, and in a Washington Post article "Broken codes and
the bomb" [August 6, 1990] retired NSA career intelligence
officer, David Lowman, which the Post identified as "an
expert on declassified World War II Intelligence" noted that
such MAGIC and ULTRA decrypts available to President
Truman "...revealed in bone-chilling detail...how the
Japanese military commands planned to inflict maximum
casualties on America's invading troops...described as
Kutsu-go...a fight to the finish based on total suicide attacks
by aircraft, surface and subsurice units...(by still available
forces consisting of) 10,000 aircraft available for kamikaze
missions, 32 destroyers, 45 submarines...40 squadrons of
suicide high-speed crash boats (with) bows loaded with
explosives,,,800 demolition frogmen...whose mission it was
to blow themselves up against the bottoms of U.S.ships...
another 1,000...trained as human torpedoes...to ride inside
huge torpedoes launched at or near the surface...(to be hand
guided) into the hulls of American ships,,," And much more.
The late David Lowman later authored the book "MAGIC: The
Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of
Japanese Residents from the West Coast During WWiI." which
challenged the current revisionism of that portion of WWii
history.
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On Apr 26, 1:31 pm, "a425couple" wrote:
> > I've been re-reading Richard Frank's "Downfall,
> > the end of the Imperial Japanese Empire" and
> > decided to comment here on it.
> Judging from the synopsis of the book available on
> Amazon, it was was written some 30 years ago before
> the revisionists such as Gar Alperovitz and his
> fellow-travelers captured the imagination of the media.
Uh, 1999. _Atomic Diplomacy_ was first published in the 1960s.
His second book on the subject was published in 1995.
Alperovitz was discreditted almost as soon as his
first edition was published. The only imaginations captured were
those predisposed to believe what he was selling.
For Frank to have published 30 years prior to Alperovitz' second work,
he would have had to publish it at the same time as Gar's first.
> As with most other "pre-revision" scholars, Frank
There was no revision; there were those who believed the use of the bombs
was justifiable both before and after Alperovitz' books, and these
constitute the majority of such scholars.
Alperovitz was never taken seriously by any serious scholar I know of.
> Actually the U.S. casualty estimates ranged from the low
> figure mentioned above to over four times higher plus an
> equal number of Japanese, depending on who was making
> the estimates and when. All agreed, however, that the figure
> would be high.
Lee reproduces a memo indicating US casualties possibly going as high
as 1 million. Alperovitz claimed that the "one million" figure was a
post-war fabrication to justify the use of the bombs.
> > This study could not have been nearly as thorough
> > until the huge amounts of decripts from Ultra and Magic
> > were released in the 1990s. Frank has studied them
> > along with the notes and diaries of the key players.
> Yes, and in a Washington Post article "Broken codes and
> the bomb" [August 6, 1990] retired NSA career intelligence
> officer, David Lowman, which the Post identified as "an
> expert on declassified World War II Intelligence" noted that
> such MAGIC and ULTRA decrypts available to President
> Truman "...revealed in bone-chilling detail...how the
Not sure how much of this "bone-chilling detail" was to be passed
through coded channels; most was done similarly to the plans for the
defense of Okinawa, which means much was done on an ad-hoc basis.
One presumes Truman was more than bone-chilled by the reports of the
fighting on the lesser islands.
> Japanese military commands planned to inflict maximum
> casualties on America's invading troops...described as
Well, yes, there being a war on and all..
> Kutsu-go...a fight to the finish based on total suicide attacks
I'll presume this was "Ketsu-go"; not many would be afraid of
"Kutsu-go"
> by aircraft, surface and subsurice units...(by still available
> forces consisting of) 10,000 aircraft available for kamikaze
> missions, 32 destroyers, 45 submarines...40 squadrons of
> suicide high-speed crash boats (with) bows loaded with
> explosives,,,800 demolition frogmen...whose mission it was
> to blow themselves up against the bottoms of U.S.ships...
> another 1,000...trained as human torpedoes...to ride inside
> huge torpedoes launched at or near the surface...(to be hand
> guided) into the hulls of American ships,,," And much more.
The Japanese were known for having lots of plans. They were also
known for lacking the ability to execute them the way they wanted.
Not to mention a lack of material.
The possibility of a large civilian populace fighting to the death,
however, was no doubt taken quite seriously.
> The late David Lowman later authored the book "MAGIC: The
> Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of
These "Untold stories" most often get told quite loudly.
> Japanese Residents from the West Coast During WWiI." which
> challenged the current revisionism of that portion of WWii
> history.
You seem to quail in the face of much imagined "revisionism".
In point of fact, Alperovitz seems only to "capture the imagination"
of those seem to need windmills at which to tilt.
As for the "revisionism" of the incarceration of Japanese-Americans,
it seems that history has decided that the defense of that decision
is "revisionist".
But historically nonsensical positions usually find their own level.
Mike
Alan Meyer
bombs, or using them against cities as opposed to other possible
targets. I personally think it's a tougher problem than the firmly
convinced people on each side think. My personal inclination is that
they should have been used, but maybe there were ways to use them that
involved fewer civilian casualties while still achieving the desired
effect. Or maybe there weren't. It's not easy to say now much less to
have figured it out at the time.
However there is another factor that should be thrown into the equation
when we talk about the number of Americans and number of Japanese who
would have died if the war had been prolonged. The additional factor is
the number of people who would have died in Japanese occupied
territories - China, Korea, Formosa, South East Asia, etc.
The Japanese occupation was brutal and could only become more so as the
stress on Japanese occupation forces increased and resistance by the
occupied peoples increased. It is conceivable that prolonging the war
six months until an invasion could be launched and, _maybe_ defeated the
Japanese Army, would have cost many, many more Chinese lives than
Japanese killed by the two bombs. I seem to recall one estimate of
100,000 Chinese dying of occupation related causes each month towards
the end of the war. I don't know if that's a good estimate or a wild
ass guess but it sounds plausible to me.
As is always the case, decision makers have many constraints on the
decisions they can make. In the case of the bomb, it would have been
very difficult for any American president to explain to American wives
and mothers why their husbands and sons died in order to save the lives
of Japanese civilians who would otherwise have died trying to kill them.
It's easy for us to say what Truman should have done but it would be
hard to stand in his shoes and not treat the human cost in the U.S. as
his first priority.
Alan
Don Phillipson
news:ipa0l3$qm1$1...@dont-email.me...
>I don't have a settled opinion about the advisability of using the bombs,
>or using them against cities as opposed to other possible targets. . .
>maybe there were ways to use them that involved fewer civilian casualties
>while still achieving the desired effect. Or maybe there weren't. It's
>not easy to say now much less to have figured it out at the time.
>
> However there is another factor that should be thrown into the equation
> when we talk about the number of Americans and number of Japanese who
> would have died if the war had been prolonged. The additional factor is
> the number of people who would have died in Japanese occupied
> territories - China, Korea, Formosa, South East Asia, etc.
1. This was (with UK approval) wholly a US decision.
2. What President Truman said after the fact that he was guided
by (first) estimated US casualties during any invasion of homeland
Japan, (secondly) other casualties (e.g. in China and islands where
combat continued.) Truman did not say he was influenced by the
cost of the A-bomb but it may have been a secondary factor.
(As chairman of a congressional efficiency team, Truman
discovered the unprecedented cost of the Manhattan Project,
usually cited as $2 billion by 1945. The only other similar
single wartime budget item was development and production
of the B-29. The important difference is that for $2B the
USA could know it was getting X hundreds of an effective
weapon. Before the Trinity bomb test no one could know
whether the Manhattan Project would yield an effective weapon.
Secondly, consider postwar political debate on the possibility
that the government paid $2B to develop a weapon and then
never used it . . .)
> . . . It is conceivable that prolonging the war six months until an
> invasion could be launched and, _maybe_ defeated the Japanese Army, would
> have cost many, many more Chinese lives than Japanese killed by the two
> bombs.
Other facts not known to Truman and his advisers:
3. By late 1945 Japanese PoW camps in SE Asia had been
ordered to massacre their prisoners rather than permit their
liberation by advancing Allied troops.
4. No one ever estimated Japanese civilian casualties if
the USA invaded the Japanese homeland. But we know
the Japanese army had issued women and children with
bamboo spears and ordered them to die fighting rather
than surrender (ordered by War Minister Gen. Anami,
who was one of those who chose to commit suicide rather
than obey the emperor's order to surrender.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa Canada)
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> "Alan Meyer" <ame...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:ipa0l3$qm1$1...@dont-email.me...
> Other facts not known to Truman and his advisers:
> 3. By late 1945 Japanese PoW camps in SE Asia had been
> ordered to massacre their prisoners rather than permit their
> liberation by advancing Allied troops.
Lee cites a report where the commander of the SE Asia garrison was
going ahead with the executions even AFTER the surrender. It took
the personal dispatch of a Prince (not named, but probably Mikasa)
to prevent it.
> 4. No one ever estimated Japanese civilian casualties if
> the USA invaded the Japanese homeland. But we know
> the Japanese army had issued women and children with
> bamboo spears and ordered them to die fighting rather
> than surrender (ordered by War Minister Gen. Anami,
> who was one of those who chose to commit suicide rather
> than obey the emperor's order to surrender.)
My mother-in-law was one so trained; she says her teacher pulled them
aside and quietly told them to just run away and hide, but given the
IJA's actions on Okinawa, that might not have saved them.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> I don't have a settled opinion about the advisability of using the
> bombs, or using them against cities as opposed to other possible
> targets. I personally think it's a tougher problem than the firmly
> convinced people on each side think. My personal inclination is that
> they should have been used, but maybe there were ways to use them that
> involved fewer civilian casualties while still achieving the desired
> effect. Or maybe there weren't. It's not easy to say now much less to
> have figured it out at the time.
It is likely that there were other ways (different target choices, perhaps)
but this was not obvious to those deciding on the use of the bomb. And as
it was, it was a close thing, as there were factions trying to subvert the
surrender.
> However there is another factor that should be thrown into the equation
> when we talk about the number of Americans and number of Japanese who
> would have died if the war had been prolonged.
Over 100,000 civilians are estimated to have died on Okinawa, at least
half at the hands of the IJA.
> As is always the case, decision makers have many constraints on the
> decisions they can make. In the case of the bomb, it would have been
> very difficult for any American president to explain to American wives
> and mothers why their husbands and sons died in order to save the lives
> of Japanese civilians who would otherwise have died trying to kill them.
Yep.
> It's easy for us to say what Truman should have done but it would be
> hard to stand in his shoes and not treat the human cost in the U.S. as
> his first priority.
The argument should not be about whether or not the bombs were justified,
but whether there were good alternatives. None seem obvious to me.
Mike
David H Thornley
> of the B-29. The important difference is that for $2B the
> USA could know it was getting X hundreds of an effective
> weapon. Before the Trinity bomb test no one could know
> whether the Manhattan Project would yield an effective weapon.
> Secondly, consider postwar political debate on the possibility
> that the government paid $2B to develop a weapon and then
> never used it . . .)
>
Once methods of separating U-238 from U-235 had been worked
out, it was pretty certain that there would be one bomb that
worked. Uranium refinement is a slow and expensive process,
so there weren't going to be many uranium bombs. (Heck, I
know enough to make a nuclear weapon, given weapons-grade
U-235. It's not that difficult, and it's not much of an
engineering challenge. It's getting weapons-grade U-235
that's the hard part.)
What nobody really knew was how well the plutonium bomb
would do, and that's the reason for the Trinity test.
(There's an opera on the Trinity blast, "Dr. Atomic",
that has been performed by the Met in New York, and
simulcast to many theaters across the world. It's not your
typical opera, as most of the lyrics were taken from
things the principals wrote at the time, so instead of
a song about love with words easy to sing, we get a song
about the blistering on the plutonium sphere to somewhat
discordant music.)
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
wjho...@aol.com
>
> wjhopw...@aol.com <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> > Judging from the synopsis of the book available on
> > Amazon, it was was written some 30 years ago before
> > the revisionists such as Gar Alperovitz and his
> > fellow-travelers captured the imagination of the media.
> Uh, 1999. _Atomic Diplomacy_ was first published in the
> 1960s. His second book on the subject was published in
>.1995. Alperovitz was discreditted almost as soon as his
> first edition was published. The only imaginations captured
> were those predisposed to believe what he was selling.
As I indicated above, according to Amazon there was a
Penguin Books edition of the Frank book in 1980 and it was
that date which governed my "pre-revisionist" reference to
Frank. The date may have been an Amazon error, but the site
also has for sale a "collectible" copy of the book noting that it
comes from a "second-printing" in 1999, which I assume is the
issue to which you refer above as the original publication date..
Be that as it may, since it is Alperovitz' views to which
you refer as having not captured the attention of the media
and the general public, that was true of his first work in the '60s,
but it was certainly not true on his second time around which
occurred amidst all of the hoopla in the mid 1990s which came
with the 50th anniversary of the A-bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki
> Alperovitz was never taken seriously by any serious scholar I
> know of.
There were a number of scholars considered "serious," not only
by themselves but by others. Some preceded Alperovitz'
eminence and some came later, either in support of Alperovitz
or with reasons of their own to condemn the A-bombing.
These fellow-travelers surfaced for the most part during the A-bomb
anniversary days of the mid-90s when Alperovitz gained his most
prominence as (in the words of Professor Kagan) "the dean of atomic
revisionism. A few of the other revisionists mentioned by Kagan
at the time were Norman Cousins, P.M.S. Blackett, William Appleman
Williams, and D.F.Fleming (those of the early school) and later
Martin
J. Sherwin and Barton J. Bernstein.
> > Kutsu-go...a fight to the finish based on total suicide attacks
>
> I'll presume this was "Ketsu-go"; not many would be afraid of
> "Kutsu-go"
Sorry, my typo. You superior knowledge of Japanese
duly noted.
> The Japanese were known for having lots of plans. They were also
> known for lacking the ability to execute them the way they wanted.
> Not to mention a lack of material. The possibility of a large civilian
> populace fighting to the death, however, was no doubt taken quite
> seriously.
Indeed. Speculation on what were Japanese plans or Japanese
wishful thinking vis-a-vis what might be the reality of Japan's
capabilities could not be the basis for any course of action by
Truman
and the U.S.military leadership.
> As for the "revisionism" of the incarceration of Japanese-Americans,
> it seems that history has decided that the defense of that decision
> is "revisionist".
Not really. The ex-post-facto manufacture of phony reasons to condemn
our wartime government for legitimate military and constitutional
actions
taken in time of war is "revisionism." Not "history."
Alan Nordin
> is "revisionism." Not "history."
Revisionism is not in and of itself bad or wrong. It is only a
revised look at what was at the time the accepted view. Later
revisionism of early US history is almost always more accurate than
early histories. Early historians would overlook any less than
admirable traits exhibited by the Founding Fathers and later heroes of
US history. Read Sandberg's Lincoln and then read Donald's Lincoln
and you'll see what I mean.
Alan
narrl...@hotmail.com
> On Apr 27, 12:59 am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
>
>
>
> > wjhopw...@aol.com <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> > > Judging from the synopsis of the book available on
> > > Amazon, it was was written some 30 years ago before
> > > the revisionists such as Gar Alperovitz and his
> > > fellow-travelers captured the imagination of the media.
> > Uh, 1999. _Atomic Diplomacy_ was first published in the
> > 1960s. His second book on the subject was published in
> >.1995. Alperovitz was discreditted almost as soon as his
> > first edition was published. The only imaginations captured
> > were those predisposed to believe what he was selling.
>
> As I indicated above, according to Amazon there was a
> Penguin Books edition of the Frank book in 1980 and it was
> that date which governed my "pre-revisionist" reference to
> Frank.
Frank's book was first published in 1999. It was pointedly--if not
explicitly (it's been almost ten years since I read it)--a refutation
of the Alperovitz school.
Narr
wjho...@aol.com
> On Apr 28, 9:24 am, "wjhopw...@aol.com" <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > is "revisionism." Not "history."
>
> Revisionism is not in and of itself bad or wrong. It is only a
> revised look at what was at the time the accepted view. Later
> revisionism of early US history is almost always more accurate than
That's a fair statement when defining "revisionism" in the context
you have used above. But revisionism is a two-edged sword.
In the context I have used when referring to the evacuation/
relocation
of the West Coast persons of Japanese ancestry, the words
"revisionism" and "revisionists" refer to the intent and techniques of
those who would rewrite the history of the evacuation and the
legitimate reasons therefore, primarily to support a current social
agenda unrelated to the wartime conditions or intelligence information
of the time.
The same goes for the revisionism connected with the decision to use
the A-Bombs. However, unlike the evacuation rewrite, the anti A-Bomb
effort did not result in costing billions in unjustified reparation
payments to those who had suffered no comparative or unnecessary
damage at the cost of those who had done them no harm.
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> > Uh, 1999. _Atomic Diplomacy_ was first published in the
> > 1960s. His second book on the subject was published in
> >.1995. Alperovitz was discreditted almost as soon as his
> > first edition was published. The only imaginations captured
> > were those predisposed to believe what he was selling.
> As I indicated above, according to Amazon there was a
> Penguin Books edition of the Frank book in 1980 and it was
> that date which governed my "pre-revisionist" reference to
> Frank. The date may have been an Amazon error, but the site
Again, Alperovitz' original work, _Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and
Potsdam_, was published in the 60s. By no stretch of any imagination
is Franks' work "pre revisionist".
> Be that as it may, since it is Alperovitz' views to which
> you refer as having not captured the attention of the media
> and the general public, that was true of his first work in the '60s,
> but it was certainly not true on his second time around which
> occurred amidst all of the hoopla in the mid 1990s which came
> with the 50th anniversary of the A-bombing of Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki
No, it really it true. The only people who were persuaded in any fashion
were those pre-disposed to believe such work. There has been no change
in the general perception of the use of the bombs, nor any sort of
groundswell of support for his position.
It captured nobody's "imagination", save perhaps for those who imagine
everyone else to have an agenda.
Not much we can do about those people, however.
> > Alperovitz was never taken seriously by any serious scholar I
> > know of.
> There were a number of scholars considered "serious," not only
> by themselves but by others. Some preceded Alperovitz'
Really? You know of "serious scholars" who took seriously a work
Alperovitz himself admitted was "flawed"?
> eminence and some came later, either in support of Alperovitz
> or with reasons of their own to condemn the A-bombing.
Many people before and after Alperovitz condemned the use of bombs.
However, that is not the same as being persuaded by Alperovitz'
work, or his arguments.
> These fellow-travelers surfaced for the most part during the A-bomb
You really do not do your cause any favors by resorting to McCarthyist
phrases. It tends to cast your arguments in a paranoid light.
> anniversary days of the mid-90s when Alperovitz gained his most
> prominence as (in the words of Professor Kagan) "the dean of atomic
> revisionism. A few of the other revisionists mentioned by Kagan
> at the time were Norman Cousins, P.M.S. Blackett, William Appleman
> Williams, and D.F.Fleming (those of the early school) and later
> Martin J. Sherwin and Barton J. Bernstein.
Kagan would have his cause and effect backwards, then. WA Williams
preceded Alperovitz, Blackett died well before Alperovtiz' second
work on the subject, Fleming's works preceded _Atomic Diplomacy_,
etc.
If he is merely rambling on that there are "revisionist" writers,
well, that's nice, but does nothing to show Alperovitz' works were
at all influencial.
> Indeed. Speculation on what were Japanese plans or Japanese
> wishful thinking vis-a-vis what might be the reality of Japan's
> capabilities could not be the basis for any course of action by
> Truman and the U.S.military leadership.
Correct; they could only be certain that the Japanese would be
quite fierce in defense, and this would prove costly to the Allies.
> > As for the "revisionism" of the incarceration of Japanese-Americans,
> > it seems that history has decided that the defense of that decision
> > is "revisionist".
> Not really.
Yes, really.
The US has formally apologized for the action. It has recognized it
as wrong, as have, in fact, most scholarly researchers.
>The ex-post-facto manufacture of phony reasons to condemn
No, the reasons for the incarcerations were phony.
Unless you believe DeWitt's claims that the Japanese were untrustworthy
because of their race, that is.
> our wartime government for legitimate military and constitutional
> actions
> taken in time of war is "revisionism." Not "history."
You are confused; "history" states that was a mistake. And you're
on the wrong side of history.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On Apr 28, 10:00 am, Alan Nordin <alan_nor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> you have used above. But revisionism is a two-edged sword.
> In the context I have used when referring to the evacuation/
> relocation
> of the West Coast persons of Japanese ancestry, the words
> "revisionism" and "revisionists" refer to the intent and techniques of
> those who would rewrite the history of the evacuation and the
> legitimate reasons therefore, primarily to support a current social
> agenda unrelated to the wartime conditions or intelligence information
> of the time.
The "history" of the evacuation has already been written. The analysis
of that decision led more rational scholars to conclude, and the US
government to agree, that the incarcerations were unjustified, and
unnecessary.
There are those who wish to change the accepted view; they are, in
effect, trying to "revise" it. Hence, "revisionist".
> The same goes for the revisionism connected with the decision to use
> the A-Bombs. However, unlike the evacuation rewrite, the anti A-Bomb
> effort did not result in costing billions in unjustified reparation
Note that < $2 billion is not "billions".
> payments to those who had suffered no comparative or unnecessary
> damage at the cost of those who had done them no harm.
Sorry, you've wandered off into Bayman territory; locking people up
in a desert concentration without trial or charge certainly
constitutes harm.
Or would you happily volunteer to be so treated?
Mike
Alan Nordin
> That's a fair statement when defining "revisionism" in the context
> you have used above.
It's more than a fair statement, it's true. You've chosen to give it
meaning it doesn't have. My example was just that, an example. Your
example is just that, an example. In and of itself, the word
"revisionism" is neither bad nor good. All it means is departing from
what is generally accepted. And in some cases, it is more accurate
than what is {or should become was} generally accepted, in others it
isn't.
Of course there are alternate meanings, but they refer to schisms in
Marxism and Zionism and they are usually "Revisionism", capitol "R".
I don't think we're talking about either here.
Alan
wjho...@aol.com
> On Apr 28, 7:57 pm, "wjhopw...@aol.com" wrote:
>
> > That's a fair statement when defining "revisionism" in
> > the context you have used above.
>
> It's more than a fair statement, it's true. You've chosen to
> give it meaning it doesn't have.
It would hardly have called it "fair" if it wasn't true.
Why are you trying to argue with someone who agrees
with you on that point?
>.... In and of itself, the word "revisionism" is neither
> bad nor good.
And as I clearly said, in the context in which I used
the term, "revisionism" could hardly be interpreted as
"good." So what's your beef?
>All it means is departing from what is generally accepted.
>And in some cases, it is more accurate than what is...,
> in others it isn't.
But in the negative sense it is much more than just
departing from something "generally accepted" if the
departure is couched in ideological distortions of fact
in order to twist the historical record so as to justify
an action such as granting redress and reparations
for reasons or their race to only one group of enemy
aliens interned according to long-standing law,
while totallly ignoring other enemy aliens who were
identically situated but were of the wrong race. Or
perhaps you were unaware of that.
WJH
Alan Nordin
> But in the negative sense it is much more than just
> departing from something "generally accepted" if the
> departure is couched in ideological distortions of fact
> in order to twist the historical record so as to justify
> an action such as granting redress and reparations
> for reasons or their race to only one group of enemy
> aliens interned according to long-standing law,
> while totallly ignoring other enemy aliens who were
> identically situated but were of the wrong race. Or
> perhaps you were unaware of that.
The above paragraph is my problem/beef. If you had said, "the
revisionist view of Japanese Internment", I would have no problem at
all. But hey, don't believe me, look it up in any dictionary you
want, you won't see anything about Japanese Internment.
As for the issue that you are arguing, I refuse to become embroiled,
or perhaps you were unaware of that.
My issue is your misuse of the word "revisionism". To get back to my
original post, I quoted you as specifically saying, its either
"revisionism" or "history", and that is wrong. And I will add that is
ALL I quoted.
Alan
wjho...@aol.com
>
> .... If you had said, "the. revisionist view of Japanese
> Internment", I would have no problem at all....
Well, what do you think I was saying? Here is a copy
of the exchange which raised your hackles. What did
you think we were talking about? The weather?
(Fester)
> As for the "revisionism" of the incarceration of
>Japanese-Americans, it seems that history has
>decided that the defense of that decision
> is "revisionist".
(Hopwood)
Not really. The ex-post-facto manufacture of phony
reasons to condemn our wartime government for
legitimate military and constitutional actions
taken in time of war is "revisionism." Not "history."
> As for the issue that you are arguing, I refuse to
> become embroiled, or perhaps you were unaware of that.
i was, since you did embroil yourself by delivering a lecture
on semantics, apparently occasioned by your misinterpretation
of my use of two of the words in the exchange quoted above.
> My issue is your misuse of the word "revisionism"....
> saying, its either "revisionism" or "history", and that is wrong.
> And I will add that is ALL I quoted.
Well, you should gave quoted MORE. Had you quoted (after
first having read) the entire exchange as reproduced above,
instead of pouncing on only two of its words and those out
of context, you may have had a better understanding.
Hopefully you do now.
WJH
Alan Nordin
Well you've completely missed my point. Earlier you said ....
And as I clearly said, in the context in which I used
the term, "revisionism" could hardly be interpreted as
"good."
I'll try to make this as clear as I can. You are saying revisionism,
as you define it, is bad. The people who are arguing with you would
just as readily define it as good. Or in other words, those on one
side of an argument view the concept oppositely from those on the
other side of the argument. Or the context you use it in is opposite
from the context they use it in. Hence my insistance that the term
revisionism is neither bad or good and only time {or maybe a usenet
discussion} will determine if it is more accurate than what is
"generally accepted." Earlier you took exception to this phrase, it's
from the dictionary definition of revisionism, hence my comment "look
it up".
You keep on bringing in the specifics of your argument concerning
Japanese Internment. My argument has nothing to do with Japanese
Internment, it has nothing to do with any specific instance of
revisionism. It has everything to do with revisionism in general
which is neither bad nor good, nor right nor wrong.
Yes I'm talking about semantics.
Alan
PS I find it interesting that you have chosen to address me over this
while ignoring people who are refuting the facts of your argument.
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On Apr 29, 5:42 pm, "wjhopw...@aol.com" <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> I'll try to make this as clear as I can. You are saying revisionism,
> as you define it, is bad. The people who are arguing with you would
> just as readily define it as good.
To be clear, I argue that revisionism is, by definition, revisionist.
Ie, attempting to revise the currently accepted view and/or judgement of
history. It can be good, bad, or indifferent, depending on one's view.
Mr Hopwood seems only to use it in a perjorative sense, and likes to use
phrases like "fellow traveler" in such discussions, which show a clear
ideological bias. And then, of course, to accuse others of such a bias.
> It has everything to do with revisionism in general
> which is neither bad nor good, nor right nor wrong.
I agree. To focus on the current discussions, claiming the US deliberately
manuevered Japan into not surrendering in order to use the a-bombs would
be "revisionist". In my opinion, this would be wrong, and is revisionist.
WRT the Japanese-American internment issue, current historical dogma
holds that the en-mass lockup was largely (if not entirely) racist, and
should not have been done, based on the information available both at the
time, and now. Attempts to justify said action would be "revisionist".
It is coincidental that in this discussion both "revisionist" schools
are wrong (IMO); as you say, small r revisionism is by itself neutral.
Mike
Alan Nordin
> Alan Nordin <alan_nor...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > The people who are arguing with you would
> > just as readily define it as good.
>
> To be clear, I argue that revisionism is, by definition, revisionist.
> Ie, attempting to revise the currently accepted view and/or judgement of
> history. It can be good, bad, or indifferent, depending on one's view.
Sorry, you're right, please change that line to, "The people arguing
with you MIGHT just as readily define it as good."
Alan
wjho...@aol.com
> wjhopw...wrote:
>
> > Be that as it may, since it is Alperovitz' views to which
> > you refer as having not captured the attention of the media
> > and the general public, that was true of his first work in the '60s,
> > but it was certainly not true on his second time around which
> > occurred amidst all of the hoopla in the mid 1990s which came
> > with the 50th anniversary of the A-bombing of Hiroshima and
> > Nagasaki
>
> No, it really it true. The only people who were persuaded in any fashion
> were those pre-disposed to believe such work. There has been no change
> in the general perception of the use of the bombs, nor any sort of
> groundswell of support for his position.
You don't differentiate between time frames. If you refer to
Alperovitz
in the 60s, you are right. But if you mean Alperovitz in the 90's, in
my view you are mistaken. Alperovitz and his views in the 90s and
IIRC even spilling into the next decade, was for a few years on or
around the A-Bomb anniversary dates each year, given considerable news
and editorial space which brought him to the attention of the general
public to a much greater extent than in the 60s.. Also, to a slightly
lesser degree was Bernstein whose views were similar. Who knows how
many people were persuaded to adopt their (with apologies to Mr.
Nordin) "revisionist" line of thinking?
> Really? You know of "serious scholars" who took seriously a work
> Alperovitz himself admitted was "flawed"?
I wonder if you would mind showing us a source and quote for
Alperovitz' having admitted that his own work was "flawed?"
> Many people before and after Alperovitz condemned the use of bombs.
> However, that is not the same as being persuaded by Alperovitz'
> work, or his arguments.
Could you be more specific?. Give us quotes from one or two other
serious scholars who condemned both the use of the Bombs and expressed
disagreement with Alperovitz' reasons therefore.
.
> > These fellow-travelers surfaced for the most part during the A-bomb
>
> You really do not do your cause any favors by resorting to McCarthyist
> phrases. It tends to cast your arguments in a paranoid light
Petty nonsense. Can't you do better than that?
> The US has formally apologized for the action. It has recognized it
> as wrong, as have, in fact, most scholarly researchers.
The U.S. has taken a number of politically motivated actions
in the past and will likely do so in the future. That does not
mean they were the right thing to do. As for the scholarly
researchers, there are also those, perhaps as many, who
believe the evacuation was fully justified. Take your choice.
> Unless you believe DeWitt's claims that the Japanese were
> untrustworthy because of their race, that is.
It may come as news to you but DeWitt believed, as did all
Americans at the time, that we were at war with Japan, not
with the race of the Japanese people.
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> > No, it really it true. The only people who were persuaded in any fashion
> > were those pre-disposed to believe such work. There has been no change
> > in the general perception of the use of the bombs, nor any sort of
> > groundswell of support for his position.
> You don't differentiate between time frames. If you refer to
No need to do so; Alperovitz is only marginally discussed when the
history of WWII is brought up.
> Alperovitz
> in the 60s, you are right. But if you mean Alperovitz in the 90's, in
> my view you are mistaken. Alperovitz and his views in the 90s and
> IIRC even spilling into the next decade, was for a few years on or
> around the A-Bomb anniversary dates each year, given considerable news
> and editorial space which brought him to the attention of the general
Birthers are given "considerable news and editorial space"; they are
largely (and rightly) ridiculed. Alperovitz has not garnered a following
for his views, save for those who were already predisposed to agree with him.
Even in Japan, he is largley ignored.
> lesser degree was Bernstein whose views were similar. Who knows how
> many people were persuaded to adopt their (with apologies to Mr.
> Nordin) "revisionist" line of thinking?
Sorry, I have no idea why you need to bring Mr Nordin into this with
an insincere apoloy; he is quite clear on the use of the term "revisionist",
and the term applies to Alperovitz' POV.
> > Really? You know of "serious scholars" who took seriously a work
> > Alperovitz himself admitted was "flawed"?
> I wonder if you would mind showing us a source and quote for
> Alperovitz' having admitted that his own work was "flawed?"
Sorry I didn't write it down; you could dig into the archives for
soc.culture.japan, or this group (I forget which) from about 12 years
ago when we were discussing his book. Somebody did a rather lengthy
refutation of the book, and cited Alperovitz' words for putting out
his revised edition. In some cases it involved his citing conversations
which likely never took place.
> > Many people before and after Alperovitz condemned the use of bombs.
> > However, that is not the same as being persuaded by Alperovitz'
> > work, or his arguments.
> Could you be more specific?. Give us quotes from one or two other
> serious scholars who condemned both the use of the Bombs and expressed
> disagreement with Alperovitz' reasons therefore.
Please read carefully. I have stated there were those who condemned the
use of the bombs, both before and after Alperovitz' work appeared. This
is not the same as saying they publically disagreed with Alperovitz'.
> > > These fellow-travelers surfaced for the most part during the A-bomb
> >
> > You really do not do your cause any favors by resorting to McCarthyist
> > phrases. It tends to cast your arguments in a paranoid light
> Petty nonsense. Can't you do better than that?
I would ask the same of you; you continually attempt to use politically
charged language ("revisionist", "politically correct", "fellow traveller",
etc.) seemingly in the belief that it bolsters your case. Yet you
feign indic
> > The US has formally apologized for the action. It has recognized it
> > as wrong, as have, in fact, most scholarly researchers.
> The U.S. has taken a number of politically motivated actions
> in the past and will likely do so in the future. That does not
Yes; as an example, the lockup of the West Coast Japanese-Americans
was in large part political; people didn't like them, they were
"different" and, like you, they could not make the mental connection
between "American" and "Axis" IFF the people under discussion were of
yellow skin. However, they could allow West Coast Italians and German
to remain in areas deemed too "sensitive" for US citizens (if those
citizens had Japanese ancestry.)
> mean they were the right thing to do. As for the scholarly
No, but in this case it was correct.
> researchers, there are also those, perhaps as many, who
> believe the evacuation was fully justified. Take your choice.
No, there do remain a few polemics who make those claims. You yourself
have been rather unable to provide any concrete examples of spy rings
uncovered by "newly released MAGIC documents", though given years to
do so. In fact, MAGIC failed rather spectacularly to uncover outright
Japanese agents in Hawaii.
Hence, those revisionists claiming the internment was justified find
themselves marginalized.
> > Unless you believe DeWitt's claims that the Japanese were
> > untrustworthy because of their race, that is.
> It may come as news to you but DeWitt believed, as did all
> Americans at the time, that we were at war with Japan, not
> with the race of the Japanese people.
Exactly the point; so when he locked up non-Japanese citizens, he was
doing for what reason? You fail to answer this. Clearly, neither you
nor DeWitt is capable of distinguishing between nationality and race.
No reason for you to drag the interment into a discussion of Alperovitz'
book, otherwise.
To put it bluntly, Mr Hopwood, those of Americans of Japanese descent living
in the US at the time were Americans. To pretend otherwise is racist.
By definition.
Mike
If not their race, what?
wjho...@aol.com
>
> The "history" of the evacuation has already been written.
There were two histories. The original one based on fact
and the later revised one based on ideology.
> The analysis... led more rational scholars to conclude, and the US
> government to agree, that the incarcerations were unjustified, and
> unnecessary.
That was the analysis based on the 2d, the revised, version
of the evacuation, the one which leads to the phony use of terms such
as "incarceration" instead of "relocation." The one which confuses
"internment camps" and residents thereof with "relocation centers"
built hastily to humanely accommodate evacuees with no place to
go until jobs and housing could be found for them and from which some
35,000 departed during the war for jobs and housing, while over 4,000
left to attend colleges.
> Sorry, you've wandered off into Bayman territory; locking people up
> in a desert concentration without trial or charge certainly
> constitutes harm.
There you go again. Ignoring the facts. Those INTERNED first had
hearings before enemy control boards and only after being charged
were they interned. (Alien Enemy Act of 1798) Those were the
ones you refer to as "incarcerated." Those in the relocation centers
could ask to leave if they had somewhere to go, jobs or other means
of support, and were cleared by military intelligence. As noted above
almost all who wanted to leave did so. In fact, many of those who
left asked to return. Life on the outside wasn't as easy as in at
the
centers with their schools, hospitals, 3 square meals a day,
recreational
facilities galore, you name it--they had it..
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> >.... In and of itself, the word "revisionism" is neither
> > bad nor good.
> And as I clearly said, in the context in which I used
> the term, "revisionism" could hardly be interpreted as
> "good." So what's your beef?
Yes, yours is the Humpty Dumpty approach to the English language.
> >All it means is departing from what is generally accepted.
This would be correct, and is in fact implied in the term "revisionist".
> >And in some cases, it is more accurate than what is...,
> > in others it isn't.
> But in the negative sense it is much more than just
> departing from something "generally accepted" if the
> departure is couched in ideological distortions of fact
> in order to twist the historical record so as to justify
> an action such as granting redress and reparations
> for reasons or their race to only one group of enemy
> aliens interned according to long-standing law,
> while totallly ignoring other enemy aliens who were
> identically situated but were of the wrong race.
An incredibly (and unnecessarily) convoluted sentence.
In fact, Mr Hopwood, as you have been told, they (those Issei/nisei)
were incarcerated because of race, regardless of citizenship. Thus,
as you are aware, but do not pretend to care, US citizens, including
combat veterans, were thrown into concentration camps. Meanwhile, "enemy
aliens" who had chosen not to naturalize were allowed to live in the
same "sensitive" areas from which those nasty, untrustworthy "Japanese"
were removed for "security".
>Or perhaps you were unaware of that.
You've been made aware of all the above; you first deny it, then claim
that it doesn't matter.
You'd make a good birther.
Mike
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<ed05183e-8db8-4d42...@p13g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
wjho...@aol.com () wrote:
> The ex-post-facto manufacture of phony
> reasons to condemn our wartime government for
> legitimate military and constitutional actions
> taken in time of war is "revisionism."
Let me see in the UK all non citizens from Italy Germany and Japan were
interned including Jewish refuges. These were individually assessed and
some were released during the war, all internees got their property back
at the end of the war. No one of British nationality naturalised or not
was interned. Now can you say that all people of German and Italian
origin were interned along with the Japanese and no US citizens were
interned? And for that matter did everybody interned get their property
back?
By the way if the reasons are phony I would expect to see evidence.
Ken Young
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<c7e6d71b-1eb9-4744...@j26g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
alan_...@comcast.net (Alan Nordin) wrote:
> 'll try to make this as clear as I can. You are saying revisionism,
> as you define it, is bad.
Revisionism is attempting to revise an accepted view of history.
Whether or not it is good or bad depends on several factors. If it is
different interpretation of accepted facts such as WW1 revisionism which
tries to prove that Haig was not a murderous bastard who cared nothing
about losses and learned nothing during the war it is a matter of
interpretation and turning up unpublished historical records. If on the
other hand it is trying to prove that something that is documented did
not happen like the Holocaust it is propaganda. If it is attempting to
show that something has been wildly exaggerated like the Inquisition and
Witch trials it come between the two.
In just about any era of history you can discover revisionist arguments
from modern historians that applies especially to medieval history where
as a result any discussion of feudalism has been abandoned as no modern
historians agree on what the term means.
Calling someone revisionist usually means that you do not agree with
what he or she is saying and can not be bothered to refute the actual
argument.
Off course people writing popular works that have no historical rigour
can be referred to as revisionists but referring to them as idiots is
usually a better idea. These people usually do not worry about
historical morality but use what is current when writing. The A-Bombs
are a classic example. Everybody at the time considered them bigger and
better bombs, seen in the context of the various strategic bombing
programs they were just a better way of doing that. The US invasion
plans of Japan planned to drop A-bombs on the beaches and then send
troops ashore. The effects of radiation were not considered for years
after. When I was growing up every shoe shop still had x-ray machines to
check that your shoes fitted.
There was a major change in attitude after the war due partially to the
health records from Japan and mainly due to Mutually Assured
Destruction. From memory the Japanese suffered more casualties from
bombing in Tokyo than Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together and that is
ignoring the casualties from other strategic bombing.
Ken Young
wjho...@aol.com
> wjhopw...@aol.com <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 29, 9:18 am, Alan Nordin wrote:
> > >.... In and of itself, the word "revisionism" is neither
> > >And in some cases, it is more accurate than what is...,
> > > in others it isn't.
>
> > But in the negative sense it is much more than just
> > departing from something "generally accepted" if the
> > departure is couched in ideological distortions of fact
> > in order to twist the historical record so as to justify
> > an action such as granting redress and reparations
> > aliens interned according to long-standing law,
> > while totallly ignoring other enemy aliens who were
> > identically situated but were of the wrong race.
>
> An incredibly (and unnecessarily) convoluted sentence.
Too convoluted for you? It shouldn't be. Long, yes, but It
does not appear to violate the grammatical standards of
Strunk & White, and should be clear to anyone beyond the
10th grade or not suffering from dyslexia.
> In fact, Mr Hopwood, as you have been told...
(Without substantiation and most often by you, Mr, Fester)
>(that) ..... they (those Issei/nisei).were incarcerated because
of race, regardless of citizenship.
Wrong. There were no U.S. citizens Interned and those who
were interned in DOJ camps were the only ones "incarcerated"
in the accepted meaning of the word. We should point out
that over 5,000 FORMER U.S. citizens of Japanese descent
were interned but only after they renounced their U.S.
citizenship and asked to be sent to Japan so they could fight for
the Emperor.
> ...."enemy aliens" who had chosen not to naturalize were allowed
> to live in the same "sensitive" areas from which those nasty,
Germans and Italians, who were in such logistically large numbers
that they could only be evaluated on an individual basis. Many
German and Italian aliens were refugees from Nazism or Fascism
and there was little in the way of adverse national security evidence
against them, unlike the Japanese of whom there was an abundance
of such evidence which caused considerable military concern.
> You'd make a good birther.
A suggestion: in the interest of the credibility of this forum, It
might help
if you cleaned up your act by presenting more bona fide historical
evidence to support your position, while at the same time refraining
from regurgitating the same tired old emotion-based mendacious
information which you like to accompany with a litany of sophomoric
ad hominem attacks against those with whom you disagree.
WJH
wjho...@aol.com
> wjhopw...@aol.com () wrote:
> > The ex-post-facto manufacture of phony
> > reasons to condemn our wartime government for
> > legitimate military and constitutional actions
> > taken in time of war is "revisionism."
>
> origin were interned along with the Japanese and no US
> citizens were interned?
Not ALL persons of any enemy alien nationality
were interned. Only those enemy aliens who had,
been summoned for individual hearings
before enemy alien review boards and only after being
found by such boards to pose a possible security threat
were interned. Those included enemy aliens of the
following nationalities: German 10,905), Italian (3,278),
Japanese (16,849), Hungarian (52) Romanian (26, )and
Bulgarian (5).
In addition, and also interned, were over 5,000 American-born
Japanese who during the war formally renounced their U.S.
citizenship and requested to be sent to Japan to join the
Japanese war effort against the country of their birth.
No U.S. citizens were interned.
> And for that matter did everybody interned get their property
> back?
As much as could reasonably be returned after the dislocations,
and normal snafus of chaotic times. During the war personal
property of those evacuated from war zones was registered and
stored at government expense in bonded warehouses. After
the war Congress passed the Evacuation Claims Act of 1948
in order that those who had suffered losses of real of personal
property could file claims for damages with the government.
Some 26,568 claims were subsequently filed and approx
$37,000,000. was paid out by the government. There were
a number of complaints that rules requiring adjudication of claims
over $2500 caused significant delays in payment of larger claims.
Accordingly, in 1956 rules were changed to allow payment of
claims up tor $100,000 without the previous delay time and also
to provide for disputed claims to go to the U.S. Court of Claims.
After that, pending clsims were expeditiously settled and only
15 out off the intitial 26,568 were ever appealed to the Court of
Claims.
> By the way if the reasons are phony I would expect to see evidence.
Here was the phony issue:
The reason given by Congress for reparation payments to all
persons of Japanese descent (and only Japanese descent)
who were evacuated, relocated or interned during WWii was
that the cause of such action was "racism, war hysteria, and a
failure of political leadership"
That conclusion was never based on fact, nor could it have
been. Only on ideology. The staff and direction of
the political commission appointed by Congress to study the
reparations issue had a conflict of interest. Among this group
were those who had a probable opportunity for personal gain
which rested on what their report to Congress said in its "
findings" and recommendations.
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On Apr 29, 1:20 am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> >
> > The "history" of the evacuation has already been written.
> There were two histories.
Really, your attempts at "political correctness" are growing weary.
No, there is only a single history. There are multiple interpretations
of the history.
> The original one based on fact
> and the later revised one based on ideology.
The "original one" based on the fact that they were non-white, and the
"revised one based on ideology" that it is anti-American to imprison
people without cause.
> > The analysis... led more rational scholars to conclude, and the US
> > government to agree, that the incarcerations were unjustified, and
> > unnecessary.
> That was the analysis based on the 2d, the revised, version
> of the evacuation,
Correct; after leaving behind the hysteria of DeWitt's "they're untrust-
worthy because of their race", the more intelligent view now holds sway,
notwithstanding the efforts of revisionists such as you.
> the one which leads to the phony use of terms such
> as "incarceration" instead of "relocation." The one which confuses
Again, your "politically correct" euphemisms betray your political
ideology.
In fact, they were intended to be concentration camps, and the people
contained therein were incarcerated. They were under armed guard, behind
barbed wire, though US citizens or legal US residents.
> "internment camps" and residents thereof with "relocation centers"
> built hastily to humanely accommodate evacuees with no place to
> go
Uh, to point out what must be painfully obvious to anyone who paid attention,
they had perfectly good homes; it was the actions of an hysterical group
of people who forced them out of their homes.
> > Sorry, you've wandered off into Bayman territory; locking people up
> > in a desert concentration without trial or charge certainly
> > constitutes harm.
> There you go again. Ignoring the facts.
Nope. Simply not falling for your modern "touchy-feely" politically
correct euphemisms.
They were not allowed to go home, even if they were natural born US
citizens, or naturalized combat veterans.
> were they interned. (Alien Enemy Act of 1798) Those were the
> ones you refer to as "incarcerated." Those in the relocation centers
And the others were marched off, under armed guard, and forced to live
in very inhospitable areas.
Again, your pathetic attempts at political correctness do you no favors.
> could ask to leave if they had somewhere to go, jobs or other means
> of support, and were cleared by military intelligence. As noted above
> almost all who wanted to leave did so. In fact, many of those who
Sorry, but no, they weren't allowed to leave until later in the war.
You are now lying.
> left asked to return. Life on the outside wasn't as easy as in at
> the
> centers with their schools, hospitals, 3 square meals a day,
You claim to have been there "at the time". This seems unlikely, in that
people I know who actually WERE there at the time had schools, hospitals,
etc.
Seriously, do you even KNOW anyone who lived in the US in the 1940s?
> recreational
> facilities galore, you name it--they had it..
Barbed wire, armed guards; yeah, all the luxeries of a prison.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> In article
> There was a major change in attitude after the war due partially to the
> health records from Japan and mainly due to Mutually Assured
> Destruction. From memory the Japanese suffered more casualties from
> bombing in Tokyo than Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together and that is
> ignoring the casualties from other strategic bombing.
The US generally puts the casualties of the Tokyo raid at about 120,000.
The Japanese generally place it in the 70-80k range. It is unlikely that
the Tokyo toll exceeded the casualty of BOTH a-bombed cities, but it
at the very least matched the high estimates of Hiroshima.
Over the years, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki body counts have (obviously)
increased as disorders wrought by radiation effects began to take their
toll, but it is difficult to seperate actual losses due to radiation from
losses to diseases and conditions which occur naturally.
OTOH, I know of no effort to track the long-term effects of exposure to
fire-bombing.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> In article
> <ed05183e-8db8-4d42...@p13g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
> wjho...@aol.com () wrote:
> at the end of the war. No one of British nationality naturalised or not
> was interned. Now can you say that all people of German and Italian
> origin were interned along with the Japanese and no US citizens were
> interned?
No. In fact, some non-naturalized (though not all) Germans and Italians
were allowed to remain in "sensitive" areas. In fact, in _Up Front_,
Bill Mauldin recalls serving with a German officer in Italy.
> And for that matter did everybody interned get their property
> back?
No. In some cases (the Yokohama Specie Bank, eg) claims were settled
for pennies on the dollar. In other case, since Japanese immigrants were
not allowed to legally own land in California, and relied on other agencies
to hold title (eg, their children, public agencies, friends) they had no
lawful claim to restitution if that property was not returned (even if it
had not been seized for non-payment of taxes.)
Mike
David H Thornley
> were interned. Those included enemy aliens of the
> following nationalities: German 10,905), Italian (3,278),
> Japanese (16,849), Hungarian (52) Romanian (26, )and
> Bulgarian (5).
>
citizens of enemy nations were allowed to stay along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts, where enemy action continued for
some time close to the shore, and where an enemy agent could
use signal lights or assist somebody being put ashore by
a U-boat, but not along the Pacific coast, which (IIRC) was
attacked by two submarines and some balloon bombs in the
course of the war.
> In addition, and also interned, were over 5,000 American-born
> Japanese who during the war formally renounced their U.S.
> citizenship and requested to be sent to Japan to join the
> Japanese war effort against the country of their birth.
>
Those should also clearly have been interned. No country has
any obligation to allow enemy aliens to go join their
national forces.
However, that doesn't account for most of the Japanese legal
residents and US citizens of Japanese descent which were shipped
off to prison camps. Internment is something of a red
herring here.
Internment of enemy aliens is reasonable. Imprisoning US
citizens due to their ethnicity was not.
> Here was the phony issue:
> The reason given by Congress for reparation payments to all
> persons of Japanese descent (and only Japanese descent)
> who were evacuated, relocated or interned during WWii was
To repeat, interning enemy aliens is reasonable, but
imprisoning US citizens on the grounds of their descent
was not. Reparation payments were in order.
> that the cause of such action was "racism, war hysteria, and a
> failure of political leadership"
Which, as far as I have been able to tell, it was. At the
time of the imprisonments, the war had stayed far west of
Hawaii, and no Japanese forces ever got east of Hawaii
except for a few submarines that accomplished nothing.
In December 1941, some panic was, perhaps, forgiveable,
but in Spring 1942 panic was clearly a failure of any
political or military leadership that was still in anything
resembling a state of panic.
The evacuations were purely on the basis of race, not
any other basis like US citizenship. If somebody in
a large exclusion zone was of Japanese descent, off to
the camps. If not, not. Actions conducted with the
explicit criterion of race are, prima facie, racist,
and I haven't seen any evidence to contradict that.
wjho...@aol.com
> ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> > In article
> > <ed05183e-8db8-4d42-89fc-99a0f4d58...@p13g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
> > wjhopw...@aol.com () wrote:
> > at the end of the war. No one of British nationality naturalised or not
> > was interned. Now can you say that all people of German and Italian
> > origin were interned along with the Japanese and no US citizens were
> > interned
Note: The above was not written by wjhopwood as is indicated above.
Probably just the usual sloppy editing by mfes we've come to expect.
> No. In fact, some non-naturalized (though not all) Germans and Italians
> were allowed to remain in "sensitive" areas.....
To which it should be added that there was no enemy action
involving Germany or Italy expected in the sensitive areas along
the Pacific coast which is apparently "sensiive area"referred to
above.
> No. In some cases (the Yokohama Specie Bank, eg) claims were settled
> for pennies on the dollar......
To be expected. As is common in comparable situations some
claims were probably submitted in amounts greater than the
amount of actual damages ,or had other deficiencies. These
would normally be reduced to a figure the government was
willing to approve. Those not satisfied with the government's
settlement offer could make an appeal o the U.S. Court of Claims.
Dissatisfied claimants who did not choose to appeal had little
cause to whine about receiving only "pennies on the dollar."
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 1, 6:24 pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> > ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> > > In article
> > > <ed05183e-8db8-4d42-89fc-99a0f4d58...@p13g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
> > > wjhopw...@aol.com () wrote:
> > > at the end of the war. No one of British nationality naturalised or not
> > > was interned. Now can you say that all people of German and Italian
> > > origin were interned along with the Japanese and no US citizens were
> > > interned
> Note: The above was not written by wjhopwood as is indicated above.
Nobody claimed it was; you are confused by simple attributions.
> Probably just the usual sloppy editing by mfes we've come to expect.
More likely, simply counting the number of ">" at the beginning of each
line is a skill which has escaped you.
We'll try to dumb this down for you.
> > No. In fact, some non-naturalized (though not all) Germans and Italians
> > were allowed to remain in "sensitive" areas.....
> To which it should be added that there was no enemy action
> involving Germany or Italy expected in the sensitive areas along
> the Pacific coast which is apparently "sensiive area"referred to
> above.
You are confused (again.) You have claimed that the US was at war with
Japan, hence it was only natural that the US lock up all those of Japanese
descent on the West Coast, whether they were American or not (about 2/3 of
them were.) How did it escape your notice that the US was also at war with
Italy and Germany at the time of the incarerations? Were newspapoers not
available to you at the time? Perhaps you found yourself in a situation
where you could not avail yourself of various electronic media, but it
seems reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the US populace was
aware that Italy and Germany and Japan had an alliance, and could be
expected to share information (did this not make Malik's book?) Thus,
an area, too "sensitive" for "enemy aliens" must surely have been too
sensitive for ANY enemy alien, regardless of color, yes?
In any event, you should probably take this up with the good people who
ran "Uno Secreto Storia". They will educate you on the number of WEST Coast
Italians who were rounded up (as well as some who escaped internment for
"political reason".)
> > No. In some cases (the Yokohama Specie Bank, eg) claims were settled
> > for pennies on the dollar......
> To be expected.
No, it really isn't. The US is normally not in the business of openly robbing
its own people.
> As is common in comparable situations some
> claims were probably submitted in amounts greater than the
> amount of actual damages ,or had other deficiencies. These
I'm certain you have this "probably" well documented.
We eagerly await.
> would normally be reduced to a figure the government was
> willing to approve.
Of course; similar compensation was granted (eg) the Indians.
> Those not satisfied with the government's
> settlement offer could make an appeal o the U.S. Court of Claims.
> Dissatisfied claimants who did not choose to appeal had little
> cause to whine about receiving only "pennies on the dollar."
Of course; after all, after having been marched off their land, and
given "3 square meals a day" (esp. in the delightful Owens Valley),
they could be assured their government would do right by them.
I do hope the words and concepts are simple enough for you, but at least
you won't have to deal with those confusing ">" symbols.
Mike
wjho...@aol.com
> wjhopw...@aol.com wrote:
> > were interned. Those included enemy aliens of the
> > following nationalities: German 10,905), Italian (3,278),
> > Japanese (16,849), Hungarian (52) Romanian (26, )and
> > Bulgarian (5).
>
> It is reasonable to intern enemy aliens.
If you think that was reasonable, do you also think it was
reasonable for the government, (some 4 decades later) to
apologize to and pay $20,000 to each of the Japanese
(and only the Japanese) who were interned during WWII.
What would you call that if not "racism."
> It is notable that citizens of enemy nations were allowed to
> stay along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, where enemy action
> continued for some time close to the shore... but not along
>the Pacific coast,
U-Boat activity was heavy for about 6 months and then
convoys were organized and the coastal threat was gradually
reduced. At no time was any enemy air activity or invasion
considered a threat. On the Pacific coast, however, such
enemy activity was considered a possibility following the
disaster at Pearl Harbor and well into the following year.
As to the reasons Germans and Italians were not evacuated
en masse there were many reasons. First to be considered was
logistics--the numbers involved. Then there was the matter of
assimilation. Most were widely assimilated into mainstream
America--the Japanese were not. Large numbers of persons
of German and Italian ancestry, were engaged in war defense
industries. And then there were the refugees from Axis
brutality in Europe. Next there was the economy. Just
coming out of the great depression and now at war, the economy
of the entire country would have been devastated had its residents
of German and italian ancestry been interned. As it was, however,
there were numerous restrictions applied to the Germans and
Italian resident aliens, but evacuation/relocation as with the
Japanese was considered out of the question. The Germans
and italians were handled on an individual basis because it
was the only practical way to do so.
> > In addition, and also interned, were over 5,000 American-born
> > Japanese who during the war formally renounced their U.S.
> > citizenship and requested to be sent to Japan to join the
> > Japanese war effort against the country of their birth.
>
> Those should also clearly have been interned. No country has
> any obligation to allow enemy aliens to go join their
> national forces.
> However, that doesn't account for most of the Japanese legal
> residents and US citizens of Japanese descent which were shipped
> off to prison camps. Internment is something of a red
> herring here.
No red herring. Evacuation and Internment were quite
different. Those evacuated and not interned first had an
option of moving voluntarily from the restricted
military areas. Approx 8000 managed to do so. But it soon
became apparent that most had no place to go. It was then that
it became necessary for the government to build, as quickly
as it could, the ten relocation centers to act as temporary
housing (not "prison camps"). That term is the real red herring here.
As i previously pointed out
approx one-third of the evacuees left the centers and,
with government assistance in finding jobs and schooling in
areas removed from the military zones from which they had
been evacuated. However, about 18,000 hard-core Japanese
loyalists had to be segregated and detained in a separate camp
for disloyals at Tule Lake, California.
> Internment of enemy aliens is reasonable. Imprisoning US
> citizens due to their ethnicity was not.
As i noted before, almost two-thirds of the evacuated ADULTS
were enemy aliens and most of the ADULT American-born were
dual citizens (Japanese and American). When the other half of
the "dual" was enemy alien citizenship, what would you have
considered them--American or Japanese?
>......Reparation payments were in order.
>
> > that the cause of such action was "racism, war hysteria, and a
> > failure of political leadership"
>
> Which, as far as I have been able to tell, it was.
You really don't know enough about this to make such
a judgement . From the gist of your comments it is
obvious that you have absorbed most of the political
hype which surrounded the redress issue. But that's
your prerogative. You have a right to be wrong but
should be willing to listen to the historical evidence
with an open mind.
> At the
> time of the imprisonments, the war had stayed far west of
> Hawaii, and no Japanese forces ever got east of Hawaii
> except for a few submarines that accomplished nothing.
> In December 1941, some panic was, perhaps, forgiveable,
> but in Spring 1942 panic was clearly a failure of any
> political or military leadership that was still in anything
> resembling a state of panic.
Did you witness any panic or weren't you born yet in
early 1942. There wasn't any panic then or througout.
the war. Believing that there was is having been duped
by those who quite possibly have had something to gain
by the redress and reparations movement and continually
try to justify that government giveaway by disseminating
such nonsense.
> The evacuations were purely on the basis of race, not
> any other basis like US citizenship. ...Actions conducted
> with the explicit criterion of race are, prima facie, racist,
> and I haven't seen any evidence to contradict that.
You apparently don't know the difference between race,
and national origin. We were at war with Japan, not with
the race of the Japanese. Other nations of basic racial
stock were allied with us in that war. Also, the loyalty
contradictions of dual citizenship as well as the
responsibilities of the military in wartime seem to be
unknown to you. Your comments seem to reflect a belief
that the war really didn't exist--that the Japanese evacuation
was produced and directed by some evil people who
must have been akin to the Ku Klux Klan.
Fortunately the Supreme Court of those days had a more
realistic view. Here is the Court's conclusion in the
Hirabayashi opinion:
" Whatever views we may entertain regarding the
loyalty to this country of the citizens of Japanese ancestry,
we cannot reject as unfounded the judgement
of the military authorities and of Congress that there were
disloyal members in the population, whose number and
strength could not be quickly ascertained. We cannot say
that the war making branches of the Government did not
have ground for believing that in a critical hour such persons
could not be readily isolated and separately dealt with, and
constituted a menace to the national defense and safety, which
demanded that prompt and adequate measures be taken to
guard against it." [quoted in "All the Laws but One--Civil Liberties
in Wartime" --by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
WJH
pbrom...@aol.com
> There you go again. Ignoring the facts. Those INTERNED first had
> hearings before enemy control boards and only after being charged
> were they interned. (Alien Enemy Act of 1798) Those were the
> ones you refer to as "incarcerated." Those in the relocation centers
> could ask to leave if they had somewhere to go, jobs or other means
> of support, and were cleared by military intelligence. As noted above
> almost all who wanted to leave did so. In fact, many of those who
> left asked to return. Life on the outside wasn't as easy as in at
> the
> centers with their schools, hospitals, 3 square meals a day,
> recreational
> facilities galore, you name it--they had it..
>
> WJH
So, according to you, only the hard cases at Tule Lake were actually
incarcerated?
What was the barbed wire for? Why were the armed guards in the towers
with their rifles pointed inward?
For what reason must an American citizen be cleared by military
intelligence before being allowed to travel to another part of the
country? Since when has an American citizen ever been required to
have a job lined up before being allowed by the government to settle
in a different part of the country?
You're damned right life on the outside wasn't easy. As my in-laws
say, "So you get outside the barbed wire and you make it through 100
miles of sage brush. You're still a Jap!"
The internment of American born citizens of Japanese ancestry was an
injustice. No matter how often you repeat your bullshit and paint the
internment camps as desirable places to live can you change that.
wjho...@aol.com
> wjhopw...@aol.com <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> > On May 1, 6:24 pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> > > ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> > > > In article
> > > > <ed05183e-8db8-4d42-89fc-99a0f4d58...@p13g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
> > > > wjhopw...@aol.com () wrote:
> > > > at the end of the war. No one of British nationality naturalised or
> > > > not was interned. Now can you say that all people of German a
> > > > and Italian origin were interned along with the Japanese and no
> > > > US citizens were interned
> > Note: The above was not written by wjhopwood as is indicated
> >above.
>
> Nobody claimed it was; you are confused by simple attributions.
The attribution is simply incorrect. Just sloppy editing.
> You have claimed that the US was at war with Japan, hence it was
> only natural that the US lock up all those of Japanese
Nope. "Locked up" (interned) were only those Japanese nationals
found to be security threats after individual hearings.
"The resident enemy alien is constitutionally subject to summary
arrest, internment, and deportation whenever 'a declared war
exists." Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S.763 (1950) as noted
in "All the Laws But One--Civil Liberties in Wartime" by the late
Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, (Chapter 16 note 5).
> whether they were American or not (about 2/3 of
> them were.)
But that does not consider the their ages. Close to two-thirds of the
ADULTS among the evacuees were Japanese nationals. And
most of those ADULTS who were American citizens (approx 28,000)
were also citizens of Japan. Certainly cause for loyalty concern.
>.......the US was also at war with Italy and Germany at the time....
> Were newspapoers not available to you at the time?.... it
> seems reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the US
> populace was aware that Italy and Germany and Japan had an
> alliance...., Thus, an area, too "sensitive" for "enemy aliens" must
> surely have been too sensitive for ANY enemy alien, regardless
> of color, yes?
As historian Arnold Krammer notes in his "Undue
Process--The Untold Story of America's German Alien Internees,"
"The Germans and Italians were widely assimilated, unlike the
Japanese...In 1940 1,237,000 of German birth lived in the U.S.,
the largest foreign-born ethic group except for the Italians....
(considering the children of the German-born) the number of
Germans in the country reached 5 million." Add to that number
the ethnic italians, and, as Krammer says: "For military authorities
any mass evacuation of Germans and Italians in the United States
would have been a disaster."
(Nonsense re U.S. robbing its own people deleted)
> > As is common in comparable situations some
> > claims were probably submitted in amounts greater than the
> > amount of actual damages ,or had other deficiencies...
>
> I'm certain you have this "probably" well documented.
> We eagerly await.
Of course. See "Personal Justice Denied." Full documentation
for most claims submitted did not exist.
WJH
ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk
<81c693a9-2099-4de5...@c41g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
> f you think that was reasonable, do you also think it was
> reasonable for the government, (some 4 decades later) to
> apologize to and pay $20,000 to each of the Japanese
> (and only the Japanese) who were interned during WWII.
> What would you call that if not "racism."
Well considering that the vast majority were not enemy Aliens yes. And
I consider that it took four decades and paltry payouts as evidence of
racism.
> U-Boat activity was heavy for about 6 months and then
> convoys were organized and the coastal threat was gradually
> reduced.
The Second Happy Time, the British would have been very happy if enemy
Aliens along the West Coast had been interned.
> At no time was any enemy air activity or invasion
> considered a threat. On the Pacific coast, however, such
> enemy activity was considered a possibility
So you are justifying stupidity and panic as an excuse for injustice.
If the Japanese had the logistics for an invasion on the Pacific coast
they would have done it at Pearl.
> And then there were the refugees from Axis
> brutality in Europe.
Did not stop the British interning every German and Italian in the UK.
Some were released later. Still there were not large numbers of
Anglo-German and Anglo-Italian voters in the UK. Just about all of those
were refugees.
> The Germans and italians were handled on an individual basis because >
it was the only practical way to do so.
Why was it not possible to handle the far smaller number of Japanese on
the same basis?
Ken Young
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 2, 12:50 am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> > wjhopw...@aol.com <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> > > On May 1, 6:24 pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> > > > ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> > > > > In article
> > > > > <ed05183e-8db8-4d42-89fc-99a0f4d58...@p13g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
> > > > > wjhopw...@aol.com () wrote:
> > > > > at the end of the war. No one of British nationality naturalised or
> > > > > not was interned. Now can you say that all people of German a
> > > > > and Italian origin were interned along with the Japanese and no
> > > > > US citizens were interned
> > > Note: The above was not written by wjhopwood as is indicated
> > >above.
> >
> > Nobody claimed it was; you are confused by simple attributions.
> The attribution is simply incorrect.
Nope; the "> " are added automatically. Standard usenet practice.
> Just sloppy editing.
No, simply not confused by standard usenet practices.
> > You have claimed that the US was at war with Japan, hence it was
> > only natural that the US lock up all those of Japanese
> Nope. "Locked up" (interned) were only those Japanese nationals
> found to be security threats after individual hearings.
Wrong again. Manzanaar was a prison camp, wherein US citizens, including
adults and children, as well as legal permanent residents of the US
were locked up, behind barbed wire and armed guard.
Again, your delicate sensibilities seem to be unable to handle what was
known at the time;
Harold Ickes: "we gave the fancy name of 'relocation center' to these
dust bowls, but they were concentration camps."
> > whether they were American or not (about 2/3 of
> > them were.)
> But that does not consider the their ages. Close to two-thirds of the
The US did not consider their ages. The US did not consider their
citizenship. The US only considered them to be of the Japanese race,
and therefor unreliable. As do you.
> most of those ADULTS who were American citizens (approx 28,000)
> were also citizens of Japan. Certainly cause for loyalty concern.
Apparently not; Italian NATIONALS were able to stay in areas forbidden
Americans of Japanese descent. German NATIONALS were serving in Italy
with the US Army. Yet those of Japanese descent, serving in the US
Army, were discharged, to be interned.
> As historian Arnold Krammer notes in his "Undue
> Process--The Untold Story of America's German Alien Internees,"
> "The Germans and Italians were widely assimilated, unlike the
> Japanese
Right; they could naturalize, while the Japanese could not, except
by serving in WWI. Also, they could legally own land in all states,
while Issei could not.
So, yeah, by law, the Germans (and Italians) were "more assimilated".
But even full Italian citizenship didn't necessarily buy you a trip
to a concentration camp. Japanese descent did.
> the ethnic italians, and, as Krammer says: "For military authorities
> any mass evacuation of Germans and Italians in the United States
> would have been a disaster."
Oh, my goodness; you're saying the US couldn't do it because it might
be "hard"?????
> (Nonsense re U.S. robbing its own people deleted)
Well, in this case "its own people" referred to those of Japanese
descent.
So, of course, it is inconsequential to you.
> > > As is common in comparable situations some
> > > claims were probably submitted in amounts greater than the
> > > amount of actual damages ,or had other deficiencies...
> >
> > I'm certain you have this "probably" well documented.
> > We eagerly await.
> Of course. See "Personal Justice Denied." Full documentation
> for most claims submitted did not exist.
Please provide it for us; we cannot take your word, as it seems simple
usenet attributions cause you undue confustion.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> wjhopw...@aol.com wrote:
> > > were interned. Those included enemy aliens of the
> > > following nationalities: German 10,905), Italian (3,278),
> > > Japanese (16,849), Hungarian (52) Romanian (26, )and
> > > Bulgarian (5).
> >
> > It is reasonable to intern enemy aliens.
>
> If you think that was reasonable, do you also think it was
> reasonable for the government, (some 4 decades later) to
> apologize to and pay $20,000 to each of the Japanese
> (and only the Japanese) who were interned during WWII.
> What would you call that if not "racism."
You continue to be quite racist here, Mr Hopwood. In fact, AMERICANS
(not "only the Japanese") also received some form of compensation.
However, this is nothing more than an acknowledgement that the initial
action was racist, Mr Hopwood. And this was spelled out in the reparations
act.
> > It is notable that citizens of enemy nations were allowed to
> > stay along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, where enemy action
> > continued for some time close to the shore... but not along
> >the Pacific coast,
> U-Boat activity was heavy for about 6 months and then
> convoys were organized and the coastal threat was gradually
> reduced. At no time was any enemy air activity or invasion
> considered a threat. On the Pacific coast, however, such
> enemy activity was considered a possibility following the
> disaster at Pearl Harbor and well into the following year.
In May, 1942 ("well into the following year") the IJN suffered
a crippling defeat at Midway. No enemy invasion was considered
a threat after that (nor before, really.)
OTOH, German U-boats sunk over 300 ships in US coastal waters
from February to May, 1942. That's quite a threat. They
operated on the East Coast for quite a bit after that; indeed,
after the surrender, seven U-boats surrendered in Portsmouth.
On May 5, 1945, the U-853 torpedoed and sank a ship off Newport,
Rhode Island.
U-boats patrolled the Gulf Coast from 1942 - 1943; the last
ship sunk by a U-boat in that area was in December, 1943, 2
years after Pearl Harbor. Only one U-boat was sunk in
that area.
http://www.wintertexansonline.com/uboats.htm
There's a map of confirmed U-boat sinkings off the US coast at
http://uboat.net/maps/us_east_coast.htm
As you can see, these continued until 1945.
In June 1942 (after Midway) 8 German commandos were put ashore
in Florida. In 1944, another team was put ashore in Maine. Several
more were put ashore in Canada throughout the war.
No, Mr Hopwood, the German threat was much greater; yet you
seem to focus on the Pacific coast non-threat. They Japanese?
They sunk about 10 vessels between Pearl Harbor and October, 1942.
So, you are dead wrong, again. The Germans were a threat throughout
the war, yet for some odd reason, not all the Germans and German-Americnas
were rounded up from the East Coast or Gulf Coast. Care to try again?
> As to the reasons Germans and Italians were not evacuated
> en masse there were many reasons. First to be considered was
> logistics--the numbers involved.
Of course; the group with the most non-citizen aliens should be
considered the biggest threat.
> Then there was the matter of
> assimilation. Most were widely assimilated into mainstream
> America--the Japanese were not. Large numbers of persons
> of German and Italian ancestry, were engaged in war defense
> industries.
The ideal position for a spy.
> And then there were the refugees from Axis
> brutality in Europe. Next there was the economy. Just
> coming out of the great depression and now at war, the economy
> of the entire country would have been devastated had its residents
> of German and italian ancestry been interned. As it was, however,
So, it would have been "hard" to take the "absolutely necessary"
precautions? Unless they weren't white, of course.
> there were numerous restrictions applied to the Germans and
> Italian resident aliens, but evacuation/relocation as with the
> Japanese was considered out of the question. The Germans
> and italians were handled on an individual basis because it
> was the only practical way to do so.
So, let's get this straight; it was "practical" to handle a million
Germans and Italians (either enemy aliens, or US citizens) but
impractical to handle a much SMALLER number of "Japanese" on an
individual basis.
You have no idea how stupid that sounds, do you? You really are the
single best refutation of your own position.
> > > In addition, and also interned, were over 5,000 American-born
> > > Japanese who during the war formally renounced their U.S.
> > > citizenship and requested to be sent to Japan to join the
> > > Japanese war effort against the country of their birth.
> > Those should also clearly have been interned. No country has
> > any obligation to allow enemy aliens to go join their
> > national forces.
> > However, that doesn't account for most of the Japanese legal
> > residents and US citizens of Japanese descent which were shipped
> > off to prison camps. Internment is something of a red
> > herring here.
> No red herring. Evacuation and Internment were quite
> different.
No, they weren't. They were removed by force, marched off to camps,
by force, and remained under armed guard, your politically correct
euphemisms notwithstanding.
Behind barbed wire, surrounded by armed guards, etc.
> Those evacuated and not interned first had an
> option of moving voluntarily from the restricted
> military areas. Approx 8000 managed to do so. But it soon
> became apparent that most had no place to go. It was then that
Well, there was, you know, home.
> it became necessary for the government to build, as quickly
> as it could, the ten relocation centers to act as temporary
> housing (not "prison camps"). That term is the real red herring here.
Harold Ickes: "we gave the fancy name of 'relocation center' to these
dust bowls, but they were concentration camps."
No, Mr Hopwood, your misuse of language is a "red herring".
> > Internment of enemy aliens is reasonable. Imprisoning US
> > citizens due to their ethnicity was not.
>
> As i noted before, almost two-thirds of the evacuated ADULTS
As noted before, 2/3 of those locked up were Americans.
But they weren't white, so you don't care. In fact, you simply call
them all Japanese, not American.
> were enemy aliens and most of the ADULT American-born were
> dual citizens (Japanese and American). When the other half of
> the "dual" was enemy alien citizenship, what would you have
> considered them--American or Japanese?
By US law, they are American. US law applies to ALL US citizens.
To think otherwise is racist.
> >......Reparation payments were in order.
> >
> > > that the cause of such action was "racism, war hysteria, and a
> > > failure of political leadership"
> > Which, as far as I have been able to tell, it was.
> You really don't know enough about this to make such
> a judgement.
He has studied it more than you, it appears.
"As early as 1946, Harold Ickes, President Roosevelt's own Secretary
of the Interior, characterized the mass detention of Japanese-Americans
as "mass hysteria over the Japanese";
It doesn't seem you know much about ANY of the people involved in the
decision.
> From the gist of your comments it is
> obvious that you have absorbed most of the political
> hype which surrounded the redress issue.
Did Ickes absorb that same political hype in 1946?
Again, do you have any idea how stupid you sound?
> your prerogative. You have a right to be wrong but
> should be willing to listen to the historical evidence
> with an open mind.
You seem to obligate yourself to being in the wrong. Penance
for something?
> > time of the imprisonments, the war had stayed far west of
> > Hawaii, and no Japanese forces ever got east of Hawaii
> > except for a few submarines that accomplished nothing.
> > In December 1941, some panic was, perhaps, forgiveable,
> > but in Spring 1942 panic was clearly a failure of any
> > political or military leadership that was still in anything
> > resembling a state of panic.
> Did you witness any panic or weren't you born yet in
> early 1942. There wasn't any panic then or througout.
Oddly, J Edgar Hoover disagrees with you, and noted that
the US military intelligence was "panicing" over various
incidents on the West Coast.
Were you not yet born at that time? Oh, wait, you were claiming there
was a real Japanese threat to the West coast quite a while after
Pearl Harbor; it seems that even today, you foster a panic.
> > The evacuations were purely on the basis of race, not
> > any other basis like US citizenship. ...Actions conducted
> > with the explicit criterion of race are, prima facie, racist,
> > and I haven't seen any evidence to contradict that.
> You apparently don't know the difference between race,
> and national origin. We were at war with Japan, not with
> the race of the Japanese.
You are your own worst witness, Mr Hopwood. You claim that all
those of Japanese descent were untrustworthy, and that dual
citizens (if non-white) must be considered "Japanese". By any
definitions, you are lumping them together by race; your arguments
are against a race, not against a nation.
You are, ergo, racist.
> Other nations of basic racial
> stock were allied with us in that war. Also, the loyalty
> contradictions of dual citizenship as well as the
So why weren't all Italian and German dual nationals interned?
In any event, immediately after Pearl Harbor, some of those who were
dual citizens renounced their Japanese citizenship. Others had never
been Japanese citizens. But, as you demonstrate, "Japaneseness" is
a genetic trait, not a matter of citizenship, and so they were all
marched off to concentration camps.
Mike
David H Thornley
> If you think that was reasonable, do you also think it was
> reasonable for the government, (some 4 decades later) to
> apologize to and pay $20,000 to each of the Japanese
> (and only the Japanese) who were interned during WWII.
> What would you call that if not "racism."
>
in accordance with the international law of the time, I
would presume.
You seem to be confusing internment with being peremptorily
shipped to the middle of the desert and held in barbed-wire
camps. I can see where the confusion could arise, but
legally those are two different things.
> U-Boat activity was heavy for about 6 months and then
> convoys were organized and the coastal threat was gradually
> reduced.
Entirely correct.
However, anything after May 3 is irrelevant to the decision,
and the U-boats were still making a lot of trouble as of May.
At no time was any enemy air activity or invasion
> considered a threat. On the Pacific coast, however, such
> enemy activity was considered a possibility following the
> disaster at Pearl Harbor and well into the following year.
>
To which I can only wonder why. Pearl Harbor had been a
shock, but after that one raid the Japanese operated in
the western Pacific and Indian Oceans, never coming close
to Hawaii, let alone California, after that. The Pearl
Harbor raid showed that the Japanese were capable of more
than we thought, but doing anything would require going
about two thousand nautical miles further.
> Japanese was considered out of the question. The Germans
> and italians were handled on an individual basis because it
> was the only practical way to do so.
>
Since there were millions of them it was practical to
handle them on an individual basis, while since there
were a bit over a hundred thousand individuals of
Japanese descent moved, it was not possible to deal with
them individually.
Right.
> No red herring. Evacuation and Internment were quite
> different.
Right. One was forced evacuation to hastily built facilities
where escape was prevented by barbed wire and machine guns,
and so was the other.
>> Internment of enemy aliens is reasonable. Imprisoning US
>> citizens due to their ethnicity was not.
>
> As i noted before, almost two-thirds of the evacuated ADULTS
> were enemy aliens and most of the ADULT American-born were
> dual citizens (Japanese and American).
However, those were not the only ones forcibly moved. The order
applied to all people of Japanese descent, which included
a small number of adult US (not dual) citizens.
Meaning that we imprisoned US citizens due to their ethnicity.
Not their citizenship, not any other factor.
>>> that the cause of such action was "racism, war hysteria, and a
>>> failure of political leadership"
>> Which, as far as I have been able to tell, it was.
>
> You really don't know enough about this to make such
> a judgement .
Got anything to back that up?
From the gist of your comments it is
> obvious that you have absorbed most of the political
> hype which surrounded the redress issue.
Your telepathy may be out of order.
But that's
> your prerogative. You have a right to be wrong but
> should be willing to listen to the historical evidence
> with an open mind.
>
Sure. Present some.
So far, you've argued that US citizens were not forced
from their homes due to ethnicity, when the order was for
all persons of Japanese descent, and this included adult
US citizens that were not also Japanese citizens. What
historical evidence are you using?
> Did you witness any panic or weren't you born yet in
> early 1942. There wasn't any panic then or througout.
Okay, then they were blithering idiots. A certain amount
of panic and doubt might be forgiveable for a month or so,
but anybody who knew what had been happening and by Spring
thought the Japanese had any likelihood of operating on the
US West Coast was either hysterical or an idiot.
> the war. Believing that there was is having been duped
No, believing there was is taking the kindest possible
interpretation of US military authorities.
There was, as of Spring 1942, no evidence that the Japanese
could operate off the West Coast nearly as effectively as
the Germans were operating off the East and Gulf Coasts.
Therefore, we have unpanicked people who didn't care about
the actual war zone and were afraid of the Japanese.
What does that say about them?
>> The evacuations were purely on the basis of race, not
>> any other basis like US citizenship. ...Actions conducted
>> with the explicit criterion of race are, prima facie, racist,
>> and I haven't seen any evidence to contradict that.
>
> You apparently don't know the difference between race,
> and national origin.
Now who's using modern sensibilities? "Race" was not used
strictly to mean the Oriental/Negroid/Caucasian distinction.
There were plenty of people at the time who referred to the
German race and Japanese race.
We were at war with Japan, not with
> the race of the Japanese.
I can find you some genocidal quotes, if you like.
> stock were allied with us in that war. Also, the loyalty
> contradictions of dual citizenship as well as the
> responsibilities of the military in wartime seem to be
> unknown to you.
Just as the fact that there were some adult US citizens
who were swept up with the rest seems to elude you whenever
you talk about the reasons.
If Japanese or dual citizenship had been the problem, there
would have been some people of Japanese descent left behind.
Not many, but a few.
It would seem that the forced relocation had nothing to do
with citizenship.
Your comments seem to reflect a belief
> that the war really didn't exist
Actually, they reflect a belief that there are effective
ways to fight a war, and stupid and counterproductive ways
to fight a war. The evacuation was a stupid one. It took
resources and removed a good many productive citizens and
residents from the war effort. That's in addition to its
moral failings.
> Fortunately the Supreme Court of those days had a more
> realistic view.
The Supreme Court has been known to issue bad rulings,
sometimes corrected a long time later, and has also been
known to be overly influenced by politics.
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> Here was the phony issue:
> The reason given by Congress for reparation payments to all
> persons of Japanese descent (and only Japanese descent)
"American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of
the other enemy nationalities -- Germans and Italians -- on a selective
basis, but as untouchables, a group who could not be trusted and had to
be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent..."
~ Francis Biddle, Attorney General, Postwar memoirs
> who were evacuated, relocated or interned during WWii was
> that the cause of such action was "racism, war hysteria, and a
> failure of political leadership"
"As early as 1946, Harold Ickes, President Roosevelt's own Secretary
of the Interior, characterized the mass detention of Japanese-Americans
as "mass hysteria over the Japanese".
But what would Ickes know? Afterall, he was only involved in the
decision-making process.
> That conclusion was never based on fact, nor could it have
> been. Only on ideology. The staff and direction of
You and Bayman seem to believe that nonsense repeated becomes truth;
it does not.
Really, your revisionism is becoming rather boring.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> > Fortunately the Supreme Court of those days had a more
> > realistic view.
> The Supreme Court has been known to issue bad rulings,
> sometimes corrected a long time later, and has also been
> known to be overly influenced by politics.
"I have made a lot of mistakes in my life... One is my part in the
evacuation of the Japanese from California in 1942... I don't think
that served any purpose at all... We picked them up and put them in
concentration camps. That's the truth of the matter. And as I look back
on it -- although at the time I argued the case -- I am amazed that the
Supreme Court ever approved it."
~ Tom Clark, After retiring as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 1966
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On Apr 30, 1:17 am, mtfes wrote:
> > wjhopw...@aol.com <wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Apr 29, 9:18 am, Alan Nordin wrote:
> > > >.... In and of itself, the word "revisionism" is neither
> > > > bad nor good....
> > > >And in some cases, it is more accurate than what is...,
> > > > in others it isn't.
> > > But in the negative sense it is much more than just
> > > departing from something "generally accepted" if the
> > > departure is couched in ideological distortions of fact
> > > in order to twist the historical record so as to justify
> > > an action such as granting redress and reparations
> > > for reasons of their race to only one group of enemy
> > > aliens interned according to long-standing law,
> > > while totallly ignoring other enemy aliens who were
> > > identically situated but were of the wrong race.
> >
> > An incredibly (and unnecessarily) convoluted sentence.
> Too convoluted for you? It shouldn't be.
It isn't; just unnecessarily long and convoluted.
> > In fact, Mr Hopwood, as you have been told...
> (Without substantiation and most often by you, Mr, Fester)
Wait, you don't AGREE that US citizens were locked up?
> >(that) ..... they (those Issei/nisei).were incarcerated because
> of race, regardless of citizenship.
> Wrong. There were no U.S. citizens Interned and those who
Wow. You have argued that they were, when they presented some sort of
security threat.
Even for you, that's bizarre.
> were interned in DOJ camps were the only ones "incarcerated"
> in the accepted meaning of the word. We should point out
> that over 5,000 FORMER U.S. citizens of Japanese descent
> were interned
Actually, they were interned before that.
If your whole argument is based on politically correct semantics, it
really isn't much of a case...
> > ...."enemy aliens" who had chosen not to naturalize were allowed
> > to live in the same "sensitive" areas from which those nasty,
> Germans and Italians, who were in such logistically large numbers
> that they could only be evaluated on an individual basis. Many
Are you and Bayman related?
So, it was too difficult to deal with millions of people of German and
Italian descent as a group, so they had to be handled individually. OTOH,
it was too difficult to deal with 110,000 people of Japanese individually,
so they had to be handled as a group.
> and there was little in the way of adverse national security evidence
> against them, unlike the Japanese of whom there was an abundance
> of such evidence which caused considerable military concern.
Actually, very little evidence; sufficiently little that JE Hoover
thought he had a good handle on the whole situation, and that you cannot
provide any MAGIC intercepts showing the existence of agents not taken
care of by the time the internments occurred.
> > You'd make a good birther.
> A suggestion: in the interest of the credibility of this forum, It
Seriously, you are not really one to discuss what is and is not credible
on this forum, Mr Hopwood.
Mike
wjho...@aol.com
> > reasonable for the government, (some 4 decades later) to
> > apologize to and pay $20,000 to each of the Japanese
> > (and only the Japanese) who were interned during WWII.
> > What would you call that if not "racism."
>
> Well considering that the vast majority were not enemy Aliens
> yes. And I consider that it took four decades and paltry payouts
> as evidence of racism.
You should really refrain from commenting on things you
know so little about. Evacuation was not "internent" and
internment was not "evacuation." You must have missed
it but in a prior post I made it clear that U.S. citizens were
NOT "interned." Only enemy aliens were interned.
So, when you say, as you do above, that "the vast majority
of U.S. internees were not enemy aliens you are wrong.
The U.S. internees were ALL enemy aliens.
Your conclusion that the Japanese enemy aliens in the U.S.
were interned because of their "race" thus follows from
your misunderstanding of this issue.
> Did not stop the British interning every German and Italian in the UK.
> Some were released later.
I'm curious. in the UK they must have interned
some Japanese as well as Germans and Italians. After the
war did they decide to pay enemy aliens anything for being
interned? If they did, did they pay all enemy aliens equally,
regardless of their race or nationality? Or, as in the US, did
they pay only the Japanese internees just because of their
race while the Germans, Italians, and other Axis enemy
aliens got nothing?
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 4, 12:33 pm, ken...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> > wjhopw...@aol.com () wrote:
> > >...... do you also think it was
> > > reasonable for the government, (some 4 decades later) to
> > > apologize to and pay $20,000 to each of the Japanese
> > > (and only the Japanese) who were interned during WWII.
> > > What would you call that if not "racism."
> >
> > Well considering that the vast majority were not enemy Aliens
> > yes. And I consider that it took four decades and paltry payouts
> > as evidence of racism.
> You should really refrain from commenting on things you
> know so little about.
I don't recall that even slowing you up; didn't you claim _Downfall_ was
written some 30 years before Alperovitz' works?
> Evacuation was not "internent" and
> internment was not "evacuation." You must have missed
> it but in a prior post I made it clear that U.S. citizens were
> NOT "interned." Only enemy aliens were interned.
He may have missed a post where you made that statement, but saying
you made that "clear" is generous. In all cases, the people in question
were marched off to concentration camps, under armed guard, put behind
barbed wire, and told not to leave.
This, regardless of whether they were citizens or not.
> So, when you say, as you do above, that "the vast majority
> of U.S. internees were not enemy aliens you are wrong.
I suppose some are not so willing to accomodate your delicate
insensibilites in this case.
> Your conclusion that the Japanese enemy aliens in the U.S.
> were interned because of their "race" thus follows from
> your misunderstanding of this issue.
Speaking of misunderstanding, can you explain
1) How you claim we were at war with the nation of Japan, not the race of
Japanese, use that statement as a reason to lock up ALL those of Japanese
descent (regardless of citizenship) yet not see that as de facto racist
2) How you can claim a "potential" threat of the IJN on the West Coast
justifies locking up all those nasty ol' "Japanese", yet a very REAL
Kriegsmarine threat throughout the war on the East and Gulf coasts
would justify no such thing being done to the "Germans"
3) How it is that there were too many "Germans" and "Italians" to deal
with as a group, so they could only be sorted individually, but it
would have been difficult to deal with the far smaller number of
"Japanese" individually, so they had to be treated en mass?
Perhaps your problems in convincing people of your position are related
to your non-standard use of English and logic in statements like the
above.
> > Did not stop the British interning every German and Italian in the UK.
> > Some were released later.
> I'm curious. in the UK they must have interned
> some Japanese as well as Germans and Italians. After the
> war did they decide to pay enemy aliens anything for being
> interned? If they did, did they pay all enemy aliens equally,
Likely not; they didn't lock up their own citizens of Japanese descent,
did they?
Mike
Rich Rostrom
> Likely not; they didn't lock up their own citizens of
> Japanese descent, did they?
I don't think there was a significant number of
Japanese-Britons - maybe a few dozen.
However, there were 23,000 Japanese-Canadians,
nearly all in British Columbia.
As in the U.S., there was considerable racial
animosity toward them, and 22,000 were
interned in 1941-1942.
In 1988, the Canadian government apologized
and paid compensation of $21,000 to each
surviving internee.
Alan Nordin
> I don't think there was a significant number of
> Japanese-Britons - maybe a few dozen.
I'm surprised at this, I always thought London was the greatest
melting pot in the world. I would've expected at least a few hundred
in London, not many more elsewhere maybe. Still, in comparison, very
few.
Alan
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 6, 9:58 am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> However, there were 23,000 Japanese-Canadians,
> nearly all in British Columbia.
> As in the U.S., there was considerable racial
> animosity toward them, and 22,000 were
> interned in 1941-1942.
I vaguely recall that they weren't allowed back to the West Coast until
well after the war...
Mike
wjho...@aol.com
>
> ....... didn't you claim _Downfall_ was written some 30 years
> before Alperovitz' works?
No, as you well know. That was according to Amazon.com
to which I attributed it.
> > Evacuation was not "internent" and
> > internment was not "evacuation." You must have missed
> > it but in a prior post I made it clear that U.S. citizens were
> > NOT "interned." Only enemy aliens were interned.
>
> .....In all cases, the people in question were marched off to
> concentration camps, under armed guard, put behind
> barbed wire, and told not to leave.
You know better than that. As for the
"marching off to concentration camps" here's what one
enemy alien who was evacuated but not interned,
had to say about the relocation centers: Kiyoaki Murata
arrived at the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona via the
Santa Fe RR. He hadn't been "marched" anywhere::
"The camp was not the prison I had expected it to be. I
have since heard accounts of camps with high barbed wire
fences and rifle-bearing MPs threatening to shoot any evacuee
attempting to escape....Poston was not at all like this. At first
there was a token stretch of barbed wire fence around the
camp but it was gone in a few months. And I did see one
helmeted MP by a guard post...I even sauntered out into the
mesquite woods without his showing any sign of disapproval.
Within a few days, he was no longer to be seen....As far as I
could see, all the...residents of...Poston soon found their new
life more or less satisfactory under the circumstances." From
"An Enemy Among Friends," Kiyoaki Murata
> 1) How you claim we were at war with the nation of Japan, not the race
> of Japanese, use that statement as a reason to lock up ALL those of
> Japanese descent (regardless of citizenship) yet not see that as de facto racist
(a) Because when a de facto state of war exists with a nation, all
citizens of that nation living in the U.S. become enemy aliens
subject
to arrest and detention in accordance with U.S. and international
law.
Why would that be "racist" just because the enemy nation happened
to be Japan? On the contrary, it is "racist" in itself to even so
consider.
(b) As for the case of U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage, so many
being dual citizens large numbers of whom had been revealed
by military intelligence as being disloyal to the U.S., that FDR
was obliged to issue Executive Order 9066 authorizing both
aliens and U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry to be removed from
certain military areas. Not only was the EO approved by Congress,
but about 100% of the public, and confirmed as Constitutional by the
Supreme Court. That's an awful number of "racists," isn't it?
> 2) How you can claim a "potential" threat of the IJN on the West Coast
> justifies locking up all those nasty ol' "Japanese", yet a very REAL
> Kriegsmarine threat throughout the war on the East and Gulf coasts
> would justify no such thing being done to the "Germans"
There were other West Cpast threats than the one to which you refer,
fifth column activity being a principal one. However, it was
primarily a
matter of logistics. .Because in the one case (the Japanese) an
evacuation could be physically accomplished and in the other case
(Germans and Italians) an evacuation could not be physically
accomplished. it is romantic nonsense to contend that if both cannot
be done neither should be done.
> 3) How it is that there were too many "Germans" and "Italians" to deal
> with as a group, so they could only be sorted individually, but it
> would have been difficult to deal with the far smaller number of
> "Japanese" individually, so they had to be treated en mass?
See answer to #2 above.
WJH
wjho...@aol.com
> Japanese-Britons - maybe a few dozen.
According to my understanding, in Singapore the
British evauated all persons of Japanese ancestry
and sent them to India. Also that all Japanese
in Fiji were sent to New Zealand for internment
Mexico evacuated all Japanese from Baja California
and away from coastal areas elsewhere in Mexico.
Additionally, 16 South American nations interned
over 8000 Axis nationals which included several
thousand Japanese.
> However, there were 23,000 Japanese-Canadians,
> nearly all in British Columbia.
Unlike the U.S., however, I don't believe they were
allowed back to the West Coast of Canada until
four years after the war ended. Also that Canada
encouraged them to remain in Eastern Canada or
go home to Japan, which some 4000 apparently did.
> As in the U.S., there was considerable racial
> animosity toward them, and 22,000 were
> interned in 1941-1942.
The animosity was not because of their race but
because of their national origin. In the U.S. for instance,
there was not any significant animosity to Asian people
from other Asian countries (Chinese, Filipino) and I dare
say the same in Canada.
> In 1988, the Canadian government apologized
> and paid compensation of $21,000 to each
> surviving internee.
How many, I wonder, who were paid such sums
had been enemy aliens when interned? Did
Canada pay only relocated persons of Japanese
ancestry or did they also pay enemy alien
Canadians who had been actually "interned?"
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 6, 10:58 am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> >
> > ....... didn't you claim _Downfall_ was written some 30 years
> > before Alperovitz' works?
> No, as you well know.
"Judging from the synopsis of the book available on
Amazon, it was was written some 30 years ago before
the revisionists such as Gar Alperovitz and his
fellow-travelers captured the imagination of the media."
How many Hopwoods are using your account?
> That was according to Amazon.com to which I attributed it.
I'm sure it would have been a lot of effort to have done even a
cursory lookup on the work.
> > > Evacuation was not "internent" and
> > > internment was not "evacuation." You must have missed
> > > it but in a prior post I made it clear that U.S. citizens were
> > > NOT "interned." Only enemy aliens were interned.
> >
> > .....In all cases, the people in question were marched off to
> > concentration camps, under armed guard, put behind
> > barbed wire, and told not to leave.
> You know better than that. As for the
I know better than to take your word for anything;
> "marching off to concentration camps" here's what one
"...My friends in the War Relocation Authority, like Secretary Ickes,
are deeply distressed over the effects of the entire evacuation and
relocation program upon the Japanese-Americans, particularly upon the
young citizen group. Persons in this group find themselves living in an
atmosphere for which their public school and democratic teachings have
not prepared them. It is hard for them to escape a conviction that their
plight is due more to racial discrimination, economic motivations, and
wartime prejudices than to any real necessity from the military point
of view for evacuation from the West Coast. Life in a relocation center
cannot possibly be pleasant. The evacuees are surrounded by barbed wire
fences under the eyes of armed military police. ..."
~ Milton S. Eisenhower, National Director of the WRA. To Roosevelt, April
22, 1943
Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of Interior
To Roosevelt, April 13, 1943:
"Information that has come to me from several sources is to the effect
that the situation in at least some of the Japanese internment camps
is bad and is becoming worse rapidly. Native-born Japanese who first
accepted with philosophical understanding the decision of their Government
to round up and take far inland all of the Japanese along the Pacific
Coast, regardless of their degree of loyalty, have pretty generally
been disappointed with the treatment that they have been accorded. Even
the minimum plans that had been formulated and announced with respect
to them have been disregarded in large measure, or, at least, have not
been carried out. The result has been the gradual turning of thousands of
well-meaning and loyal Japanese into angry prisoners. I do not think that
we can disregard, as of no official concern, the unnecessary creating of
a hostile group right in our own territory consisting of people who are
engendering a bitterness and hostility that bodes no good for the future."
> > 1) How you claim we were at war with the nation of Japan, not the race
> > of Japanese, use that statement as a reason to lock up ALL those of
> > Japanese descent (regardless of citizenship) yet not see that as de facto racist
> (a) Because when a de facto state of war exists with a nation, all
> citizens of that nation living in the U.S. become enemy aliens
> subject
> to arrest and detention in accordance with U.S. and international
> law.
And yet they marched off US citizens.
If not for race, then why?
> Why would that be "racist" just because the enemy nation happened
> to be Japan? On the contrary, it is "racist" in itself to even so
> consider.
So, a person of Japanese descent cannot be a US citizen?
That's de facto racism on you part, Mr Hopwood.
> (b) As for the case of U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage, so many
> being dual citizens
Which makes them subject to the requirements of the US government, and
entitled to the protections of citizenship.
After all, the white dual citizens were not marched off en mass, were they?
> large numbers of whom had been revealed
You tend be less specific the weaker your arguments become; give us
some numbers. You claim there were "few" US citizens, but somehow "large
numbers" of these "few" are disloyal.
We're going to have to call these things "Hopwoodisms".
> by military intelligence as being disloyal to the U.S., that FDR
No, not really; a few, and Hoover and Ringle claimed to have a good
handle on those.
But then, they were actually investigating the matter.
> was obliged to issue Executive Order 9066 authorizing both
> aliens and U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry to be removed from
> certain military areas. Not only was the EO approved by Congress,
> but about 100% of the public,
"100% of the public"? Hmm...
> and confirmed as Constitutional by the
> Supreme Court. That's an awful number of "racists," isn't it?
Yes; are you unaware of the times in which you claimed to have lived?
How very, very odd; were you unaware of the de jure racial segregation in
parts of the country?
Seriously, how old are you, and have you even ONCE read anything about the
US prior to the civil rights movement?
> > 2) How you can claim a "potential" threat of the IJN on the West Coast
> > justifies locking up all those nasty ol' "Japanese", yet a very REAL
> > Kriegsmarine threat throughout the war on the East and Gulf coasts
> > would justify no such thing being done to the "Germans"
> There were other West Cpast threats than the one to which you refer,
> fifth column activity being a principal one. However, it was
There was no fifth column activity there. However, you made a claim that
there was a "threat" from the Japanese on the West Coast, while you ignored
the much greater (and real) destruction wrought on the East Coast, which
lasted until May 1945. Yet, you were adamant that the threat was from
Japan, not a fifth column previously.
Now, you're trying to change your argument again...
VERY dishonest, Mr Hopwood.
> primarily a matter of logistics.
Ah, yes; it's easier to lock 'em up if they're of the Japanese race,
regardless of whether they were citizens or not. Oh, and of course,
the "minor children" of whom you are fond of saying must be kept with
their parents. What about those orphans of Japanese descent? They were,
by law, US citizens. There was no feeble excuse about "keeping families
together" in that case, was there? Yet
Father Hugh T. Lavery of the Catholic Maryknoll Center in Los Angeles,
"I mentioned that we had an orphanage with children of Japanese ancestry,
and that some of these children were half Japanese, others one-fourth
or less. I asked which children should we send... Bendetsen said:
"I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them,
they must go to camp."
Clearly, MAGIC intercepts must have indicated a threat from these 1/4
"Japanese" children, and it was MUCH easier, logistically, to march 'em
off to concentration camps than to leave them in the orphanage, yes,
Mr Hopwood?
> Because in the one case (the Japanese) an
> evacuation could be physically accomplished and in the other case
> (Germans and Italians) an evacuation could not be physically
> accomplished. it is romantic nonsense to contend that if both cannot
> be done neither should be done.
It is the sign of a particularly weak argument to refute statements not
made. However, now that you mention it, neither a mass evacuation of German-
or Japanese-Americans should have been undertaken. Children should not have
been removed from their orphanages to be sent to concentration camps.
Are the words simple enough for you?
We merely respond to your previous nonsense that it was somehow "too hard"
evaluate 100,000 people individually, while individual evaluation was the
ONLY efficient enough to handle millions.
Well, no doubt, you can explain your Looking-Glass logic...
> > 3) How it is that there were too many "Germans" and "Italians" to deal
> > with as a group, so they could only be sorted individually, but it
> > would have been difficult to deal with the far smaller number of
> > "Japanese" individually, so they had to be treated en mass?
> See answer to #2 above.
I did; you tried to misdirect attention to your nonsense with an argument
that was refuted years ago. Really, you must do something about your
attention span.
Mike
David H Thornley
> On May 6, 10:58 am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> You know better than that. As for the
> "marching off to concentration camps" here's what one
> enemy alien who was evacuated but not interned,
> had to say about the relocation centers: Kiyoaki Murata
> arrived at the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona via the
> Santa Fe RR. He hadn't been "marched" anywhere::
I would suspect he walked through the front gate at Poston I.
> "The camp was not the prison I had expected it to be. I
> have since heard accounts of camps with high barbed wire
> fences and rifle-bearing MPs threatening to shoot any evacuee
> attempting to escape....Poston was not at all like this.
Which is not a universal opinion. At
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poston_War_Relocation_Center we
have a poem written by another internee, primarily about
the "DAMNED FENCE".
Given that one prisoner says one thing and another says
another thing, I'm going with the accounts I can find.
> Within a few days, he was no longer to be seen....As far as I
> could see, all the...residents of...Poston soon found their new
> life more or less satisfactory under the circumstances." From
> "An Enemy Among Friends," Kiyoaki Murata
>
Alexander Leighton did a fifteen-month study of the Posten
camp, and published in 1945, rather early for postwar
revisionism, wouldn't you think? He seemed to have a
somewhat different idea about the treatment there.
> (a) Because when a de facto state of war exists with a nation, all
> citizens of that nation living in the U.S. become enemy aliens
That wasn't really responsive to Mike's question, was it? Nobody's
argued that it's a bad thing to intern enemy nationals.
> (b) As for the case of U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage, so many
> being dual citizens large numbers of whom had been revealed
And, of course, there were those adults who were US citizens, and
not dual citizens. They were swept up also.
> certain military areas. Not only was the EO approved by Congress,
> but about 100% of the public, and confirmed as Constitutional by the
> Supreme Court. That's an awful number of "racists," isn't it?
>
Sadly, there was a whole lot of racism going on in the world, and
most Americans of the time were probably racists. This had been
going on for a long time. It's only in the past fifty or sixty
years that racism has become less socially acceptable, although
I've witnessed it on occasion.
The past fifty or sixty years are, of course, after WWII.
> fifth column activity being a principal one. However, it was
> primarily a
> matter of logistics. .Because in the one case (the Japanese) an
> evacuation could be physically accomplished and in the other case
> (Germans and Italians) an evacuation could not be physically
> accomplished. it is romantic nonsense to contend that if both cannot
> be done neither should be done.
>
Okay, let's apply that to other military considerations.
If our army is facing a small army and a larger army, it would be
impossible to defeat the larger enemy army, so we should concentrate
on the small one.
That really doesn't make much sense, does it?
>> 3) How it is that there were too many "Germans" and "Italians" to deal
>> with as a group, so they could only be sorted individually, but it
>> would have been difficult to deal with the far smaller number of
>> "Japanese" individually, so they had to be treated en mass?
>
> See answer to #2 above.
>
In other words, no answer at all.
If German and Italian citizens and dual citizens could bet handled on an
individual basis, despite their great numbers, why not Japanese?
Are you telling us that the US authorities simply abandoned all hope
of stopping possible sabotage and espionage?
If it was possible to deal with millions of people on an individual
basis, it was possible to deal with a hundred thousand people on an
individual basis.
What you're saying is rather like "Newfoundland is to big to search.
Let's search Canada instead."
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> > (a) Because when a de facto state of war exists with a nation, all
> > citizens of that nation living in the U.S. become enemy aliens
> That wasn't really responsive to Mike's question, was it? Nobody's
> argued that it's a bad thing to intern enemy nationals.
Certainly until their loyalties could be determined. I've mentioned this
before, but in Mauldin's _Up Front_, he mentions serviing with an
officer who was German (I vaguely remember something about "Prussian",
but I'm too lazy to dig through the book), while in Italy. He mentioned
this guy was one of the more ferocious of the officers he knew of
towards the Germans. It seems that even enemy aliens could be vetted.
Mike
wjho...@aol.com
>..... Nobody's argued that it's a bad thing to intern enemy
> nationals.
Maybe, just maybe, we are beginning to get to the crux
of the issue here, so let's cut to the chase.
Inasmuch as you are now saying that the internment of enemy
aliens was not a "bad thing", that must mean that you believe
it was an acceptable thing to do in wartime. It logically follows,
then
that if was an acceptable thing to do, there was no basis
for later making apologies for having done so and paying each
of the Japanese former enemy aliens, and only the japanese,
a large sum of money in reparations. Enemy aliens of other
nationalities got nothing.
So, Mr. Thornley, because of your courageous statement
in this environment, I am asking you to step up to bat and
give straight answers to the two questions I ask below. i
won't bother to ask Mr. Fester inasmuch as his usual
responses to matters I raise are incoherent rants consisting
of a mixture of misinformation, personal attacks, mendacious
remarks and oxymorons (with emphasis on the last syllable
of the latter) and should only be read for comic relief.
1. Do you believe it was right for our government to apologize
to and pay a large sum of money in reparation to each Japanese
enemy alien who had been interned (even to those who had been
U.S. citizens but renounced their U.S. citizenship to fight for
Japan)?
2. Do you believe that it was or was not racial discrimination
for our government to give such apologies and make such
payments only to former Japanese enemy aliens, excluding other
former enemy aliens from Germany, Italy and other European Axis
nationalities?
It would be nice if you could refrain from the conventional lecture
about the history of racism in U.S. history and just answer those
questions with a "Yes'" or '"No.".
Thank you.
WJH
Rich Rostrom
> On May 6, 3:09 pm, Rich Rostrom <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote:
> > I don't think there was a significant number of Japanese-Britons - maybe a few dozen.
>
I have no specific information - that's just
a poorly informed guess. However, there
was no colonial relationship between Japan
and Britain, and much less emigration of
Japanese in search of opportunity elsewhere.
(Japan was not as poor or as populous as
China.)
So it seems very unlikely that there would
be very few ethnic Japanese in Britain, and
almost none who were either naturalized or
British-born.
Rich Rostrom
According to Mauldin, he would sneak into
German lines at night, go up to a command post,
and demand a SITREP - in German, with a strong
Prussian accent and the appropriate Junker
manner.
Mauldin also said that the guy once used a carbine
to shoot a German officer in the throat - then wept
because he'd wrecked the German's Zeiss field
glasses.
Rich Rostrom
> On May 6, 3:09 pm, Rich Rostrom <rrostrom.21stcent...@rcn.com> wrote:
> > However, there were 23,000 Japanese-Canadians,
> > nearly all in British Columbia.
---
> > As in the U.S., there was considerable racial
> > animosity toward them, and 22,000 were
> > interned in 1941-1942.
>
> The animosity was not because of their race but
> because of their national origin.
14,000 of the 22,000 were Canadian-born.
> In the U.S. for instance,
> there was not any significant animosity to Asian people
> from other Asian countries (Chinese, Filipino) ...
This is possibly the most outrageous lie I've
ever seen in this newsgroup. The history of
anti-Chinese racism, especially on the West
Coast, is huge.
Read this short story by Mark Twain:
"Disgraceful Persecution Of A Boy"
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1548/
Twain objected to the arrest of a San Francisco boy
for throwing stones at Chinamen - when everything
and everybody around that boy had taught him it
was the right thing to do.
It was that bigotry which resulted in the Chinese
Exclusion Act - which barred Chinese immgrants
from the U.S. at the same time as millions of
European immigrants were welcomed.
All east Asian immigration was barred in 1924.
California had an anti-miscegenation law barring
marriages of whites and Chinese.
The Magnuson Act of 1943 relaxed the 1924 ban -
it allowed _105_ Chinese to enter the U.S. each
year, and ended the total prohibition on Chinese
naturalization.
But "in the U.S... there was not any significant
animosity to Asian people..."
> ... and I dare say the same in Canada.
Canada barred all Asian immigration in 1924.
In British Columbia, the Anti-Asiatic League
campaigned against immigration of any Asians
(including Chinese and Japanese), and for
exclusion of Asian-Canadians from trades such
as fishing. The AAL was formed in 1907.
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 6, 7:34 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> >..... Nobody's argued that it's a bad thing to intern enemy
> > nationals.
> Maybe, just maybe, we are beginning to get to the crux
> of the issue here, so let's cut to the chase.
Right; the issue that Americans of Japanese descent were treated as eny
aliens.
> Inasmuch as you are now saying that the internment of enemy
> aliens was not a "bad thing", that must mean that you believe
> it was an acceptable thing to do in wartime.
And here you begin your weak man arguments. What he said was nobody's
made that argument.
Again, attention to detail would do you more good than harm.
> It logically follows,
> then
> that if was an acceptable thing to do, there was no basis
> for later making apologies for having done so and paying each
> of the Japanese former enemy aliens, and only the japanese,
> a large sum of money in reparations. Enemy aliens of other
> nationalities got nothing.
Well, as it hapens, more than 2/3 of those were US citizens anyway.
You wish none of them to receive an apology or reparations, regardless
of that. In fact, one of the reasons for the reparations was the
reactions of people like you;
"American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of
the other enemy nationalities -- Germans and Italians -- on a selective
basis, but as untouchables, a group who could not be trusted and had to
be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent..."
Francis Biddle, Attorney General, Postwar memoirs
> So, Mr. Thornley, because of your courageous statement
> in this environment,
"courageous"? I admire Mr Thornley's posts, but it's hardly courageous
post here. And he didn't make the statement (whether he agrees with
it or not is another issue). You're twisting his words.
> I am asking you to step up to bat and
> give straight answers to the two questions I ask below. i
Mr Thornley has always been straightforward.
> won't bother to ask Mr. Fester inasmuch as his usual
> responses to matters I raise are incoherent rants consisting
> of a mixture of misinformation, personal attacks, mendacious
Right; tell us again how there was no barbed wire fence, or machine
guns at these camps, Mr Hopwood. Or how locking up full-blooded US
citizens of Japanese descent showed there was no racism involved.
I'm still waiting for your response to the 3 issues I posted yesterday,
btw.
> of the latter) and should only be read for comic relief.
I'd be hard-pressed to top "it was hard to treat 100,000 people as
individuals, but the only wat to treat millions was as individuals."
> It would be nice if you could refrain from the conventional lecture
> about the history of racism in U.S. history and just answer those
> questions with a "Yes'" or '"No.".
And it would be even nicer if you could address the issues I (and other
posters) have brought up over the years, or you could remember your
rants from one incarnation of Hopwood to the next. But we doubt it
will happen.
Mike
Duwop
> On May 6, 7:34 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
>
> 1. Do you believe it was right for our government to apologize
> to and pay a large sum of money in reparation to each Japanese
> enemy alien who had been interned (even to those who had been
> U.S. citizens but renounced their U.S. citizenship to fight for
> Japan)?
>
And please do not take into account the fact that the U.S. Gov't and
it's people were the first to turn their back on and betray these
citizens of the United States of America. Two wrongs do not make a
right after all, no, scratch that, that would be admitting wrong.
Errr, nevermind.........
Shawn Wilson
> Right; the issue that Americans of Japanese descent were treated as eny
> aliens.
They WERE enemy aliens. They were Japanese citizens. They also had
US citizenship by birth, and it turns out dual citizenship sucks when
the 'duals' go to war against each other.
If you think the issue was racism, feel free to explain why Japanese
(and Germans and Italians) were interned, while Chinese, Koreans and
Filipinoes were not.
wjho...@aol.com
> On May 6, 5:13 pm,wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> > In the U.S. for instance,
> > there was not any significant animosity to Asian people
> > from other Asian countries (Chinese, Filipino) ...
>
> This is possibly the most outrageous lie I've
> ever seen in this newsgroup. The history of
> anti-Chinese racism, especially on the West
> Coast, is huge.
Before you call someone a liar you had best not
quote the person out of context as you have done
above. The following is the complete exchange from
which you lifted the out of context excerpt above:
On May 6 you wrote: (re Japanese in Canada)
"As in the U.S., there was considerable racial
animosity toward them, and 22,000 were interned
in 1941-1942."
To which I responded:
"The animosity was not because of their race but
because of their national origin. In the U.S. for instance,
there was not any significant animosity to Asian people
from other Asian countries (Chinese, Filipino) and I dare
say the same in Canada."
So as can be clearly seen, the time-frame of
my response applied to the 1941-1942 era you
yourself brought up, namely to actions taken and
animosities felt during WWII, not to the social history
of the U.S. preceding WWiI.
You have misrepresented (with intent?) what
i said, then called me a liar. Perhaps you learned the
technique from Mr. Fester, the Dean of that school
of chicanery.
Back to basics, Regardless of prior discrimination and
animosities toward U.S. residents of Chinese or
Filipino ancestry, after Pearl Harbor attitudes changed.
China and the Philippines were allied with the U.S. in
the war against Japan, and, although of Asian ancestry
resident persons of Chinese or Philippine descent were
not evacuated or interned. So, how can any reasonable
person believe we evacuated or interned the Japan
solely because of their "race?"
WJH
:
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 7, 7:33 am, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> > Right; the issue that Americans of Japanese descent were treated as eny
> > aliens.
> They WERE enemy aliens.
No, more than 2/3 were US citizens.
> They were Japanese citizens.
Some. Not all. Some were full US citizens, orphaned, and sent to camps.
Some were born in the US, were never Japanese citizens. Sent to camp.
Some were born in Hawaii, served in WWI and were allowed to naturalize
(which meant they had forsworn any previous allegiences.) Sent to camp.
Do you think they should have been treated differently, yes or no?
> They also had
> US citizenship by birth, and it turns out dual citizenship sucks when
> the 'duals' go to war against each other.
Not usually; most countries will treat their citizens as their citizens.
> If you think the issue was racism, feel free to explain why Japanese
> (and Germans and Italians) were interned, while Chinese, Koreans and
> Filipinoes were not.
It is not the case that all German-Americans or Italian-Americans were
interned. Sorry, but it isn't. It is NOT the case that all unnaturalized
Germans and Italians were interned though, unlike the Japanese, they
were given the opportunity to have naturalized. Many full Axis citizens
were allowed to remain in areas deemed "too sensitive" for Americans of
Japanese descent.
BTW, your history is screwed up; Korea didn't exist, and those of Korean
descent would have been considered Japanese. They, too, would have been
marched to camps. Similarly, and Taiwanese.
However, at the time, the term "race" was applied to Germans (can't recall
Churchill talking about the German race?), Italians, etc. People talked of
the Japanese race, and Hitler spoke of the British and American races, as
well as the German race.
All this has been discussed on this thread already. I suspect none of it
will have an effect.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 7, 10:33 am, Rich Rostrom wrote:
> > On May 6, 5:13 pm,wjhopw...@aol.com> wrote:
> > > In the U.S. for instance,
> > > there was not any significant animosity to Asian people
> > > from other Asian countries (Chinese, Filipino) ...
> > This is possibly the most outrageous lie I've
> > ever seen in this newsgroup. The history of
> > anti-Chinese racism, especially on the West
> > Coast, is huge.
> Before you call someone a liar you had best not
> quote the person out of context as you have done
> above.
I would simply say you're intellectually dishonest. More politically
correct, and less likely to upset your delicate sensibilities.
> On May 6 you wrote: (re Japanese in Canada)
> "As in the U.S., there was considerable racial
> animosity toward them, and 22,000 were interned
> in 1941-1942."
This would be a correct statement.
> To which I responded:
> "The animosity was not because of their race but
> because of their national origin. In the U.S. for instance,
So if they were of Japanese descent, but not Japanese citizens,
there would have been no animosity?
> there was not any significant animosity to Asian people
> from other Asian countries (Chinese, Filipino) and I dare
> say the same in Canada."
And you were wrong. Again. There was considerable racial animosity
towards these people. In addition, they weren't allowed to naturalize,
weren't allowed to own property, etc.
This constitutes considerable racial animosity.
Certainly, you would be the first to whine if any of this applied to
you.
> So as can be clearly seen, the time-frame of
> my response applied to the 1941-1942 era you
> yourself brought up,
And in that time frame, non-whites were not allowed to naturalize, the
US armed forces were segregated, there were miscegenation laws in various
states, etc.
You were wrong.
> animosities felt during WWII, not to the social history
> of the U.S. preceding WWiI.
Wait; so it would be your contention that these miscegenation laws
disappeared during and immediately after the war? That segregation
disappeared during the war?
You are more confused that usual. That's a high bar.
> You have misrepresented (with intent?) what
Quoting you is always asking for trouble; you are constantly misquoting
yourself.
> the war against Japan, and, although of Asian ancestry
> resident persons of Chinese or Philippine descent were
> not evacuated or interned. So, how can any reasonable
> person believe we evacuated or interned the Japan
> solely because of their "race?"
Hmm, how about because people "at the time" spoke of the Japanese
race? The people of Japanese descent who were full-American, not
dual citizens, were interned. Orphans, in US orphanages, with
only some Japanese ancestry, were interned.
You of course will pretend this didn't happen. Not difficult to see
why you can't convince many people of your argument.
Mike
David H Thornley
> So, Mr. Thornley, because of your courageous statement
> in this environment, I am asking you to step up to bat and
> give straight answers to the two questions I ask below.
OK, as you request.
> 1. Do you believe it was right for our government to apologize
> to and pay a large sum of money in reparation to each Japanese
> enemy alien who had been interned (even to those who had been
> U.S. citizens but renounced their U.S. citizenship to fight for
> Japan)?
>
This question is, as it stands, ambiguous. Are you referring to
Japanese enemy aliens who were interned (not a large number) or
those imprisoned (a much larger number)? I have rarely been
sure about what you meant.
If it was legally interned aliens only, then I'd have to know
more of the relative conditions of internment before I could
say. The treatment of West Coast people of Japanese descent
was bad, and I don't know if Japanese internees were treated
differently from German and Italian.
> 2. Do you believe that it was or was not racial discrimination
> for our government to give such apologies and make such
> payments only to former Japanese enemy aliens, excluding other
> former enemy aliens from Germany, Italy and other European Axis
> nationalities?
>
If you're referring to those who were simply removed from their
homes and put in prison camps in the desert, it was not racial
discrimination to apologize and pay reparations.
If you're referring to actual internees, again, I don't know.
I don't know their comparative treatment, and I don't know
of any agreements that might have been made with postwar
governments of ex-Axis countries.
It is difficult to make laws that apply fairly to large numbers
of people.
> It would be nice if you could refrain from the conventional lecture
> about the history of racism in U.S. history and just answer those
> questions with a "Yes'" or '"No.".
>
If you truly want yes/no answers, please ask questions answerable by
"yes" or "no". "It was or was not" is not a yes/no question.
Shawn Wilson
> > > Right; the issue that Americans of Japanese descent were treated as eny
> > > aliens.
> > They WERE enemy aliens.
>
> No, more than 2/3 were US citizens.
99% of them were JAPANESE citizens, which was the problem. Locking up
enemy aliens in wartime is SOP.
> > They were Japanese citizens.
>
> Some. Not all.
Damn near, exceptions were isolated individuals.
> Do you think they should have been treated differently, yes or no?
I think they were treated appropriately under the circumstances. I
also think claims of RACISM! are slander against the people
involved.
> > They also had
> > US citizenship by birth, and it turns out dual citizenship sucks when
> > the 'duals' go to war against each other.
>
> Not usually; most countries will treat their citizens as their citizens.
And citizens of enemy countries as enemies...
> > If you think the issue was racism, feel free to explain why Japanese
> > (and Germans and Italians) were interned, while Chinese, Koreans and
> > Filipinoes were not.
>
> It is not the case that all German-Americans or Italian-Americans were
> interned.
It is neither the case that "all" Japanese citizens were interned.
> Sorry, but it isn't. It is NOT the case that all unnaturalized
> Germans and Italians were interned though, unlike the Japanese, they
> were given the opportunity to have naturalized. Many full Axis citizens
> were allowed to remain in areas deemed "too sensitive" for Americans of
> Japanese descent.
Eh, judgement call.
> BTW, your history is screwed up; Korea didn't exist, and those of Korean
> descent would have been considered Japanese. They, too, would have been
> marched to camps. Similarly, and Taiwanese.
Of course it existed, it was merely conquered.
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 7, 4:41 pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> > > > Right; the issue that Americans of Japanese descent were treated as eny
> > > > aliens.
> > > They WERE enemy aliens.
> > No, more than 2/3 were US citizens.
> 99% of them were JAPANESE citizens,
Sorry, nobody has produced a document to support anything close to that number;
I believe you're making it up.
> which was the problem. Locking up
> enemy aliens in wartime is SOP.
Locking up some is SOP. Labelling all of a certain ethnic group as "enemy",
regardless of citizenship is NOT SOP. It was not done to the Italians or
Germans. It was not done to the Germans in WWI. You have, in fact,
been informed of the existence of German nationals serving in the front
lines in Europe during WWII. How does that fit with your "SOP"?
And in any event, you fail to address those who were not dual citizens,
those who had renounced dual citizenship, and those who took advantage of
a bried window of opportunity to naturalize (one of the requirements is
renouncing all foreign allegiences.)
> > > They were Japanese citizens.
> > Some. Not all.
> Damn near, exceptions were isolated individuals.
Nope, not "damn near". And the "isolated individuals" would include
orphans, US combat vets, etc.
Now, can you supply us with the numbers of dual German-and-Italian citizens
interned? After all, if this was SOP, then surely all such from the
East and Gulf Coasts would have been locked up, but this was clearly not the
case. How many orphans? Former US soldiers from the group? 100 %? 10%?
Otherwise, your "SOP" claim rings hollow.
> > Do you think they should have been treated differently, yes or no?
> I think they were treated appropriately under the circumstances. I
So, locking up orphans is "appropriate"? Locking up US citizens, who had
served their nation is "appropriate"?
Most people would disagree.
> also think claims of RACISM! are slander against the people
> involved.
As it happens, it is only "modern sensibilities" that are offended by
racism; it was quite accepted at the time. However, those making the
charge of racism include those involved in the decision-making process.
Are they slandering themselves?
"American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of
the other enemy nationalities -- Germans and Italians -- on a selective
basis, but as untouchables, a group who could not be trusted and had to
be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent..."
"The Department of War and the Department of Justice are in agreement
that the present military situation does not at this time require the
removal of American citizens of the Japanese race."
~ Francis Biddle
"As then California Attorney General Earl Warren put it, "When we
are dealing with the Caucasian race we have methods that will test
the loyalty of them. But when we deal with the Japanese, we are on an
entirely different field."
Here's how DeWitt stated it:
"The continued presence of a large, unassimilated, tightly knit and
racial group" (in referring to the Japanese.
You will note 2 things. 1) The term "race" is used by those supporting and
those against the internments. 2) The man most responsible for the internments
using the word race in describing his decision.
Sorry, but your claim of "slander" seems pretty weak. As is your knowledge
of the language of the time.
> > > They also had
> > > US citizenship by birth, and it turns out dual citizenship sucks when
> > > the 'duals' go to war against each other.
> > Not usually; most countries will treat their citizens as their citizens.
> And citizens of enemy countries as enemies...
Sorry, but that is not necessarily the case. In fact, those possible exceptions
were addressed in the discussions.
And again, slowly, it was not done to the Germans or Italians.
> > > If you think the issue was racism, feel free to explain why Japanese
> > > (and Germans and Italians) were interned, while Chinese, Koreans and
> > > Filipinoes were not.
> >
> > It is not the case that all German-Americans or Italian-Americans were
> > interned.
> It is neither the case that "all" Japanese citizens were interned.
All from the West Coast.
> > Sorry, but it isn't. It is NOT the case that all unnaturalized
> > Germans and Italians were interned though, unlike the Japanese, they
> > were given the opportunity to have naturalized. Many full Axis citizens
> > were allowed to remain in areas deemed "too sensitive" for Americans of
> > Japanese descent.
> Eh, judgement call.
No, political, in many cases. As an example, Joe DiMaggio's father was
allowed to remain in San Francisco, though he had not bothered to naturalize.
Still, it's interesting that you, too, will make exceptions for the German
and Italian citizens, but not for US citizens whose ancestors were Japanese.
> > BTW, your history is screwed up; Korea didn't exist, and those of Korean
> > descent would have been considered Japanese. They, too, would have been
> > marched to camps. Similarly, and Taiwanese.
> Of course it existed,
No it did not, anymore than the US existed prior to the Declaration of
Independence. It was part of Japan, being formally annexed in 1910.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korea
Not sure what good citing a whole wiki article is supposed to do your case,
but even that states Japan annexed Korea in 1910; there was no Korea. Any
former Koreans in the US would have been deemed "Japanese", the US having
agreed to Japan's wish to annex Korea well before the official act.
Mike
wjho...@aol.com
>
> "American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of
> be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent..."
>
Apparently Biddle didn't have the courage of his
convictions. He, personally, was one of those few
engaged in the decision-making process and who
approved the draft of E.O 9066 which authorized the
evacuation of the Japanese from the West Coast. The
following is excerpted from Chapter V of "Guarding the
United States and its Outposts" Stetson Conn, U.S.
Army Center of History: .
"On the evening of February 17 (1942), Mr.
McCloy, General Guilion, and Col. Bendetsen met with
Justice Dept. representatives at the home of Attorney
General Biddle....General Gullion pulled from his pocket
and proceeded to read the draft of a proposed Presidential
Executive Order that would authorize the Secretary of War
to remove both citizens and aliens from areas he might
designate. Mr. Biddle accepted the draft without further
argument because the President had already indicated
to him that it was a matter for military decision...the
Executive Order was presented to the President and
signed by him on 19 February.
> "As early as 1946, Harold Ickes, President Roosevelt's own Secretary
> of the Interior, characterized the mass detention of Japanese-Americans
> as "mass hysteria over the Japanese"
>
> But what would Ickes know? Afterall, he was only involved in the
> decision-making process.
What did Ickes know? Nothing. He was not only excluded
from knowledge of the existence of MAGIC, the code-breaking
program by which the President and a very few carefully
selected other officials were reading pre-war intercepted
Japanese diplomatic messages which revealed the
participation of resident Japanese nationals and Japanese-
Americans in intelligence gathering for the Japanese
governrnent, but he also had no involvement in the
decision-making process for the evacuation.
WJH
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
a post explaining the danger posed by the half-Japanese orphans mentioned
in other posts?
Should be easy for you, since that was based on "military necessity" and
solid intelligence.
Thanks.
Now, on to address your post.
wjho...@aol.com <wjho...@aol.com> wrote:
> On May 5, 9:05 pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> >
> > "American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of
> > the other enemy nationalities .... a group who could not be trusted and had to
> > be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent..."
> >
> > ~ Francis Biddle, Attorney General, Postwar memoirs
> Apparently Biddle didn't have the courage of his
> convictions.
"Rowe and Ennis argued strongly against [the Exective Order]. But the
decision had been made by the President. It was, he said, a matter of
military judgment. I did not think I should oppose it any further. The
Department of Justice, as I had made it clear to him from the beginning,
was opposed to and would have nothing to do with the evacuation"
So he did oppose it "at the time", though you're adamant that the opposition
is all from some unnamed, post-war "political" cabal, for some unknown
(but undoubtedly) nefarious end. However, we'll pretend you actually
believe what you write. To continue...
> He, personally, was one of those few
> engaged in the decision-making process and who
> approved the draft of E.O 9066 which authorized the
> evacuation of the Japanese from the West Coast. The
Let's examine that, shall we?
So what you're NOW saying that those "engaged in the decision-making
process" are now among those who claim the internments were unwarrented.
How does this square with your contentions that the people involved all
knew this was the right thing? That those who question their actions
are some sort of post-war conspiracy? After all, there are now those
questioning their own actions, yes?
Oh, and here's another:
"I have made a lot of mistakes in my life... One is my part in the
evacuation of the Japanese from California in 1942... I don't think
that served any purpose at all... We picked them up and put them in
concentration camps. That's the truth of the matter. And as I look back
on it -- although at the time I argued the case -- I am amazed that the
Supreme Court ever approved it."
~ Tom Clark, After retiring as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 1966
> > "As early as 1946, Harold Ickes, President Roosevelt's own Secretary
> > of the Interior, characterized the mass detention of Japanese-Americans
> > as "mass hysteria over the Japanese"
> >
> > But what would Ickes know? Afterall, he was only involved in the
> > decision-making process.
> What did Ickes know? Nothing. He was not only excluded
Right; it's not like FDR was known to discuss things with Cabinet members.
Excellent point.
> from knowledge of the existence of MAGIC, the code-breaking
> program by which the President and a very few carefully
> selected other officials were reading pre-war intercepted
> Japanese diplomatic messages which revealed the
> participation of resident Japanese nationals and Japanese-
Ah, yes, these mythical intercepts that named names, indicated actions,
etc. They were SO useful that DeWitt stated he felt "the fact that no
action (sabatoge) has yet occurred is proof that it will happen soon".
Yes, clearly that was some vital data.
> Americans in intelligence gathering for the Japanese
> governrnent, but he also had no involvement in the
> decision-making process for the evacuation.
After all, the department of the interior had nothing to do with the
camps, and of course as a Cabinet member, he was excluded from
any advisory position WRT Roosevelt, correct, Mr Hopwood?
Mike
wjho...@aol.com
> wjhopw...@aol.com wrote:
> > So, Mr. Thornley, because of your courageous statement
> > in this environment, I am asking you to step up to bat and
> > give straight answers to the two questions I ask below.
>
> OK, as you request.
>
> > 1. Do you believe it was right for our government to apologize
> > to and pay a large sum of money in reparation to each Japanese
> > enemy alien who had been interned (even to those who had been
> > U.S. citizens but renounced their U.S. citizenship to fight for
> > Japan)?
>
> This question is, as it stands, ambiguous.
No it isn't. It couldn't be more straightforward.
> Are you referring to Japanese enemy aliens who were interned.
Yes, I clearly said so. Is it possible that you still confuse
'"internment" with "evacuation/relocation" after all that has
been told over and over again in this forum about the legal,
physical, and procedural distinctions between the two?
> I have rarely been sure about what you meant.
Consider this. Internment was as close to the word "prison"
as existed, and even that was not nearly as harsh as the
accmmodations most GIs experienced. The other condiition
was evacuation and relocation. From the relocation centers,
one could leave if one had a place to go other than back
to the exclusion areas, and if one asked to leave, and if one was
cleared to leave by military intelligence. Over 33.000 did so.
Many stayed because they wanted to stay as life for them
before the war had been tough and after evacuation they had
never had it so good.
> If it was legally interned aliens only, then I'd have to know
> more of the relative conditions of internment before I could
> say.
>
> The treatment of West Coast people of Japanese descent
> was bad, and I don't know if Japanese internees were treated
> differently from German and Italian.
The internment of the enemy aliens was identical regardless
of their race and/or nationalities.
Each had had an internment hearing before an enemy alien
review board where the decision to intern or not to intern was
made.
Japanese, Germans, and Italians lived side-by-side in the
same DOJ internment camps. They played games together.
they swam in the same pool together, attended recreational
activities together--you name it, they had identical treatment
in all respects.
> If you're referring to actual internees, again, I don't know.
Of course I was.
> I don't know their comparative treatment,
You should know now. I just told you. You can check it out
at the website of a former internee www.foitimes.com/internment.
Since I asked two questions which you found confusing, although
i believe either could easily be answered "yes" or "no" I'll try
to
simplify them for you.. You should now have now no problem with
a "yes" or a "no" answer.
1 Do you believe that our government was right, for
reasons of alleged racial discrimination, to apologize and
make reparation payments to each former enemy alien
Japanese who had been interned during WWII in accordance
with long-standing U.S. and international law governing
treatment of enemy aliens?
2. Do believe that making such apologies and
payments to former Japanese enemy aliens but not to former
enemy alien German and Italian internees, was racial
discrimination inasmuch as:
Germans and Italians had also been interned
at the same time, for the same reasons, under the same
procedures, at the some of the same locations, and had
been treated the same as had the Japanese?
Thanks for not waffling, again.
WJH
Chris Morton
>Uh, 1999. _Atomic Diplomacy_ was first published in the 1960s.
>His second book on the subject was published in 1995.
If I recall correctly, Frank does quite a good job of showing the sense of alarm
created (in everyone but MacArthur) of the rapidly shifting force ratios
predicted for Kyushu. The numbers were constantly changing, and NOT in Truman's
favor.
>Alperovitz was discreditted almost as soon as his
>first edition was published. The only imaginations captured were
>those predisposed to believe what he was selling.
The only support I see for Alperovitz is purely ideological... that is if you
can call kneejerk condemnation of ANY U.S. action an "ideology".
It's very easy believe that the Japanese were "beaten" and "eager to
surrender"... so long as you know nothing of (or ignore) the actual
politico-civilian situation on the ground in Japan at the time. Those always
cited as being in favor of immediate peace had as much ability to effectuate it
as Congressman Dennis Kucinich did of withdrawing all U.S. troops from
Afghanistan and Iraq.
--
Gun control, the theory that 110lb. women have the "right" to fistfight with
210lb. rapists.
Chris Morton
>
>I don't have a settled opinion about the advisability of using the
>bombs, or using them against cities as opposed to other possible
>targets. I personally think it's a tougher problem than the firmly
>convinced people on each side think. My personal inclination is that
>they should have been used, but maybe there were ways to use them that
>involved fewer civilian casualties while still achieving the desired
>effect. Or maybe there weren't. It's not easy to say now much less to
>have figured it out at the time.
The Japanese government routinely lied to the population. Any sort of
"demonstration" would have been kept completely secret from the population.
U.S. attempts to inform the population would have been condemned by the military
as "propaganda". "Baghdad Bob" may have been hilarious, but he wasn't original.
The large civilian casualties and loss of communications created a narrative
IMPOSSIBLE for the military to suppress.
>However there is another factor that should be thrown into the equation
>when we talk about the number of Americans and number of Japanese who
>would have died if the war had been prolonged. The additional factor is
>the number of people who would have died in Japanese occupied
>territories - China, Korea, Formosa, South East Asia, etc.
In addition, it was planned to slaughter all POWs and civilian internees.
The Rape of Manila is all of the evidence needed to see how a deaparate and
cornered Japanese military dealt with a helpless civilian population.
Chris Morton
>My mother-in-law was one so trained; she says her teacher pulled them
>aside and quietly told them to just run away and hide, but given the
>IJA's actions on Okinawa, that might not have saved them.
And of course, according to the book "Tennozan", IJA troops on Okinawa forced
civilians to kill their families and commit suicide, then themselves
SURRENDERED.
MrTimm
I left after the first act. It was awful.
Most of the audience left with me.
On Apr 28, 7:23 am, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
>
> (There's an opera on the Trinity blast, "Dr. Atomic",
> that has been performed by the Met in New York, and
> simulcast to many theaters across the world. It's not your
> typical opera, as most of the lyrics were taken from
> things the principals wrote at the time, so instead of
> a song about love with words easy to sing, we get a song
> about the blistering on the plutonium sphere to somewhat
> discordant music.)
Shawn Wilson
> > > > They WERE enemy aliens.
> > > No, more than 2/3 were US citizens.
> > 99% of them were JAPANESE citizens,
>
> Sorry, nobody has produced a document to support anything close to that number;
> I believe you're making it up.
It is easy enough to check. Issei were born in Japan and not US
citizens period (there simply was no naturalization path for them).
Nissei were their children (Japanese immigration in the US was recent,
so there weren't older generations) and had US and Japanese
citizenship. Sansei were the (then minor) children of the Nissei.
Interning the Issei was a no brainer. The (minor) Sansei merely went
with their parents rather than be separated from them. BTW interning
enemy aliens in wartime is STILL US law, and has been since the Alien
and Sedition Acts under Adams.
History had shown Japanese expats aiding their various invasions, and
Pearl Harbor had an incident of an American Japanese spontaneously
helping a shot down Japanese pilot from the attack. The west coast
was viewed as particularly vulnerable to possible Japanese invasion or
(more likely) sabotage. Hawaii was not, btw. Unlike the west coast
it had little war industry, and many soldiers and sailors around for
protection.
Paranoia was not unreasonable, and under the law internment was
perfectly justified.
> > which was the problem. Locking up
> > enemy aliens in wartime is SOP.
>
> Locking up some is SOP.
No. Locking up ALL of them is SOP. Letting some run around free is
the novelty.
Labelling all of a certain ethnic group as "enemy",
> regardless of citizenship is NOT SOP.
The US did not do that. it interned enemy citizens (and their minor
children) and did not intern others of the same race (Chinese,
koreans, Philppinoes) we were not at war with.
> It was not done to the Italians or
> Germans.
It was for such as lived in the exclusion zone.
> It was not done to the Germans in WWI.
Different war, different circumstance, different administration,
different policy.
> You have, in fact,
> been informed of the existence of German nationals serving in the front
> lines in Europe during WWII. How does that fit with your "SOP"?
I merely cite the behavior of all the other combatants in the war,
specifically including Canada...
> And in any event, you fail to address those who were not dual citizens,
> those who had renounced dual citizenship, and those who took advantage of
> a bried window of opportunity to naturalize (one of the requirements is
> renouncing all foreign allegiences.)
Few enough to be irrelevant.
> > > > They were Japanese citizens.
> > > Some. Not all.
> > Damn near, exceptions were isolated individuals.
>
> Nope, not "damn near".
Excuse me, but yes, damn near all.
> And the "isolated individuals" would include
> orphans, US combat vets, etc.
So what?
> Now, can you supply us with the numbers of dual German-and-Italian citizens
> interned? After all, if this was SOP, then surely all such from the
> East and Gulf Coasts would have been locked up, but this was clearly not the
> case. How many orphans? Former US soldiers from the group? 100 %? 10%?
Germans and Italians would have surrendered their German and Italian
citizenship on naturalization.
> > > Do you think they should have been treated differently, yes or no?
> > I think they were treated appropriately under the circumstances. I
>
> So, locking up orphans is "appropriate"? Locking up US citizens, who had
> served their nation is "appropriate"?
Interning citizens of a country the US is at war with is appropriate,
yes.
> Most people would disagree.
Most people at the time agreed with me, not excluding the ACLU...
> > also think claims of RACISM! are slander against the people
> > involved.
>
> As it happens, it is only "modern sensibilities" that are offended by
> racism; it was quite accepted at the time. However, those making the
> charge of racism include those involved in the decision-making process.
> Are they slandering themselves?
Slander is slander, and it offends me. You have yet to explain how
"racism" did not lead to Chinese and Koreans being interned.
> > > > They also had
> > > > US citizenship by birth, and it turns out dual citizenship sucks when
> > > > the 'duals' go to war against each other.
> > > Not usually; most countries will treat their citizens as their citizens.
> > And citizens of enemy countries as enemies...
>
> Sorry, but that is not necessarily the case. In fact, those possible exceptions
> were addressed in the discussions.
Possible exceptions are not actual exceptions.
> And again, slowly, it was not done to the Germans or Italians.
Except that it was. You RACISM! argument falls apart if you
acknowledge this though. I already cited Wiki coverage of this.
> > > > If you think the issue was racism, feel free to explain why Japanese
> > > > (and Germans and Italians) were interned, while Chinese, Koreans and
> > > > Filipinoes were not.
>
> > > It is not the case that all German-Americans or Italian-Americans were
> > > interned.
> > It is neither the case that "all" Japanese citizens were interned.
>
> All from the West Coast.
Not even that, unless you define the 'west coast' as identical with
the exclusion zone.
> > > Sorry, but it isn't. It is NOT the case that all unnaturalized
> > > Germans and Italians were interned though, unlike the Japanese, they
> > > were given the opportunity to have naturalized. Many full Axis citizens
> > > were allowed to remain in areas deemed "too sensitive" for Americans of
> > > Japanese descent.
> > Eh, judgement call.
>
> No, political, in many cases. As an example, Joe DiMaggio's father was
> allowed to remain in San Francisco, though he had not bothered to naturalize.
Judgement includes political judgement.
> Still, it's interesting that you, too, will make exceptions for the German
> and Italian citizens, but not for US citizens whose ancestors were Japanese.
By 'ancestors' are you Orwellianly referring to their PARENTS?
> > > BTW, your history is screwed up; Korea didn't exist, and those of Korean
> > > descent would have been considered Japanese. They, too, would have been
> > > marched to camps. Similarly, and Taiwanese.
> > Of course it existed,
>
> No it did not, anymore than the US existed prior to the Declaration of
> Independence. It was part of Japan, being formally annexed in 1910.
That did not make Koreans Japanese.
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 8, 3:27 pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
> > > > > They WERE enemy aliens.
> > > > No, more than 2/3 were US citizens.
> > > 99% of them were JAPANESE citizens,
> >
> > Sorry, nobody has produced a document to support anything close to that number;
> > I believe you're making it up.
> It is easy enough to check.
Please do so.
> Issei were born in Japan and not US
> citizens period (there simply was no naturalization path for them).
For those who served in WWI, there was a brief window for naturalization.
> Nissei were their children (Japanese immigration in the US was recent,
> so there weren't older generations) and had US and Japanese
> citizenship.
And the exclusion act of 1924 pretty much insured that any issei would
have been in the US for 18 years, ensuring that there would be a very
large number of
> Interning the Issei was a no brainer. The (minor) Sansei merely went
> with their parents rather than be separated from them. BTW interning
Amazingly enough, some sansei would have been adults at that time; do
you not recall the gentleman's agreement of 1907.
> enemy aliens in wartime is STILL US law, and has been since the Alien
> and Sedition Acts under Adams.
Actually, the US Constitution guarantees rights to ALL US citizens, and has
since, well, there was a Constitution. The Alien and Sedition Acts applies
to non-citizens.
> History had shown Japanese expats aiding their various invasions, and
Really?
Which invasions at the time would show that?
> Pearl Harbor had an incident of an American Japanese spontaneously
> helping a shot down Japanese pilot from the attack. The west coast
Good point; yet Hawaii did not see fit to intern the entire population,
though very few of the Japanese-descendents were US citizens there.
> (more likely) sabotage. Hawaii was not, btw. Unlike the west coast
> it had little war industry, and many soldiers and sailors around for
> protection.
Sorry, but if you feel that (eg) San Francisco, San Diego, LA, etc., did
not have "many soldiers and sailors around for protection", you really
have no idea whatsoever what the time was like.
> Paranoia was not unreasonable,
Paranoia is pretty much always undreasonable; in fact, we fought a war
against 2 paranoid regimes.
> and under the law internment was perfectly justified.
I'm sure Mr Hopwood will correct you; after all, you can't "intern"
US citizens.
> > Locking up some is SOP.
> No. Locking up ALL of them is SOP. Letting some run around free is
> the novelty.
You are seriously confused; not in WWI nor WWII were "ALL" enemy aliens
locked up. Not in any US conflict, in fact.
> Labelling all of a certain ethnic group as "enemy",
> > regardless of citizenship is NOT SOP.
> The US did not do that.
You are confused. It interned ALL those of Japanese descent, regardless
of citizenship, or age.
Do you deny that, yes or no?
> it interned enemy citizens (and their minor
> children)
And their adult children. And orphans. And US citizens who had never been
Japanese citizens. And US citizens who had renounced Japanese citizens.
> and did not intern others of the same race (Chinese,
Sorry, you will have to correct DeWitt; he referred the the Japanese
race.
> koreans, Philppinoes) we were not at war with.
Again, slowly, ANY "koreans" would have had to carry Japanese passports,
and would have been considered Japanese under international agreement.
Korea didn't exist at the time.
> > It was not done to the Italians or Germans.
> It was for such as lived in the exclusion zone.
This is wrong; certain aliens were allowed to live in exclusion zones. You
may have heard of Joe DiMaggio?
You're simply wrong.
> > It was not done to the Germans in WWI.
> Different war, different circumstance, different administration,
> different policy.
Sorry, you are now arguing with yourself;
"No. Locking up ALL of them is SOP. Letting some run around free is
the novelty."
> > You have, in fact,
> > been informed of the existence of German nationals serving in the front
> > lines in Europe during WWII. How does that fit with your "SOP"?
> I merely cite the behavior of all the other combatants in the war,
> specifically including Canada...
Sorry, so you AGREE that it is NOT "SOP", then?
So, you withdraw that statement?
> > And in any event, you fail to address those who were not dual citizens,
> > those who had renounced dual citizenship, and those who took advantage of
> > a bried window of opportunity to naturalize (one of the requirements is
> > renouncing all foreign allegiences.)
> Few enough to be irrelevant.
You aver a great deal, and provide no real evidence. Please provide
the relevant numbers.
> > > > > They were Japanese citizens.
> > > > Some. Not all.
> > > Damn near, exceptions were isolated individuals.
> >
> > Nope, not "damn near".
> Excuse me, but yes, damn near all.
Well, all you have to do is show it; or, like Bayman, you can simply keep
repeating it.
> > And the "isolated individuals" would include
> > orphans, US combat vets, etc.
> So what?
So what is the miitary reason for locking up orphans?
> > interned? After all, if this was SOP, then surely all such from the
> > East and Gulf Coasts would have been locked up, but this was clearly not the
> > case. How many orphans? Former US soldiers from the group? 100 %? 10%?
> Germans and Italians would have surrendered their German and Italian
> citizenship on naturalization.
As did any Japanese who naturalized, as did the nissei who renounced their
Japanese citizenship after PH.
And, of course, there were dual citizens of Germany and Italy born in this
country. Why were they not all locked up?
After all, you claimed this is "SOP", right? (Though you seem to be unclear
on that.)
> > > > Do you think they should have been treated differently, yes or no?
> > > I think they were treated appropriately under the circumstances. I
> > So, locking up orphans is "appropriate"? Locking up US citizens, who had
> > served their nation is "appropriate"?
> Interning citizens of a country the US is at war with is appropriate,
Which is not the question. (And was not done to the Germans and Italians.)
The question was:
"So, locking up orphans is "appropriate"? Locking up US citizens, who had
served their nation is "appropriate"?
NOT Japanese citizens, Mr Wilson; *US* citizens.
> > Most people would disagree.
> Most people at the time agreed with me, not excluding the ACLU...
Which is why there is more intelligent analysis after an event.
> > > also think claims of RACISM! are slander against the people
> > > involved.
> > As it happens, it is only "modern sensibilities" that are offended by
> > racism; it was quite accepted at the time. However, those making the
> > charge of racism include those involved in the decision-making process.
> > Are they slandering themselves?
> Slander is slander,
And truth is truth.
> and it offends me.
Well, I do feel bad about your delicate sensibilities. But I don't believe
you are offended at all.
> You have yet to explain how
> "racism" did not lead to Chinese and Koreans being interned.
Well, yes, we did several times. We used complete sentences, and small
words. You have deleted those passages, but no matter; we can reproduce
them;
The people "at the time" spoke of a "Japanese race", a "German race", etc.
"A Jap's a Jap. . . the Japanese race is an enemy race." --General
John DeWitt, commander of West Coast defenses
Is DeWitt slandering DeWitt? Or do you simply not know what you're talking
about?
> > > > > They also had
> > > > > US citizenship by birth, and it turns out dual citizenship sucks when
> > > > > the 'duals' go to war against each other.
> > > > Not usually; most countries will treat their citizens as their citizens.
> > > And citizens of enemy countries as enemies...
> >
> > Sorry, but that is not necessarily the case. In fact, those possible exceptions
> > were addressed in the discussions.
> Possible exceptions are not actual exceptions.
Sorry, forgive my syntax; those were ACTUAL exceptions. There were, in fact,
German and Italian dual citizens roaming free in exclusion zones. I'm
sure Mr Hopwood will inform you of this, as they were all cleared on
an individual basis.
> > And again, slowly, it was not done to the Germans or Italians.
> Except that it was.
No, it wasn't. Sorry, but it wasn't.
> You RACISM! argument falls apart if you
> acknowledge this though. I already cited Wiki coverage of this.
Actually, the only wiki you've cited so far is about Korea, and somehow
forgets to mention that any "Korean" at the time would have been Japanese
under the law.
> > > > interned.
> > > It is neither the case that "all" Japanese citizens were interned.
> >
> > All from the West Coast.
> Not even that, unless you define the 'west coast' as identical with
> the exclusion zone.
Why, yes, yes it was. How about that; you CAN learn some things.
> > > > Sorry, but it isn't. It is NOT the case that all unnaturalized
> > > > Germans and Italians were interned though, unlike the Japanese, they
> > > > were given the opportunity to have naturalized. Many full Axis citizens
> > > > were allowed to remain in areas deemed "too sensitive" for Americans of
> > > > Japanese descent.
> > > Eh, judgement call.
> > No, political, in many cases. As an example, Joe DiMaggio's father was
> > allowed to remain in San Francisco, though he had not bothered to naturalize.
> Judgement includes political judgement.
So, it wasn't "SOP"?
> > Still, it's interesting that you, too, will make exceptions for the German
> > and Italian citizens, but not for US citizens whose ancestors were Japanese.
> By 'ancestors' are you Orwellianly referring to their PARENTS?
"Orwellian"? Hmm. It would, in some cases, refer to grandparents, and in
some cases great-grandparents.
> > > > descent would have been considered Japanese. They, too, would have been
> > > > marched to camps. Similarly, and Taiwanese.
> > > Of course it existed,
> >
> > No it did not, anymore than the US existed prior to the Declaration of
> > Independence. It was part of Japan, being formally annexed in 1910.
> That did not make Koreans Japanese.
Well, by international agreement (and specifically US agreement), yes it
did. Just as American Indians would have been considered American.
Mike
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
> On May 8, 3:43 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> > wjhopw...@aol.com wrote:
> > Are you referring to Japanese enemy aliens who were interned.
> Yes, I clearly said so. Is it possible that you still confuse
> '"internment" with "evacuation/relocation" after all that has
Yes, it is possible to confuse "marched off your property under armed
guard and thrown into a concentration camp" with "marched off your
property under armed guard and thrown into a concentration camp"
> physical, and procedural distinctions between the two?
Yes, your "politically correct" euphemisms.
> > I have rarely been sure about what you meant.
> Consider this. Internment was as close to the word "prison"
> as existed, and even that was not nearly as harsh as the
> accmmodations most GIs experienced.
"Most" GIs did not serve at a front, and had some free time.
> was evacuation and relocation. From the relocation centers,
> one could leave if one had a place to go other than back
Uh, no, not really. Not until later.
> > The treatment of West Coast people of Japanese descent
> > was bad, and I don't know if Japanese internees were treated
> > differently from German and Italian.
> The internment of the enemy aliens was identical regardless
> of their race and/or nationalities.
Sorry, no it wasn't.
"American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of
the other enemy nationalities -- Germans and Italians -- on a selective
basis, but as untouchables, a group who could not be trusted and had to
be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent..."
~ Francis Biddle, Attorney General
> Each had had an internment hearing before an enemy alien
> review board where the decision to intern or not to intern was
> made.
Nope; Japanese citizens and US citizens would often be in the same
camps, without hearing.
> Of course I was.
> > I don't know their comparative treatment,
> You should know now. I just told you. You can check it out
Seriously, you don't believe you have enough credibility to be
believed?
> 1 Do you believe that our government was right, for
> reasons of alleged racial discrimination, to apologize and
> make reparation payments to each former enemy alien
> Japanese who had been interned during WWII in accordance
> with long-standing U.S. and international law governing
> treatment of enemy aliens?
Yep.
> 2. Do believe that making such apologies and
> payments to former Japanese enemy aliens but not to former
> enemy alien German and Italian internees, was racial
> discrimination inasmuch as:
> Germans and Italians had also been interned
> at the same time, for the same reasons, under the same
> procedures, at the some of the same locations, and had
> been treated the same as had the Japanese?
Nope.
The US treated one group of people on a selective basis; it treated the
other as being all alike.
When you treat them as if they're all the same, you need to apologize for
doing so.
Mike
David H Thornley
> On May 8, 3:43 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
>> Are you referring to Japanese enemy aliens who were interned.
>
> Yes, I clearly said so.
In that case, we are outside the areas I've actually studied, and
I have no business giving a yes/no answer, even to questions
that actually invite one.
I really don't understand your intentions, Mr. Hopwood. Do you
really think that a declaration from somebody ignorant of the
situation would be of any interest? Moreover, we've been talking
almost exclusively about those of Japanese descent forcibly moved
to prison camps in the desert, rather than internees.
Chris Morton
wjho...@aol.com says...
>matter of logistics. .Because in the one case (the Japanese) an
>evacuation could be physically accomplished and in the other case
>(Germans and Italians) an evacuation could not be physically
>accomplished. it is romantic nonsense to contend that if both cannot
>be done neither should be done.
So, the equal protection clause is "romantic nonsense"?
I'm sure it was... to Tojo.
It is an immutable law that everyone who attempts to defend the shipping of
Japanese-Americans to ethnic concentration camps inevitably must adopt the
worldview and indeed the verbiage of the Japanese militarists against whom they
claim the internment was a defensive measure.
You have met the enemy and he is you.
Chris Morton
wjho...@aol.com says...
>So as can be clearly seen, the time-frame of
>my response applied to the 1941-1942 era you
>yourself brought up, namely to actions taken and
>animosities felt during WWII, not to the social history
>of the U.S. preceding WWiI.
So:
1. Was there NOT extensive racial and ethnic prejudice against the Japanese
(especially in California) before WWII?
Or,
2. Was this long history of animosity COMPLETELY discounted in the hysteria
against the Japanese-Americans, which eventually led to the internment?
Neither is plausible to an educated adult.
>Back to basics, Regardless of prior discrimination and
>animosities toward U.S. residents of Chinese or
>Filipino ancestry, after Pearl Harbor attitudes changed.
>China and the Philippines were allied with the U.S. in
>the war against Japan, and, although of Asian ancestry
>resident persons of Chinese or Philippine descent were
>not evacuated or interned. So, how can any reasonable
>person believe we evacuated or interned the Japan
>solely because of their "race?"
So then denial of basic civil rights is alright on the basis of ethnicity, but
not race?
Sophistry has not been your friend in this "debate".
Chris Morton
Alan Nordin says...
>> Japanese-Britons - maybe a few dozen.
>
>melting pot in the world. I would've expected at least a few hundred
>in London, not many more elsewhere maybe. Still, in comparison, very
>few.
Remember, the question was of JAPANESE-BRITONs, not merely Japanese living in
Britain, of which I imagine there were substantially more.
And that's the whole crux of the internment issue, not that "enemy aliens" were
interned, but that U.S. CITIZENS were encarcerated without trial, SOLELY on the
basis of race and ethnicity. You can't BE an U.S. citizen AND an "enemy alien".
You CAN be a U.S. citizen and a TRAITOR. Hence the presumption at the time, and
today with the defenders of the concentation camps, is that the bulk of
Japanese-American CITIZENS were TRAITORS... based SOLELY on their race and
ethnicity.
Chris Morton
wjho...@aol.com says...
>As to the reasons Germans and Italians were not evacuated
>en masse there were many reasons. First to be considered was
>logistics--the numbers involved.
So then even if they were a GREATER danger due to their vast numbers, there were
TOO MANY of them to act to mitigate that danger? How many is TOO many?
There were actually a very limited number of reasons why the CITIZENS of German,
Italian and other Axis descent were not sent to concentration camps:
1. They were White.
2. They had political power. Going to intern Mayor LaGuardia?
3. It would have been insanely unpopular. Intern Joe DiMaggio? Joe Dimaggio?
Jerry Collonna? Lou Costello? Johnny Weissmuller? Buster Crabb?
Maybe we needed a Stalinesque "purge" of Eisenhower, Eichelberger, Spaatz, et
al...
And of course the $64,000 question is... why was Lindburgh NOT interned??? Was
George Takei a BIGGER threat?
The primary motivation of the Japanese internment was race. The rest is just
after the fact excuse making.
Chris Morton
wjho...@aol.com says...
>left asked to return. Life on the outside wasn't as easy as in at
>the
>centers with their schools, hospitals, 3 square meals a day,
>recreational
>facilities galore, you name it--they had it..
..except freedom.
I wonder why German-Americans and Italian-Americans didn't get similar
"benefits". The survivors should sue for "discrimination"...
Chris Morton
>The "history" of the evacuation has already been written. The analysis
>of that decision led more rational scholars to conclude, and the US
>government to agree, that the incarcerations were unjustified, and
>unnecessary.
Indeed.
The lack of a comparable mass encarceration of U.S. CITIZENS of German, Italian,
Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Romanian descent is undeniable evidence that something
in addition to and wholely different from "military necessity" motivated the
Japanese internment.
>Sorry, you've wandered off into Bayman territory; locking people up
>in a desert concentration without trial or charge certainly
>constitutes harm.
In recent times, people falsely imprisoned under better conditions, for far
shorter periods of time, have collected substantial settlements and judgments
for the harm done them.
>Or would you happily volunteer to be so treated?
I doubt that anyone defending the concentration camps would even be willing to
see their populations expanded to include German-Americans and
Italian-Americans, never mind volunteer to go there themselves.
Chris Morton
>It is likely that there were other ways (different target choices, perhaps)
>but this was not obvious to those deciding on the use of the bomb. And as
>it was, it was a close thing, as there were factions trying to subvert the
>surrender.
And as is now well known to historians, but far less well known to the general
public, there was in fact an attempted coup the night before the surrender,
which failed only due to a combination of random chance (B-29 induced blackout)
and the rash incompetence of the plotters. It's entirely possible that there
might not have been a surrender the next day, resulting in the nightmare
scenario of a Kyushu invasion at a 1:1 (or worse) force ratio.
Alan Nordin
> Remember, the question was of JAPANESE-BRITONs, not merely Japanese living in
> Britain, of which I imagine there were substantially more.
Good point. My addition was informational only. I thought the number
put forth seemed low and I said so. I did not mean to imply anything
one way or the other.
Alan
Chris Morton
Alan Nordin says...
My comment was merely meant as a clarification. Given the heroic feats of
obfuscation going on (not by you), every bit of clarification is to the good.
Chris Morton
says...
>What you're saying is rather like "Newfoundland is to big to search.
>Let's search Canada instead."
Succinctly put.
That whole line of "argument" is risible at best.
It shows the sheer desparation of the proponents of the camps and the logical
pretzels into which they're willing to tie themselves in order to defend the
indefensible.
One of my favorite movie "rants" is the soliloquy by the middle-aged war
correspondent in "Objective Burma". Having seen the aftermath of a Japanese
atrocity, he cries out for the total elimination of the Japanese, practically
collapsing in a heap at its conclusion. NO defense of the Japanese-American
concentration camps I've ever seen rises to its level of coherence and
rationality.
Chris Morton
>Not sure what good citing a whole wiki article is supposed to do your case,
>but even that states Japan annexed Korea in 1910; there was no Korea. Any
>former Koreans in the US would have been deemed "Japanese", the US having
>agreed to Japan's wish to annex Korea well before the official act.
Not to mention the fact that thousands of Koreans and Taiwanese served in the
Japanese military and security forces during the war. One Japanese
airborne/special operations unit was composed primarily of Taiwanese tribesmen.
Korea and Taiwan were considered parts of Japan, and their inhabitants subjects
of the Emperor of Japan and subject to his command, if not necessarily
possessing the same "rights" (such as they were) as ethnic Japanese.
Chris Morton
wjho...@aol.com says...
>To which it should be added that there was no enemy action
>involving Germany or Italy expected in the sensitive areas along
>the Pacific coast which is apparently "sensiive area"referred to
>above.
What an "interesting"... and logically incomplete statement.
let me add the ONLY possible logical conclusion to it:
"...and citizens of it's allies in the Tri-Partite Pact could absolutely be
counted upon NOT to render the Japanese ANY assistance in any such 'enemy
action."
Weeelll, maybe just the Spanish, who weren't even an official part of the
Axis...
As the Brits say, "Pull the other one, guv!"
Chris Morton
wjho...@aol.com says...
>Wrong. There were no U.S. citizens Interned and those who
>were interned in DOJ camps were the only ones "incarcerated"
>in the accepted meaning of the word.
"Accepted" by WHOM?
A distinction without a difference.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution has alleged that my client
'gutted' the deceased, when in fact my client EVISCERATED him!"
>Germans and Italians, who were in such logistically large numbers
>that they could only be evaluated on an individual basis.
"There were so many marbles in the boxcar that I had to examine them
individually to see if they were red or green, whereas I could just assume that
the marbles in the shoebox were all green, without even taking the top off of
the box and looking..."
Mario
>
> In addition, it was planned to slaughter all POWs and civilian
> internees.
>
> The Rape of Manila is all of the evidence needed to see how a
> deaparate and cornered Japanese military dealt with a helpless
> civilian population.
Wasn't considered that this could happen also after the A-bombs?
--
H
wjho...@aol.com
> wjhopw...@aol.com wrote:
> > On May 8, 3:43 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> >> Are you referring to Japanese enemy aliens who were interned.
>
> > Yes, I clearly said so.
>
> In that case, we are outside the areas I've actually studied, and
> I have no business giving a yes/no answer, even to questions
> that actually invite one.
>
> I really don't understand your intentions, Mr. Hopwood.
Then let me tell you. My intentions are to expose and
correct the falsification and/or suppression of historical
evidence, particularly by those who may have had or do
have a vested financial, political, or emotional interest in
falsifying, misrepresenting, or suppressing such evidence
in the process of making the charge that during WWii
persons of Japanese ancestry were interned or evacuated
solely because of their race.
> Do you really think that a declaration from somebody
> ignorant of the.situation would be of any interest?
Not really. But in this forum we see such declarations
all the time--usually from the same individual(s) and most
often accompanied by a litany of ad hominem attacks.
So, considering the personal hostilities demonstrated by some
when exposed to their own lack of knowledge or emotional
shortcomings, it takes guts to admit, as you did, that when it
comes to issues about which you have insufficient knowledge,
it is probably best not to express an opinion thereon. Thanks
for that.
WJH
Don Kirkman
>Shawn Wilson <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On May 8, 3:27 pm, mtfes...@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
>> > Sorry, nobody has produced a document to support anything close to that number;
>> > I believe you're making it up.
>
>> It is easy enough to check.
>
>Please do so.
>
>> Issei were born in Japan and not US
>> citizens period (there simply was no naturalization path for them).
>
>For those who served in WWI, there was a brief window for naturalization.
Several Japanese were naturalized in the 19th century, though some of
them, influenced by their American experience including education,
returned to Japan and established universities along Western
principles. It wasn't until 1913, IIRC, that Asians were declared by
courts to be non-Whites with respect to immigration and naturalization
matters. (The informal distinction had always been black/white; since
the framers did not deal with other ethnicities like Asians and
Africans some courts considered Asians as part of the White category
and granted naturalization.} This bar to naturalization almost
immediately led to land ownership laws in several western states
denying the right to own land to immigrants ineligible for
naturalization.
In 1905 labor and political leaders in San Francisco urged Congress to
strengthen anti-Asian laws, primarily because of the increase in
Japanese immigration. The earthquake in 1906 was used as the basis
for turning the Chinatown school into an Asian school, forcing all
resident Asian children in the city to attend. Theodore Roosevelt
called for naturalization for Japanese immigrants as early as 1906,
when San Francisco's Chinese School episode nearly got the US into war
with Japan.
>> Nissei were their children (Japanese immigration in the US was recent,
>> so there weren't older generations) and had US and Japanese
>> citizenship.
>
>And the exclusion act of 1924 pretty much insured that any issei would
>have been in the US for 18 years, ensuring that there would be a very
>large number of
>> Interning the Issei was a no brainer. The (minor) Sansei merely went
>> with their parents rather than be separated from them. BTW interning
It's not true that "(minor) Sansei merely went with their parents
rather than be separated from them," that was not an option for any
minor, Nisei or Sansei; they were no less bound by the relocation
order than any other ethnic Japanese.
Sansei were still pretty scarce during WW II; most of the interned
Nikkei were Nisei (second generation; Sansei is third generation). The
youngest Issei would have been in their late teens (1924 cutoff), and
the bulk of the interned Nisei were school age or slightly older
adults.
Hawaii, of course, has always been about one generation ahead of the
mainland because of the numbers of Japanese who came to work the
plantations even before Hawaii became US territory. But we know the
Hawaiian Japanese were not interned except for a few identified
troublemakers.
>Amazingly enough, some sansei would have been adults at that time; do
>you not recall the gentleman's agreement of 1907.
And that relates to the Sansei how? Those Japanese actively involved
in the school matter were a few Japanese school children (certainly
not the "thousands" some claimed), young immigrants or Nisei. The
Sansei were still far in the future.
--
Don Kirkman
don...@charter.net
Stephen Graham
> Several Japanese were naturalized in the 19th century, though some of
> them, influenced by their American experience including education,
> returned to Japan and established universities along Western
> principles. It wasn't until 1913, IIRC, that Asians were declared by
> courts to be non-Whites with respect to immigration and naturalization
> matters.
Ozawa v. US was 1922. It's the same year as US v Bhagat Singh Thind that
established that you could be Caucasian but not white. Prior to then,
the Naturalization Acts (1906 and 1870) specified that you had to be
white or black, as you noted, but enforcement varied.
> Sansei were still pretty scarce during WW II; most of the interned
> Nikkei were Nisei (second generation; Sansei is third generation). The
> youngest Issei would have been in their late teens (1924 cutoff), and
> the bulk of the interned Nisei were school age or slightly older
> adults.
There were actually about 600 foreign-born Japanese under 17 in the
mainland US in 1940. I think they're mostly children born in Japan to
parents with prior right to residency in the US.
It's hard to tell exactly how many Sansei there were in the 1940s; all
we wind up with is total US-born population figures. But the number of
third-generation adults is not more than a few dozen.
> And that relates to the Sansei how? Those Japanese actively involved
> in the school matter were a few Japanese school children (certainly
> not the "thousands" some claimed), young immigrants or Nisei. The
> Sansei were still far in the future.
>
Because there were Nisei in their 70s: a grand total of 82 US-born
ethnically Japanese aged 60 or older in 1940.
Chris Morton
>
>Chris Morton, 20:52, lunedì 9 maggio 2011:
>
>>
>> internees.
>>
>> The Rape of Manila is all of the evidence needed to see how a
>> deaparate and cornered Japanese military dealt with a helpless
>> civilian population.
>
>
Mass murder was never off the table when it came to the Japanese, but I'm sure
the idea was (and correct as it turned out) that the atomic bombing(s) would so
shock the Japanese that they'd throw in the towel without taking further
vengeful action.
mtfe...@netmapsonscape.net
On May 10, 8:29 am, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> wjhopw...@aol.com wrote:
> > On May 8, 3:43 pm, David H Thornley <da...@thornley.net> wrote:
> > >> Are you referring to Japanese enemy aliens who were interned.
> > In that case, we are outside the areas I've actually studied, and
> > I have no business giving a yes/no answer, even to questions
> > that actually invite one.
> > I really don't understand your intentions, Mr. Hopwood.
> Then let me tell you. My intentions are to expose and
> correct the falsification and/or suppression of historical
> evidence, particularly by those who may have had or do
> have a vested financial, political, or emotional interest in
> falsifying, misrepresenting, or suppressing such evidence
> in the process of making the charge that during WWii
> persons of Japanese ancestry were interned or evacuated
> solely because of their race.
Then you have nothing to do; the political issue is settled.
The financial arrangements have been closed. No evidence has
been suppressed.
And there were principals involved in the decision who themselves
stated that the reason for the roundup was due to the race of the
people involved. Others, such as DeWitt, voiced their racism
unapologetically, and would wonder what the fuss was all about.
And history has made its judgement; that you personally don't like
that judgement is a matter of no consequence.
> > Do you really think that a declaration from somebody
> > ignorant of the.situation would be of any interest?
> Not really. But in this forum we see such declarations
> all the time--usually from the same individual(s) and most
So, someone who is ignorant of (eg) the fact that the camps
were surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire fences
is uninteresting? Someone who seems to believe that DeWitt's
"A Jap's a Jap... the Japanese race is an enemy race."
--General John DeWitt
means race wasn't a consideration should refrain from posting?
> often accompanied by a litany of ad hominem attacks.
As in someone telling other people they've been swayed
by "modern political considerations"? That they clearly
don't know what they're talking about since they disagree
with you?
Really, I'm sure that sounded better in your head.
> So, considering the personal hostilities demonstrated by some
> when exposed to their own lack of knowledge or emotional
> shortcomings, it takes guts to admit, as you did, that when it
> comes to issues about which you have insufficient knowledge,
> it is probably best not to express an opinion thereon. Thanks
> for that.
And when you exhibit similar guts, we'll assume the Apocalypse is
nigh.
But since you're full of yourself today, why not take a shot at these;
1) How did you figure that hundreds of U-boats operating off the East
coast for years after PH and sinking hundreds of US ships constituted
"only a brief" period of danger by the Kreigsmarine, yet the sinking
of less than 20 US ships off the West Coast by the IJN, ending less
than a year after PH showed the "Japanese threat" was viable "long
after" PH?
2) What "sound military purpose" was served by "relocating" orphans of
Japanese (or partial) descent?
3) Why it was "too difficult" to deal with 110,000 "Japanese" on an
individual basis, but the only way millions of "Germans" and "Italians"
was individually?
Mike
wjho...@aol.com
> On May 8, 3:27 pm, mtfes...wrote:
>
> > > > > They WERE enemy aliens.
> > > > No, more than 2/3 were US citizens.
> > > 99% of them were JAPANESE citizens,
>
> > Sorry, nobody has produced a document to support
> > anything close to that number; I believe you're making it up.
Well, 99% is too high, but It isn't too much trouble to figure out
a fairly accurate approximation of the dual citizen numbers.
Some background is in order:
The 1940 census revealed that there were then (I'm rouding
the numbers to the closest 1,000) 127,000 persons of Japanese
ancestry living on the mainland U,S. Of this number, 81,000 (64%)
were born in Japan and became enemy aliens after Pearl Harbor
and accordingly subject to internment, confiscation of property, and
deportation under long-standing U.S. and international law.
There were also 46,000 (36%) PJAs who were U,S, born, but
many of them held dual citizenship, i.e.Japanese and American.
So, how do we arrive at a reasonable number representing
the total of Americans of Japanese ancestry who were also
citizens of Japan? It's a bit complicated but more accurate
than uninformed guesses on both sides of the argument.
Dr. John J. Stephan, PhD in Japanese history, University of
London School of Oriental and African Studies, tells us that
before 1924; Imperial Japan regarded children born of a
Japanese father anywhere in the world to be Japanese citizens.
Although Japanese citizenship could be renounced by the
individual so afflicted, it seldom was. For many, there were
future advantages for maintaining it, family inheritance matters
in Japan being one. In Hawaii, for instance (which Stephan
uses as an example), of the Nisei born there prior to 1924,
only 8% had renounced their Japanese citizenship by the mid
1930s.
But in 1924 there was a change in the Japanese law. Tthe Imperial
Diet revised it to provide that children born of Japanese parents
outside of Japan would lose their Japanese citizenship two
weeks after birth unless the child had been registered by then with
a local Japanese diplomatic agency such as a Consulate or Embassy.
[See "Hawaii Under the Rising Sun"--John J. Stephan.
The 1924 version of the Japanese law was in effect at the time of
the Pearl Harbor attack. Shortly thereafter Japanese nationals,
wherever they lived and who were considered by the FBI as
possible or probable security risks, were in the process of being
reviewed for internment as enemy aliens while other Japanese
nationals and Japanese-Americans living in certain designated
military exclusion zones were asked to voluntarily move away from
such areas.
Those who could not or would not leave voluntarily
were then evacuated to hastily prepared relocation camps until
they could be screened for release to non-exclusion zones if so
desired or could otherwise stay in the centers for the duration.
There were a few persons of Japanese ancestry who had voluntarily
moved from the exclusion areas when asked, or who were already
living in non-exclusion areas who were not affected by the
evacuation
at all, putting the lie to the charge that the internments and
evacuation
had been motivated by "racism" as some more recently have claimed.
If racism had been the reason, how come those neither evacuated or
interned were left alone?
In the final analysis, War Relocation Authority documents indicate
that there were just over 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who
were evacuated. DOJ documents reveal that there were also just over
16,000 who were interned. All of the internees were enemy alien
nationals. But of the evacuees, 38,000 were American-born prior to
1924 and thus had acquired their Japanese citizenship at birth. If 8%
of those had renounced their Japanese citizenship as in Hawaii, it
seems reasonable to assume that a similar number would have
done so on the mainland which would leave. 33,000 who remained
dual citizens from their pre-1924 occasion of birth.
As for the post-1924 birth contingent of some 34,000 American-born
it also seems reasonable to assume that the same approx 40% had
been registered by their parents for Japanese citizenship within two
weeks as in Hawaii. That would would be 13,000 more dual citizens
to be added to the aforementioned 34,000. Accordingly, the total of
Japanese-Americans who could reasonably be considered to be also
citizens of Japan was 46,000 out of a total number of American-born
evacuees of Japanese ancestry (72,000), or 63%.
By the above calculations, which I consider to be a fair and
reasonable
representation of the numbers facing President Roosevelt and the
U.S. military leaders after Pearl Harbor, close to TWO-THIRDS of the
Japanese-Americans evacuated and relocated from West Coast war
zones were dual citizens, being also citizens of Japan.
Faced with these facts, it was, therefore, a bona fide matter of
national
security, to, in the immortal words of Gen. DeWitt "separate the
sheep
from the goats,"
.
WJH