Posted on 01/31/2017 5:11:01 AM PST by topher
If you were a Pole you had damned good reason to kill Germans, any Germans. And later, to kill Russians, any Russians. The ones who enabled the war machines were just as guilty as the leaders and fighters.
Lots. Wish more conservative people would chose professions like that.
For the US military and FDR after Pearl Harbor, the evidence of active Japanese spy and sabotage rings was conclusive and alarming in its implications. The Black Tom explosion in 1916 and instances of spying and sabotage after 1939 showed how vulnerable and unprepared the US was for the demands of wartime internal security.
In addition to the evidence from intelligence decrypts and military and FBI investigations, a little known incident suggested that the loyalty of Japanese Americans could not be fully relied on. After the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese pilot crash landed on the small Hawaiian island of Niihau. He was captured by local native Hawaiians, but was then let loose by several Japanese Americans, gained weapons, and took hostages before he was killed.
With that example at hand, it seemed clear at the time that as to Japanese Americans, the excitement of war might prompt some to put ethnic allegiance ahead of loyalty to the United States. This would be particularly dangerous on the wide open US west coast with its essential military production and port and rail facilities.
The argument has been made that the failure to intern all but a relative few Japanese Americans in Hawaii proves that racism was at work in regard to the internment on the US mainland. In contrast to the west coast, military facilities in Hawaii were well secured and the civilian population had long been closely monitored by police and military intelligence.
Interning Japanese American men from the west coast without their families would have many distressing consequences. It would have separated women and children from their natural providers and protectors and increased the distress of the male internees.
As the threat of Japanese attack and invasion of the west coast receded, the camps were mostly emptied out and closed in early 1945. Notably, Japanese Americans in most of the US were not interned, and many Japanese Americans were permitted to relocate away from the West Coast. Some 15,000 or so chose to be repatriated to Japan after WW II.
To their credit, many Japanese Americans went from the internment camps to loyal and meritorious service in the military during WW II. In that era, my father's room mate at the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point was a Japanese American internee. He led my father to a sharp hostility to internment, a view that I absorbed as a boy. Only after reading the historical evidence in recent years did I come to think that FDR and the military were justified in their exclusion and internment policies.
Two solid arguments. I agree with most of what you typed in both posts. I still say that internment of Americans is a slippery slope, especially when fighting multiple enemies and we choose one. But good post.
Some old goats on this site learned the word noob from their grandkids apparently.
I guess I’m a noob, I don’t know. If flying dozens of Mitsubishi zero pilots to the boat, flying hundreds of traps in my career, and caddying for holocaust survivors at a Jewish country club in my childhood means I’m a noob, then I’m a noob.
Like you, I stand for freedom. I appreciate your post, kindness, and reasoning.
The greater danger today is our vulnerability to lawfare, hybrid warfare, and grand jihad by Islam's strategists and savage adherents. Above all, we must make sure that we defeat them utterly -- using any means necessary.
What carriers did you fly from? Years ago, I spent and afternoon on the Saratoga. Impressive.
Agree, well said.
The Indy was my favorite (Saratoga twin), then cruised on KH, Carl Vinson, Reagan, GW, .... and about 5 or 6 others here and there just day hits from the beach.
Got lucky and learned how to fly. I became very passionate about freedom after being fortunate enough to fly around the world at taxpayer expense onto beautiful american made warships. I feel that I owe everyone for a great experience, young and old.
I envy such a career. As a boy, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but bad eyesight and spotty health made that an impossibility.
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