Posted on 12/07/2016 3:20:32 PM PST by nickcarraway
Seventy-five years ago today, hundreds of Japanese bombers attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. America's shock, and its grief for the more than 2,000 US military dead on this date of "infamy" led to overwhelming unity of purpose as we entered a world war.
Yet America's unity was matched by its profound fears about national security in the days after Pearl Harbor. Well before December 7, 1941, Americans believed that enemy spies and saboteurs lived among us. Some did, though not nearly as many as we imagined. In 1940, the FBI reportedly received 3,000 complaints or tips every day regarding acts against America's national defense.
Amid this climate of fear, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to detain and question thousands suspected of having ties to America's enemies. Many Germans and Italians were arrested in the days after Pearl Harbor, but the American people's fear of "persons of Japanese ancestry" hardened the most.
In the months after the attack, the US government acted decisively on these fears, physically relocating more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, more than two-thirds of whom were American citizens, to 10 inland camps across Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. Many more temporary detention centers and assembly centers dotted the American landscape in 1942.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
In 1941 a CNN would have blame the US for provoking The Empire Of Japan with the oil embargo.,
Not fear, stupid moronic CNN - righteous anger. Outrage. Totally different from what YOUR audience would do if it happened tomorrow.
They talk about fear like there isn’t anything good that comes out of fear.
Fear can make people more careful. Fear can stop people from doing stupid things. Fear can make people think twice before doing something they would come to regret. Fear makes you examine risk and risk vs payoff. Fear is what gets a lot of people to stay away from a bad place at bad times.
They do not understand rational fears versus irrational fears. They believe all fear is irrational.
Rational fear is also healthy respect for something. Rational fear is what causes people to take precations and plan ahead for potential problems.
Rational fear doesn’t turn someone into a phobic person who can’t function normally on a daily basis, that sees trouble around every corner. That is irrational fear.
These people are just propagandists trying to spin off rational concerns and solutions as irrational. We all know they are doing this.
How did I know that the rats at CNN would blame us somehow?
headline should read “conservative extremist Christian ministers” and Second Amendment beliving patriots
She said she prayed, and felt it was reveled to her that we would prevail with much suffering.
The Response to Pearl Harbor was WAY out of proportion to a war that we were LOSING.
>>Americans believed that enemy spies and saboteurs lived among us. Some did, though not nearly as many as we imagined
How many did we imagine, Daniel? Have you read Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast During Ww II? I strongly doubt it. Japanese / Japanese-Americans were reporting home all ship movements in Long Beach harbor, for but one example, from a fishing village on a small island there.
https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Intelligence-Evacuation-Japanese-Residents/dp/0960273611
Further, Japanese / Japanese-Americans tended to send their kids back to the mother country for schooling, which very much included indoctrination in Japanese militarism. This was unlike German and Italian immigrants.
This is just another standard “Pearl Harbor was bad, but America was so evil and racist for interning the Japanese, let’s talk about that” type article. Bleh.
The article makes a big deal that some called them "concentration camps." At the beginning of the war the term did not have the evil connotation it had at the end. They were simply camps where people were, well, concentrated. Once we discovered the Nazis were turning concentration camps into death camps the term acquired a very different connotation.
Not to defend what happened. The Supreme Court adopted the strict scrutiny test for discrimination based on color or national origin, but then botched the application of that test in finding the internments legal.
Incidentally, the Hawaii Japanese were not interned for the practical reason that Hawaii could not function without the Japanese labor force. Japanese volunteered for the American armed forces in much higher numbers in Hawaii than in the continental U.S.
You’re right. In the reading I’ve done on WW2 one of the recurring themes is American soldiers meeting Japanese soldiers who went to school in the US, who grew up in the US, played baseball, and etc.
When these Japanese-Americans had to choose between the US and Japan they chose Japan.
Thus there was good reason to be cautious about a population within our borders who were known and proven to have had loyalties to and sympathies with the enemy.
Not unlike today with the Muslims who lobby for Sharia law in the USA. They’re our enemies, too.
Yep. And ignored news of the bombing and invasions of Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Dutch Indonesia because it interfered with our understanding Japan’s legitimate grievances.
How would the modern media have reported it?
Video: D-Day: Crisis On Omaha
Leave it to CNN to attack the US on the 7th of December.
Something else liberals ignore from World War 2 - when Germans arrived in plain clothes intent on guerilla warfare and sabotage, we captured them and executed them per the Geneva Convention rules.
You have to wear a uniform, have a clear chain of command and try to minimize atrocities on civilians to get protection as a prisoner of war. Target civilians en mass, commit war crimes, dress up like the average person and go for sabotage - we can kill you.
WORLD WAR 2 PROVES WE HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO EXECUTE TERRORISTS.
Michelle Malkin wrote an excellent book on the same subject, 'A Case for Internment', that presented angles that I had not heard previously. Perhaps similar to what was written in 'Magic'.
Trying to play 'Monday Morning' quarterback, from the comfort of American society some 40 - 50+ years after the war, and asking why those who just had their Pacific Fleet basically destroyed in one day (and the fall of the Philippines, shortly afterward) could have acted the way that they did - is the epitome of moronic arrogance.
Of course there was fear after Pearl Harbor.
Task Force 8, commanded by Adm. Halsey, were the only ships prepared to defend the Western Pacific.
Task Force 8 consisted of the carrier USS Enterprise, 3 cruisers and 9 destroyers.
The Japanese Fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor consisted of 6 carriers, 2 battleships, 3 cruisers, 9 destroyers, and 23 submarines.
The Japanese Fleet could have cruised up and done the West Coast destroying city and city. Or worse, destroying the Panama Canal locks.
Fat Man & Little Boy - 4EVA!!!
The religion of the Japanese then was Shinto-Budism, a religion that holds the the Emperor of Japan to be a God - who required absolute allegiance and obedience. Today's PC media and education institutions censor the fact that most Japanese homes had a small Shinto-Budist shrine/alter where the family would pray and declare devotion to the Emperor.
That's the unavoidable reason why yesterday's equivalent of Islam's suicide bombers were Japan's Kamikazes.
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