Posted on 04/09/2021 10:37:05 AM PDT by TedMartin
LOS ANGELES, CA — The Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, one of the places Japanese Americans were held during World War II, will serve as an emergency shelter for unaccompanied children who have crossed the border into the United States, L.A. County has announced.
Hilda Solis, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said Thursday the decision was made after discussions with the Biden White House.
The Biden administration has contacted communities throughout the nation to find space for undocumented children being sheltered in Border Patrol facilities. It even urged, unsuccessfully, that NASA employees go to the border to volunteer in the overcrowded camps.
Also known as the Pomona Fairplex, the mega-facility in the city of Pomona is the third in Southern California to serve in that capacity.
In 1942, months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the detention of Japanese Americans, fearing they would be loyal to the emperor of Japan.
The Pomona location was selected as one of the camps. A California Historic Landmark plaque near Fairplex, at around 1099 West McKinley Avenue, Pomona, commemorates the event.
Opened in May 1942, the detention camp had 309 barracks, 8 mess halls, and 36 shower and latrine facilities. It reached a peak population of more than 5,000 before it closed later in the year. Most of the internees were transferred to another camp in Wyoming.
Today, the location serves as the Fairplex parking lot. In recent months, it has hosted one of L.A. County’s mega Covid-19 vaccination sites.
“Los Angeles County has a responsibility and an opportunity to care for unaccompanied minors coming to the United States,” Solis said. “This is not a border crisis – but, instead, it is everyone’s crisis.”
Long Beach and San Diego have both pledged to convert their convention centers into temporary shelters for migrant children.
The media will not bother to tell the public.
Oh, nose!
Better to send them back where they came from.
Where’s AOC?
I am sure the mainstream media will pick up this angle right away...NOT!
I realize this is almost cant by now, but... Imagine what the media would be saying if Trump did this.
Not just one, but TWO migrant children for each homeless person. They can keep them as pets.
But to understand interrment, one must look at the realities at the time.
In 1913 California passed the Alien Land Laws. These laws, along with others passed in 1920, prevented foreign born residents from owning or leasing agricultural property and restricted other behaviors. These laws were enforced haphazardly so that by 1940, foreign Japanese held control of 80% of vegetable agriculture. To compound matters, the farmers were all beholding in one form or another to the regional Japanese Consuls.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 prompted California, and the US Govt, to crack down on ‘enemy aliens’, initially focusing on those that arrived post-1935, and requiring them to register with their local Post Office and disclose any land or business holdings. Another law was passed restricting enemy aliens from access to short-band radios, ordering the surrender of weapons and restricting income of those aliens arriving after 1940 to $100/mo.
JC Carey letter (4 pages)
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/files/original/38539fa976a2b20d445a63c464be4261.jpg
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/files/original/3986b187b07fe1a0d6f684469062943e.jpg
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/files/original/8ef663ee22003a1b0bc6c82d9a5ce84e.jpghttp://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/files/original/99e655e67488acd6bbd81345f8e17f1f.jpg
removing shortwave capability from any radio an ‘enemy alien’ would have access to:
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/items/show/10643
led to confiscation of all radios, cameras and firearms:
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/items/show/10650
here's another letter, meeting minutes, that describes the Japanese as controlling 80% of Calif ag land, but only comprising 10% of the workforce, the majority being Filipino or Mexican. Concern is expressed Japanese own land directly adjacent to water treatment plants, power plants, hospitals and shipyards, and control dozens of water pumping plants. The possibility of sabotage is raised. A recommendation is made to remove enemy aliens from the area, for their own safety and for the peace of mind of residents who, at this point, really don't know who's going to win the war.
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/items/show/10652
Following reports that enemy aliens were meeting in secret in groups, that Army soldiers were being fired up by unknowns, and that some American nationals were working with Japanese insurgents, and additional concerns that Japanese controlled ag could be sabotaged either by late-planting or fields left fallow, further recommendations were made for removal to circumvent possible food shortages:
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/items/show/10653
http://exhibits.sos.ca.gov/items/show/10654
JC Carey wrote on Feb 18, 1942: “I believe that Japanese in California agriculture are a thousand times more dangerous than any and all other nationalities combined”
On Feb 23, 1942, a Jap submarine attacked Santa Barbara's Ellwood Oil Field, validating the fears of the citizens and the US Govt. Removal was then fast-tracked.
People may in hindsight say that Japanese losing their holdings was unfair, and that their treatment was racist, but putting oneself into the timezone of the decisions, it was a logical move at the beginning of what was to be a brutal war against vicious Japanese forces.
Politicians are always two faced. The elaborate propaganda hoax you posted at great length is a classic in stirring up the gullible so the connected could grab a mountain of booty. Nothing more than theft
yes, some propaganda, but also some truth.
And then there’s the Japanese Navy helping things along by targeting an oil field.
Understand that a Jap submarine off the central coast 2 months after Pearl Harbor tended to make the natives paranoid. For all Californians knew, LA or SF was about to become another Pearl Harbor. The level of paranoia is reflected by the ‘battle of Los Angeles’ the very next day.
The stories of the torture and cruel treatment of American GIs by Japanese soldiers in the subsequent months also didn’t help matters. Consider this first person account:
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=124054&page=1
When stories like this got out, and they did get out, fear was replaced with anger. GIs didn’t treat POWs as slaves to be worked to death, remains never to be recovered. And so the risk of revenge attacks on foreign nationals ran high.
What happened in California wasn’t unusual or racist. It was axis versus allies. Two different ethnicities were at war in WW2. And two very different ways of treating fellow humans - one beyond appauling and one honor-bound. But the same exclusion and isolation applied equally to Italians and Germans, who were also interred by the thousands and also considered enemy aliens.
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