Japanese-American graduate recalls wartime ordeal

Associated Press ^ | Aug 31, 2009 | Jim Salter

[decimon]

Yoshio Matsumoto was among the 110,000 Japanese-Americans seemingly bound for an internment camp soon after America entered World War II when a university he knew nothing about from a far off part of the country agreed to take him in.

[decimon]

The headline is not the article.

This is well written. The Relocation program was not alien detention but was for, primarily, Japanese citizens. The purpose was to move them inland. If they had some place to go on their own then they could avoid the camps.

[a fool in paradise]

The German born painter Max Ernst was interned several times in France at the start of WWII. First by the French and then by the Gestapo after France had been conquered.

The revised historical record would make you think that this was only done in America. How did US citizens in Japan fare?

I know how America, Dutch, and Russian prisoners fared at camp 731.

[kenavi]

In Orange County California, there is a building owned by a Japanese-American family, named for the Mexican to whom they gifted their nursery business prior to their deportation. He returned it to them after the War.

[Vigilanteman]

There are a fair number of them who ended up not going back to the coasts after the war because the people in flyover country treated them so well. There is a small, but vibrant Japanese-American community here in the Pittsburgh area, most of them associated with the universities or hospitals for which we are famous.

There is even a larger community of them in Salt Lake City who were helped to settle their by sympathetic Mormons whose ancestors had been kicked out of their own homes about a century earlier.

I'm not sure how many other places in the nation have similar Japanese American communities, but I do know that, with few exceptions, they've been an asset to their communities.

People in flyover country tend to judge people by what they can do rather than by the artificial platitudes of diversity. It was no coincidence that Booker T. Washington picked some little hick town in Alabama to found his great university rather than some glorious melting pot of diversity like New York City where more African Americans were lynched during three days of draft rioting than in any of the three worst years in the entire South.

[decimon]

In Orange County California, there is a building owned by a Japanese-American family, named for the Mexican to whom they gifted their nursery business prior to their deportation. He returned it to them after the War.

Damned good man.

[decimon]

The revised historical record would make you think that this was only done in America.

It's an old practice. Probably considered quite enlightened considering the older practice of slaughter.

[decimon]

From what I’ve read, relocation was for the West and part of the Gulf coasts. Some Italian-Americans were forced to relocate for a few months and many more were subject to an exclusion policy which forced them but a few miles inland.

It’s been said that none of this applied to the East Coast due to the political clout and sheer numbers of East Coast Italians. Many did, however, have to carry ID cards. That may have included my father, an Italian immigrant-citizen, but I don’t know.

[staytrue]

In Orange County California, there is a building owned by a Japanese-American family, named for the Mexican to whom they gifted their nursery business prior to their deportation. He returned it to them after the War.

There is a body of thought that the internment was not about security, but was about stealing the land and other possessions of the Japanese-Americans.

[decimon]

There is a body of thought that the internment was not about security, but was about stealing the land and other possessions of the Japanese-Americans.

My take has been that the federal policy was for security but that opportunists did what opportunists do.

Running those camps was a waste of resources while on an all-out war footing.

[decimon]

Hawaii was a different story. There were far more Japanese-Americans there and they were not relocated to any camps. OTOH, all of Hawaii was placed under martial law.

[Jacquerie]

“No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of Law.” US Constitution, 5th Amendment.

The points in your post are irrelevant.

[decimon]

The points in your post are irrelevant.

I don't think so. Relocation was for citizens and couldn't easily be repeated but alien detention in time of hostilities is accepted under international law. What there is of international law, that is.

[Jacquerie]

American citizens were rounded up and sent to camps without due process. If you think it was Constitutional you are in company with the anti-Semite, Catholic hating, KKK Justice Hugo Black who wrote the majority opinion in Korematsu v. United States.

In dissent, “Guilt is personal, not inheritable” - Justice R.H. Jackson.

[decimon]

American citizens were rounded up and sent to camps without due process. If you think it was Constitutional...

I didn't say it was Constitutional. I said that alien detention is and remains possible.

[a fool in paradise]

So no other nation owes its people anything because they don’t abide by our Constitution. Fair enough.

Except our rights come from God and the same argument can be made in any land.

[a fool in paradise]

My point wasn’t to “justify” it. It was to show the revisionist double standard that the US is held to in this matter. We are the sole bad guys. Well us and the Nazis who relocated people to the ghettos and then death camps.

The Ruskies get a pass on sending their people to the gulags. FDR had a VP who visited the gulags and was ok with it.

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks decimon. The upshot is, the Japanese who were interned weren't impressed as slave labor, tortured, or mass-murdered. They were also not subjected to abuse by various racists in the street (an obvious potential hazard had they not been interned). And, as a libtard college chum once pointed out, the Japanese had zero success in building any kind of reliable or nontrivial network of spies, and never broke our codes, and that ain't a coincidence. What's the big deal anyway? FDR could do no wrong. Sure, he knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and moved the aircraft carriers out of harm's way, knowing that carriers would be crucial in the Pacific war, but really, who thinks more lives would have been saved (particularly in the U.S.) had we not been dragged into a declaration of war? No ping, just adding to the catalog. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[decimon]

My point wasn’t to “justify” it. It was to show the revisionist double standard that the US is held to in this matter.

I agree but think the revisionism is ending. I said the article is well written because the author seems to know the facts. Ten years ago the same author would likely have repeated some misinformation.

We also interned (meaning alien detention) in WWI. Germans and others. In WWI and WWII, Canada the UK and Australia had programs similar to or worse than ours.