[risk]

Honda was in the news here in Kaliforniastan over the weekend "reaching out" once again to potential victims of racism and discrimination due to our war on terror. This article seemed to be an appropriate response. The difference between the way we fought WWII and how we're "fighting" now is that in 1941 we aimed to win at any cost.

We could lose this war thanks to people like Honda who think it isn't serious enough to warrant an all out effort to win.

[risk]

ping

[cyborg]

Locking up Americans was wrong but why is this being discussed now? Two entirely different wars in two very different times.

[muawiyah]

Sometimes an article is full of total B*S*. For example: "Dr. McGrath also notes that the American Japanese Claims Act of 1948 led to the provision of $35 million paid on thousands of Japanese-Americans claims for lost or damaged homes, or even crop loss, as a result of their being called away from their homes during a national emergency -- just as so many millions of American men were called away from their homes to serve in our armed forces where half a million of them were killed fighting our national enemies."

This is of little comfort to any individual Japanese-American citizen family which LOST over $35,000,000 in property while their sons were serving and dieing in the American armed forces overseas.

Just give me this Kinsolving guy, Manzanar, and I'm in the guardtower with a firearm and he wants to come too close to the fence. I'll show him what a concentration camp is like. You'd better believe buddy! Let me at him.

[AntiGuv]

were Japanese internment camps wrong?

Yep, they sure were.

[Steely Tom]

Of course they weren't wrong.

Now, if they had been set up during the administration of a Republican president, they would have been the most grevious crime ever committed in human history.

Who doesn't understand this? Its just logic.

(steely)

[Travis McGee]

Outstanding article, finally stating what so few Americans understand about this chapter of WW2.

[junta]

He forgot major portions of McGrath's article in "Chronicles" namely about the Tule lake camp where the internees celebrated Pearl Harbor day. And of course he forgets to mention how many Japanese took off for the homeland and how many who couldn't get out of the states renounced their American citizenship. Or that a large portion of the second generation Japanese were propagandized to think of themselves as just that Japanese not Americans (think Mexicans today) and a large program existed to take these kids back to Japan for proper education in being Japanese. Or how many Japanese-americans served the empire.

[Condor51]

"Just ask those Marines who regard February 19 as their Day of Remembrance. On that date in 1945 they stormed ashore on Iwo Jima, where more than 6,000 of them died. That's a sacrifice to remember – and honor."

One of those 6,000 was a boyhood friend of my mother. I remember when I was about five and looking through the family photo album, there was this 8x10 picture of a young marine and I asked who it was. She said it was a boy who used to live in the apartment up stairs and died on Iwo Jima.

She also told me that he had a closed casket wake because - HIS BODY WAS BUTCHERED by the japanese.

[sargon]

IMHO, those concentration camps were illegal, FDR and the Supreme Court's tyranny notwithstanding.

I'm not aware of a single Japanese American who was charged with any war-related crime during that period.

They were simply presumed to be potentially disloyal because of their ethnicity, in disregard of their American citizenship and INDIVIDUAL rights.

The internment camps were an abomination, and so was FDR.

How could anyone endorse such statist, anti-individual, hysterical Tyranny?

Contrast this with the present day, where those who are "rounded up," at least, are individuals, and who have raised, at a minimum, some level of reasonable suspicion.

Methinks there are some around here who would like to put all American Muslims in concentration camps.

It was wrong then, and it would be wrong now...

[ChadGore]

I judge FDR on the results.

At a time when the country was in total and complete War in 2 countries, how many japaneese terrorist attacks did we suffer on our soil ?

None. Thus I guage the decision as a sound wartime decision.

[G.Mason]

No.

[CounterCounterCulture]

I posted this two years ago...
60th Anniversary of Japanese Internment by FDR - Executive Order 9066

[tacticalogic]

This is an insult to the U.S. Supreme Court's liberals such as Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black and Willaim O. Douglas,

I take it that's supposed to be some kind of scathing indictment.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

[were Japanese internment camps wrong?]

Yes. Of course. Locking up people who have committed no crime is always wrong.

Was it necessary? That is another question. And quite a different one.

[Congressman Billybob]

I know and admire Les Kinsolving. But in this instance he is dead wrong. The original Army descriptions called the Japanese-American internment camps, "concentration camps." We changed the label after we found out what the Germans were doing under that label.

Ultimately, the camps WERE ruled unconstitutional, by a LOWER court. The issue went up to the Supreme Court, and to its eternal shame, it refused the case and left standing the LOWER court decision which fouond that the imprisonment of Fred Korematsu, for the "crime" of being a Japanese-American and without charges or trial. Google BOTH cases named Korematsu v. US forty years apart.

Or you can get and read my book Manzanar which gives the history of these "concentration camps." It's in most major libraries, especially in the West.

Roosevelt was wrong to issue his Order. The six Justices who voted to approve the Order were wrong. And Les is dead wrong in this article.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, "Congressmen, Humorists, Burglars -- All of Us in the Trade."

[Wurlitzer]

Well if after Beruit, Cole, WTC (first strike) etc, etc, we had interned all non-citizen mudslimes, 9/11 would not have occured.

Islime is a Trojan horse in our country. Ignore it if you wish but lets face it the government violates our rights everyday if you fly or go to a court house. If they are going to do it at lease focus on the trash that is creating the problem.

[Beckwith]

Just remember who signed the internment order. None other than that great liberal justice, Earl Warren.

[N3WBI3]

It was wrong, period... People without due process were stripped of their freedom and property. As conservativeswe should never table this issue because it hurts our pride abit after all we conservatives realize the Government makes mistakes..

[Doctor Stochastic]

Where does Kinsolving get his 17,000 number from? The government generally claims about 120,000.

[TASMANIANRED]

The other dirty little secret is although only the Japanese got reparations, the caucasions in German internment camps in the United States did not.

Yes, there were German internment camps.