Posted on 08/11/2004 3:10:27 AM PDT by alloysteel
I recently spoke with a group of bright, young law students and undergrads from the best schools in the country, including Yale, Georgetown, the University of Chicago and William and Mary. We discussed my new book, "In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror."
When I mentioned that a large number of those interned in U.S. Department of Justice camps were of European descent, the students showed surprise. "I didn't know that," someone said aloud.
Thanks to a left-wing monopoly on the teaching of World War II history, not many other Americans know about these long-forgotten internees, either.
Generations of schoolchildren have been taught to believe that our government threw only ethnic Japanese into camps because of wartime hysteria and anti-Asian bigotry. It's a convenient myth that allows today's civil liberties absolutists to guilt-trip America into opposing any use of racial, nationality or religious profiling to protect the homeland.
In fact, enemy aliens from all Axis nations -- not just Japan -- were subjected to curfews, registration, censorship, exclusion from sensitive areas and internment during World War II. Enemy aliens from Europe and their family members (many of whom were U.S.-born) made up nearly half of the total internee population.
Among them was Arthur D. Jacobs, an American-born son of German immigrants. Jacobs' father was rounded up in Brooklyn and sent to a temporary internment camp on Ellis Island in late 1944 after his name inexplicably showed up on a Nazi Party list. Though Jacobs later learned that the case against his father was weak, the entire family was resettled at the Crystal City, Texas, internment camp, where he and other ethnic German internees lived side-by-side with ethnic Japanese internees. In January 1946, Jacobs and his family were repatriated to Germany. Just 12 years old, Jacobs was separated from his parents and brother and briefly confined in a German prison called Hohenasperg.
After a harrowing bureaucratic nightmare, he and an older brother, both U.S. citizens, were returned to the United States more than a year later without their parents. Jacobs enlisted in the Air Force and served honorably until 1973, when he left the military to embark on a distinguished business and academic career. He now resides in Tempe, Ariz.
Jacobs has dedicated his retirement years to dispelling politically correct myths about the World War II internment. After President Reagan signed a reparations law in August 1988 that awarded nearly $1.65 billion in restitution to ethnic Japanese interned or evacuated from the West Coast, Jacobs went to court. Motivated not by financial gain but by the drive for historical accuracy, Jacobs argued pointedly that the reparations law unconstitutionally discriminated against internees of European descent in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Jacobs' lawsuit was fiercely opposed by every major Japanese-American leader and group in the country. The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled against him, and in October 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court refused without comment to hear Jacobs' appeal.
The apology and reparations for ethnic Japanese (including those born in the camps, those who resisted the draft, those who renounced their U.S. citizenship and those who had gathered intelligence for Japan) perpetuated anger and frustration among European internees and their families, none of whom received an apology or compensation. Even worse, the law created a historical blind spot about the World War II internment episode in the courts and classrooms that persists today.
"Hopefully, history will overcome our nation's current obsession with the alleged victimization of racial minorities to the extent that the wartime suffering of non-minority citizens such as Arthur D. Jacobs and the thousands of others like him will finally be recognized," wrote World War II veteran and retired U.S. Naval commander William Hopwood in the afterword to Jacobs' autobiography. "Fairness and common decency call for it, and our nation owes them no less."
I read somewhere that Joe Dimaggio's father was detained for a while.
The internment of Japanese was stupid, especially since they were not interned in the only part of America where their disloyalty was a real threat (Hawaii), but the issue is far more complex than today's liberal agenda allows for. The myth as it stands is too good a stick to beat on America with.
Interesting that "America" is responsible, since Democrats controlled all three branches of government at this time.
But we won the war. Now we go the other route, nudging our enemies here, prodding them there, and apologizing every step of the way.
That's all well and good, but America may cease to exist after this generation finally gets too tired to complain.
First we win, then we're nice. It's the only way that is known to work. Everything else is a laboratory experiment with our future at stake.
I could respect Michelle Malkin if she would answer one simple question: has she ever filed an immigration petition on behalf of any of her Filipino relatives?
I asked her this question point-blank in an immigration-reform chat room she was participating in, and she refused to answer.
I think a distinction should have been made between foreign nationals of a belligerant power, and American citizens who came from from a belligerant foreign nation. The former should have all been interned unless they were cooperating with our military effort in some capacity. The latter should have been the subject of close scrutiny and judged as individuals.
But neither in the case of Japan, Germany or Italy were the situations quite as analogous as that facing us now with Islam.
None of the Axis powers succeeded in pulling off the kind of attack as was executed on 9-1-1. Americans of Japanese, German and Italian extraction served with distinction in battle against their own relatives, and Europe and the Far East were riddled with corpses of Japanese-American, Italian-American and German-American citizens. Eisenhower himself was a descendant of German-Americans.
Contrast this with the actions and philosophy of individuals who are American and Islamic. There was no collective outrage at the actions of their correligionists at 9-1-1. There is no colletive outrage at the continued plotting and planning of mayhem against their adopted country in the mosques and madrassehs of the Middle East and even here in America. By their very religious beliefs, they are Muslims first and foremost and any national allegiance takes a secondary or tertiary place to that allegiance. They are enjoined by their faith not to make war on other Muslims, especially in concert with non-Muslims, and they are enjoined not to take "unbelievers" as friends.
The growing Muslim population in America is - like the growing Muslim population in the rest of the world, a ticking time bomb, and Michelle Malkin is right on the mark here, if she not too condign in her assessments on them.
From my understanding of the Hawaii situation, Japanese made up such a large proportion of the population in Hawaii that it was impractical and dangerous to intern the Japanese. Instead, the whole Island was effectively placed under marshall law with cufews and such.
That is correct. They were not interned in Hawaii,where they made up about 1/3 of the population in a potentially frontline location. Fifth column activity there would have been devastating.
Meanwhile, in the Western US, where there weren't enough of them to really pose a threat, they were hauled off.
Still, as I noted, the issue was much more complex than the liberal myth. For instance, there was genuine danger of massive mob action against the Japanese if the government didn't "do something."
A classic in this regard was some dumb TV movie of 10 years ago or so, where the teenage girl was born in the camps and was all conflicted by it. At the time, she would have had to be at least 45 years old! But they can't give up their myth.
FWIW, some Jews behave somewhat the same way, as if recognizing that others also suffered under Nazi, Commie and other oppression would detract from their status as uber-victims.
"I could respect Michelle Malkin if she would answer one simple question: has she ever filed an immigration petition on behalf of any of her Filipino relatives?"
I do not understand why it is any of your business.
Ms. Malkin, like the rest of us, are free to follow the law to our own and our own family's advantage. Why are her relations with her own family of interest to you?
Guess what, a liberal fascist Democrat FDR did it. He even enlisted women and feminists for support of the cause.
The story of the Niihau invasion is related to this and the reasons the internments came about....
Malkin has a version, which is how I learned about it.
I like this version best..
http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/PearlHarbor.htm
You know we did run the Phillipines for over 50 years.
You hit the nail on the head. Maybe we will get it.
How did you know that she has relatives here? How did you know that they need immigration processing? Wouldn't you agree that she is not responsible for anyone but herself and her own dependdants? This isn't the Soviet Union where people were punished for not tattling on their relatives to the commisars.
bttt
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