[LS]

There were some important differences and you know it: a) FDR did not put all Japanese in camps, only those on the West Coast where we were EXPECTING AN INVASION and where there was no certainty about loyalty;

b) All were processed by the FBI and many released after being cleared. It was slow, but it in no way compares with Hitler, and to suggest it did is sophistry.

c) Enacting necessary WARTIME measures, that are later determined to be unconstitution, does not make it "wrong." It was not constitutional, but it was the wise and prudent thing to do. Some German-Americans and Italian-Americans were also detained on the East Coast, though there was never any danger of the Axis invading there.

[WildHorseCrash]

There were some important differences and you know it: a) FDR did not put all Japanese in camps, only those on the West Coast where we were EXPECTING AN INVASION and where there was no certainty about loyalty;

It is evil for the Government to put a man into detention, stripping him of his rights as an American, when he did nothing wrong and when the Government has no evidence of wrongdoing, nor even the glimmerist of suspicion that he did anything wrong save for the fact that he or his ancestors were born in another country. Unless you believe the rights of the individual must bend to the power of the collective or the state...

b) All were processed by the FBI and many released after being cleared. It was slow, but it in no way compares with Hitler, and to suggest it did is sophistry.

It is the detention of these people, stripping them of their liberty and property in the first place which is evil, and not merely the slow process of "clearing" them.

Also, I did not make any comparison to Hitler in the least. All I said was that it was wrong when FDR did it, and it would be wrong now.

c) Enacting necessary WARTIME measures, that are later determined to be unconstitution, does not make it "wrong." It was not constitutional, but it was the wise and prudent thing to do. Some German-Americans and Italian-Americans were also detained on the East Coast, though there was never any danger of the Axis invading there.

First, you put the rabbit in the hat by first asserting that they were "necessary" measures. They were not. It was wholesale scapegoating and denial of the civil rights of FDR and Earl Warren's fellow citizens, most native-born Americans, for no reason other than because of their ancestry and because an unreasonable fear tinged with racial/ethnic animus.

Second, it was not wise and prudent. First, it arbitrarily and capriciously stripped them of the rights they had as Americans, something that can never be wise nor prudent. Further, it gave a huge propaganda victory to the Japanese Empire, who pointed to these actions as another example of the white man oppressing the Asian man. This was the major propaganda theme connected to the "Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" which Japan was pushing in the Asia nations it conquered. Also, it was a massive misallocation of resources at a time when all resources should have been aimed at fighting the enemy. One need only look at the records of the Nisei soldiers fighting as the good Americans they were and liberating Europe while their families were being held captive in the US, to question the wisdom of considering 120,000 people presumptive traitors absent even a micron of evidence of that status.

Finally, it was equally evil for the Government to hold Americans of German or Italian dissent where there was no evidence that these American were guilty of anything.

[Great Caesars Ghost]

People conveniently forget that there were plenty of Japanese spies on the west coast. That was why they did the internment, they couldn't afford to take the time it would have taken to weed them out by usual methods.

Some of the things that HAPPENED to people who were interned, loss of property, etc., was another matter entirely, to be handled on individual bases, which I believe they have been.

[MozarkDawg]

c) Enacting necessary WARTIME measures, that are later determined to be unconstitution, does not make it "wrong." It was not constitutional, but it was the wise and prudent thing to do.

I beg to differ. CITIZENS of the United States of America were rounded up, placed into camps and had their property confiscated, what they hadn't managed to sell for ridiculously underpriced rate. They were DENIED their CONSTITUTIONAL rights simply because they happened to be persons of Japanese descent, never exhibited any kind of threat to the security of this country whatsoever.

Paranoia during wartime is simply no excuse for this kind of thing.

[investigateworld]

I have a little different take on FDR's action. By February 1942, it was well know that the Imperial Japanese expansion would be southward, the Philippines and Indonesia. In fact the military was confident enough to allow the West Coast Aircraft Manufacturing plants to expand, rather than relocate.
The answer lies in every County Tax Collectors records on the West Coast. For when FDR put them into camps, he also frozen all bank accounts. Funny, as a Japannes-American you could be on the East Coast, welding submarines, living a normal life.
But if one was of that ancestry else where, off to jail with you.