Have you ever heard of the Black Dragon fraternity? It was a social group of Japanese ex-pats associated with the Japanese military.
What happened in the Philippines when the Japanese military invaded those islands greatly influenced what happened later in the USA. Members of Black Dragon, mainly shopkeepers and small businessmen, closed up their shops, changed into Japanese Army uniforms and took out their hidden rifles. Then they went about murdering their neighbors, conducting sabotage of infrastructure, and attacking the rear and flanks of the Philippine defenders. They facilitated the Japanese takeover of the Philippine Islands.
The US government, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was left with a difficult decision. The seething resentment and anger of the general population within the 48 continental states was palpable. There existed Black Dragon fraternities within ethnic Japanese communities, but the government was more concerned with the reactions by the general population to any efforts made by Black Dragon members. The last thing the government wanted was a rampaging campaign of elimination against Asians.
Internment and theft of possessions was the least of it.
Thanks for another reality ignored:
Have you ever heard of the Black Dragon fraternity? It was a social group of Japanese ex-pats associated with the Japanese military.
What happened in the Philippines when the Japanese military invaded those islands greatly influenced what happened later in the USA. Members of Black Dragon, mainly shopkeepers and small businessmen, closed up their shops, changed into Japanese Army uniforms and took out their hidden rifles. Then they went about murdering their neighbors, conducting sabotage of infrastructure, and attacking the rear and flanks of the Philippine defenders. They facilitated the Japanese takeover of the Philippine Islands.
The US government, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was left with a difficult decision. The seething resentment and anger of the general population within the 48 continental states was palpable. There existed Black Dragon fraternities within ethnic Japanese communities, but the government was more concerned with the reactions by the general population to any efforts made by Black Dragon members. The last thing the government wanted was a rampaging campaign of elimination against Asians.
Internment and theft of possessions was the least of it.
This is correct.
Every single civilian memoir of the day (and I collect these memoirs of the Philippines in the war) mentions the ridiculous profusion of spies in the Philippines. The day the Japanese army walked in all these shopkeepers, photographers. businessmen, drivers, servants; the staff of Japanese firms and plantations, all turned out to be military or paramilitary operatives.
Every single one of the sources I have read, whether written by famous politicians or people who were children at the time, they all mention some or many variations of this.