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To: Brian Allen
Contrary to your claim, the case was that virtually none of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast had the slightest loyalty to Japan. There are a number of reasons for this, most stemming back to an event called the Meiji Restoration.

As a practical matter, most of the Issei would be considered political refugees under today's understanding of the term. In any case, the greater part of the JA population were children. By Constitutional right they were citizens.

There are numerous books written about the situation. You should read them first.

It is rather startling to see the old WWII anti-Japanese racist propaganda popping up here in FR.

57 posted on 04/06/2002 3:05:44 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah
It is rather startling to see the old WWII anti-Japanese racist propaganda popping up here in FR.

This is old news. This is not anti japanese propaganda but it is accurate. But why Freepers would condone US govt. abuse of japanese americans and justify said abuse because of the Japanese military's actions in WWII is unacceptable.

Here is the dichotomy. White people want to point fingers at the past history of a barbaric japan, but then when it comes to slavery, killing the indians, etc., they want to convieniently forget about it.

59 posted on 04/06/2002 4:00:28 PM PST by staytrue
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To: muawiyah; Sky Pilot
If I may paraphrase John Derbyshire:

Although the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II is generally regarded as a very disgraceful episode-- the U.S. government interning U.S. citizens for reasons suspiciously racist [German-Americans and Italian-Americans were not interned in anything like such numbers, although many were interned] -- it was not, in the circumstances, not at all a deplorable action.

Your hyperbolic claim to the contrary notwithstanding, every internee, including those with United States Citizenship, was a Japanese citizen.

[At that time, Japanese automatically inherited citizenship from their fathers]

Only Japanese-Americans in likely infiltration areas were interned. Those in New York, Nebraska and Hawaii were not.

Japan had attacked American Territory; Germany and Italy had not. The camps were comfortable and contained beauty parlors, for example; in at least one case a Kabuki theater -- and were regularly visited by all the major news organizations of the time.

Japanese-Americans were given the choice of returning to Japan, and many did so. The Japanese authorities regarded them with deep suspicion and put them to forced labor in concentration camps.

Those Japanese-Americans who were interned all argue that they were not security threats and I am sure most were not. And am equally sure that a great many were. The record shows that the phrase "Nihon ga kateba ii" -- "I hope Japan wins"-- was very often heard among Japanese-Americans at the time.

That said, I thank you also for your haughty presumption as to my reading habits. Soory to disappoint but I have not only read modern history but also have lived quite a bit of it.

Half of my family spent all of World War Two under Japanese rule and several members of my wife's family were murdered by them. [As were forty million other innocents -- Hirohito, despite subsequent whitewashing and revisionism remains Human History's fourth most prolific mass-murderer!] Two of my Uncles; my mother's brother and brother-in-law; endured four years as Japanese prisonors in Singapore's Changi Prison.

That you would call our vivid memories of those appalling years of Japanese rape, torture, casual murder and fearsome and of loathesome brutality almost beyond the ability of the Human mind to comprehend: "the old WWII anti-Japanese racist propaganda;" is beyond, "rather startling."

It is bloody contemptible!

60 posted on 04/06/2002 4:04:26 PM PST by Brian Allen
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