Posted on 02/06/2003 11:19:44 AM PST by Barney Gumble
N.C. Congressman OK With Internment Camps
HIGH POINT, N.C. - A congressman who heads a homeland security subcommittee said on a radio call-in program that he agreed with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Rep. Howard Coble (news, bio, voting record), R-N.C., made the remark Tuesday on WKZL-FM when a caller suggested Arabs in the United States should be confined. Another congressman who was interned as a child criticized Coble for the comment, as did advocacy groups.
Coble, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he didn't agree with the caller but did agree with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who established the internment camps.
"We were at war. They (Japanese-Americans) were an endangered species," Coble said. "For many of these Japanese-Americans, it wasn't safe for them to be on the street."
Like most Arab-Americans today, Coble said, most Japanese-Americans during World War II were not America's enemies. Still, Coble said, Roosevelt had to consider the nation's security. "Some probably were intent on doing harm to us," he said, "just as some of these Arab-Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us."
Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., a Japanese-American who spent his early childhood with his family in an internment camp during World War II, said he spoke with Coble on Wednesday to learn more about his views.
"I'm disappointed that he really doesn't understand the impact of what he said," Honda said. "With his leadership position in Congress, that kind of lack of understanding can lead people down the wrong path."
The Japanese American Citizens League asked Coble to apologize and said he should be removed from his committee chairmanship.
"We are flabbergasted that a man who supports racial profiling and ethnic scapegoating" chairs the subcommittee, the group's national executive director, John Tateishi, said in a statement Wednesday.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that Coble explain his remarks. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said the comments were "particularly disturbing."
In 1988, President Reagan signed a bill authorizing reparations of $20,000 for each surviving camp veteran.
And here's a classic...
60th Anniversary of Japanese Internment by FDR - Executive Order 9066
Their homes, businesses and vehicles were liquidated. As far as I know, they never got them back or adequate financial restitution.
The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, passed by Congress in 1948 provided $38 million for property losses.
If the Japanese internees were compensated fairly, I stand corrected. I have some doubt about that, since this issue was addressed again in the 1980s. For your information, I opposed the 1980s reimbursements. There's no way to reimburse people in a reasoned verifiable manner 40 years after the fact.
How much did the Japanese government compensate American citizens for forcing them into slave labor camps?
Do you think we should adopt the human rights policies of Iraq, North Korea, Syria or Japan whenever the mood strikes us? The idea is to neutralize any threat to the United States. It is not to inflict equal pain on people who were born in a nation with which hostilities have broken out.
As for your distress over the "inhumane" way the relocation was handled; Somebody had to do something quickly. If the Emporer had told us in 1940 that he was going to attack Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, there would have been adequate time to come up with a "humane" plan.
Quite frankly, I don't like your tone. I have not defended enemies of American here. I am defending men women and children most of whom were not hostile to the United States. If you can't stomach that, head on off to some hate site and have a ball.
The only families split up, that I'm aware of, were the ones that had members sent to Tule Lake, California. That camp consisted of people who asked to be repatriated to Japan, or answered "no" to a loyalty questionaire, or who the FBI had evidence of disloyalty against.
That may be true. I have seen interviews with grown up Japanese Americans who experienced the relocation camps. I saw one recently. He described the pain of being separated from his father for a number of years, not knowing if he was alive or not. Yep, that's right, I do feel sorry for the little kid who had nothing to do with the war.
19,000 Japanese or Japanese-American citizens asked for repatriation and 8,000 actually went back. 3,500 renounced their American citizenship. 1942 was not the time to be politically correct.
Treating people humanely is not politically correct. It's humane.
14 posted on 02/06/2003 11:57 AM PST by jackliberty
State legislators too.
Then why does he hold such an anti-Constitutional opinion?
The internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII is the most shameful stain on the history of the U.S., with the sole exception of slavery.
More shameful than our treatment of Indians? That's ridiculous.
Personally, I believe Coble is right, and that the internment was right, thus not shameful at all. I believe that largely on the basis of the evidence in the Lowman book I referenced above. Before you judge the policy, I think you should read that book.
Do you seriously think those Japanese Americans would have been safe in that atmosphere? All you have to do is check out some of the posts on this forum from time to time, to see the animosity that still lingers in some minds.
I'm not convinced that if policies had been implemented more to your liking, that the Japanese Americans would have been better off in the long run.
Real Japanese people are quite racist (and sexist). When I was there, I wasn't allow to go into a resturant because I was white! Imagine that here! Ask any real Koreans or Chinese if the Japanese like them.
You seem to be looking for a fight where there shouldn't be one. Nothing in my remarks implied that you were defending enemies of America.
And your snide comment about us adopting standards of Japan was a total inversion of my statement. We compensated the people; Japan didn't. We treated the Japanese-Americans humanely; Japan didn't do the same for Americans.
You keep talking about "humane". The relocation camps were a lot more humane than you think; 4,5000 Japanese-Americans left the camps to go to college, $4 million was allocated to help others start businesses. Money from crops left behind were deposited in the peoples' accounts.
And people could leave the camps at any time to live anywhere other than the West Coast.
You're looking at 1942 through the prism of 2000. In 1942, the outcome of the war was not certain; In 2000, the outcome is well known. In 1942, there was espionage and spying that could have tipped the outcome and who was or was not a spy or Japanese sympathiser was not apparent. The government response may have been overboard (in today's prism) but it was as humane as possible.
Listening to stories of separation can be wrenching. Next time you hear one, ask the speaker what his father did to get sent to Tule Lake rather than Nebraska.
It wasn't just POWs. American civilians captured when Japan took Wake Island were sent to the homeland to be used as slave labor as well.
The relocation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans was not the "inhumane" episode it's been portrayed as. It was a prudent step (as viewed in 1942) that was handled better by this country than it would have been by any other country.
The Japanese-Americans who blame us for the policy should, instead, blame Japan for their plight.
Why don't we hear any complaints from the 10,000 Germans or 3,200 Italians interred? Especially since they weren't returned home until 1948 when the Japanese were returned in 1946. Why hasn't their plight become a cause celebre (sp)?
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