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Posted on 02/18/2002 4:05:49 PM PST by RCW2001
Japanese-Americans recall the pain of World War II internment 60 years later
Monday, February 18, 2002
©2002 Associated Press
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/02/18/state1949EST0101.DTL
(02-18) 16:49 PST SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) --
It's been 60 years, but the pain of destroying her mother's kimonos and anything else of Japanese origin still stings Betty Haruko Nishi. She remembers all too well how the federal government forced thousands of Japanese to give up their homes and businesses to live in internment camps during World War II.
"Everything happened so fast. My dad's new tractor, we had to leave behind. We couldn't take anything Japanese," Nishi, 72, told the San Jose Mercury News. "It was horrible."
President Roosevelt signed an Executive Order on Feb. 19, 1942, forcing about 120,000 Japanese-Americans -- many of them U.S. citizens living on the West Coast -- away from their homes, jobs and farms and into 10 internment camps.
The U.S. government did not formally apologize or make reparations to internment survivors until 1989.
Former internees say they hope a lesson was learned from their pain and that others aren't treated the same during America's war on terrorism.
"I hope the same thing doesn't happen to the Middle Easterners," said Dave Tatsuno, whose family was forced to sell their store's merchandise and move to Topaz in the Utah desert. "Most of them are innocent like we were. The country has to be careful to never again fall into the trap of condemning a people due to ancestry."
Nishi had just celebrated her 12th birthday with her family in Turlock when she was sent to a filthy assembly center in Merced with her parents, five brothers and sister. Nishi's mother went temporarily blind with stress, and her siblings got pneumonia and ulcers.
Four months later, they shared two stark rooms in Amanche, Colo., and watched many young men leaving the camps to fight for the United States overseas. Ultimately, the all-Japanese 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team suffered the highest casualty rate and became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service.
"Looking back I remember the deep well of pain the experience caused my parents," Nishi said. "It is something that will always be in my heart."
Katie Hironaka, 82, also can't forget, even though she admits the camps -- in a strange way -- may have saved lives.
"What was done to us was wrong," said Hironaka, who was a new mother sent to Heart Mountain, Wyo., with her parents and brothers.
"And yet, there was so much prejudice and ignorance, who knows how many Japanese homes would have been burned, how many citizens would have been hurt or even killed if we had been around?" she said. "In that way it was good, and yet it was so terrible as well."
Show me some accounts of Japanese-American battalions fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific.
The real question is why you choose to defend a socialist policy.
A bigger question is why you refuse to answer my questions: Do you believe that a large percentage of Islamic-Americans would whole-heartedly kill Islamic invaders if it came to that? Do you believe alarge percentage od Japanese-Americans would've whole-heartedly killed Japanese invaders in WW2 if it would've come to that. Do you believe that a large percentage of slash-Americans who come here, make money, and send that money to their extended families in their native lands really give a rats behind about America, America's history, and America's survival? Especially when they even refuse to be American in look and demeaner and even almost exclusively watch their native land's TV stations, etc.
The US Military did not deploy the Japanese-American Army regiment or battalion to the Pacific Theatre. However, there were thousands of Japanese Americans deployed across the Pacific Theatre in a "service" called the Military Intelligence Service.
http://www.dtic.mil/armylink/news/Jun2000/r20000630mispressrelease.html
Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera has approved award of the Presidential Unit Citation to the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Service, a World War II unit composed of Japanese-American soldiers who provided critical intelligence support to every major theater of the war.
"The Presidential Unit Citation is the best way we can honor the thousands of MIS members who served with rare skill and courage in World War II, but whose wartime contributions have never received appropriate credit because their services were cloaked in secrecy," Caldera said. "I hope that with this award, the MIS will at last begin to receive the recognition that they deserve, and that more of our citizens will appreciate the valuable service they rendered in the war against tyranny."
Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, Army chief of staff, will present the award to former members of the unit during a ceremony June 30 in Monterey, Ca.
In November 1941, the War Department established the Military Intelligence Service Language School, the forerunner of today's Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, which eventually trained over 6,000 linguists, most of Japanese-American heritage. These US-born second-generation Japanese-Americans, commonly known as "Nisei," were assigned to US combat units throughout the world, primarily in the Pacific theater, supporting US forces with critical intelligence skills such as interpretation, translation and interrogation.
The Presidential Unit Citation, awarded for the period of May 1942 to
September 1945, states that "...The Military Intelligence Service not only played
key roles in battlefield situations, they also provided United States forces with an unprecedented amount of intimate, authoritative, detailed, and timely information on enemy forces to support planning and execution of combat operations..."
Among its many contributions to the Allied victory, the MIS is credited with providing information that enabled US forces to shoot down hundreds of Japanese aircraft during the Battle of the Philippine Sea and translating documents for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop an atomic bomb. Maj. Gen. Charles Willouby, Gen. Douglas MacArthur's chief of staff for intelligence, said the MIS's contributions "saved countless lives and shortened the war by two years."
In spite of their significant contributions to the Allied victory in World War II, members of the MIS were formerly ineligible for unit decorations because they were attached to other units instead of being officially assigned to those units. The MIS was never deployed as a unit. Rather, its members were attached to other field units to provide critical intelligence capabilities. Many of these members received individual awards for heroism.
Congress passed legislation in November 1997 (Public Law 105-85, Section 576, "Eligibility of Certain World War II Military Organizations for Award of Unit Decorations"), authored by U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), that permitted the Army to consider the MIS for a unit decoration. Following a review of the MIS's wartime service, Caldera, acting on President Clinton's behalf, approved the award of the Presidential Unit Citation.
The Army recently recognized 22 other Japanese-American soldiers with the Medal of Honor during a ceremony at the White House June 21.
Shinseki will be a featured speaker June 30 at the 36th Biennial National Convention of the Japanese American Citizens League and will present the Presidential Unit Citation to former members of the MIS. Media interested in covering this event should contact Kay Rodriguez of the Defense Language Institute's public affairs office at 831-242-6430.
As we've said before, "The real question is why you choose to defend a socialist policy."
No kidding. That's what I said in the first place. The fact that a Japanese-American battalion killed Italians and Nnazis doesn't mean that they would've fought this way on Iwo Jima, maybe they would've but we'll never know. Plus, a Japanese-American soldier scattered here and there in the Pacific theatre doesn't prove what would happen in the civilian population if there would have been an invasion.
As we've said before, "The real question is why you choose to defend a socialist policy."
It's not socialism, it's self-survival and common sense. And it's partially proven by the fact that I've asked you four times now to answer this question, but you're not a stand-up kind of guy and won't answer: Do you believe that a large percentage of the Islamic-American community would kill and repulse invading Islams if it came to that?
You come on this thread and act all uppity because you think you're better than everyone else because of your Monday-morning quarterbacking. But when push comes to shove, you run scared when faced with a question that forces you to address the here and now. The fact that you won't answer my simple question means you're too afraid to stand for what you believe in. If you really believe everything you've posted, you'd boldly answer my question, but instead you run from it.
You have inherent racism and your comments reflect the inability for your mind to actually trust people of various national origins. The fact that these people lived in a FDR concentration camp, yet were fighting FOR the USA and dying FOR THE USA under horrible circumstances in the jungles and islands of the Pacific doesn't stop your racism. What a joke!
You're no conservative. You're far too racist and far to weak of a person to be a true conservative.
I trust anyone if the stakes are low. But I use common sense if the stakes are so high. Common sense tells me that slash-Americans will have a very strong affection for their former country for a few generations. I still see it today with people of German descent that have been here for hundreds of years. Many of them speak as if Germany was their true home.
The fact that these people lived in a FDR concentration camp, yet were fighting FOR the USA and dying FOR THE USA under horrible circumstances in the jungles and islands of the Pacific doesn't stop your racism. What a joke!
Well then answer my question: Do you believe that a large percentage of Islamic-Americans would fight and kill Islamic invaders if it came to that. The fact that you refuse to answer this question proves that you're a hypocrite. You expect the people of the '40s to have blind trust in their new Japanese countrymen, but you don't feel that you should express that same blind trust in your new Islamic-American countrymen. There are Islamic-Americans fighting and in harms way right now in Afghanistan. By your standards, that should force you to have complete trust in all of them. Let's see it.
You're no conservative. You're far too racist and far to weak of a person to be a true conservative.
You're the weak one because you run from my questions. And most people who spew "racism" accusations all the time aren't conservatives anyway.
Unfortunately, YOU are not interested in FACTS related to the INCARCERATION of INNOCENT AMERICANS under a LIBERAL FDR ADMINISTRATION.
YOU are only interested in POLLUTING the FACTS with your own nonsense.
The arab-Jewish issue IS NOT related to the constitutionality of the incarceration of ANY group on the basis of race. EOM Go Find something to do that is positive on a Sunday morning. I am going to church now. I hope you will find the same comfort in a sovereign God.
Who said anything about Jews? Where does the Constitution say that the nation cannot declare emergengy procedures in cases of rebellion or invasion?
EOM Go Find something to do that is positive on a Sunday morning. I am going to church now. I hope you will find the same comfort in a sovereign God.
A true man of God is not afraid to answer questions as to what he believes. So answer the question: Do you think that a large percentage of Islamic-Americans would repulse and kill Islamic invaders if it came to that?
Again, you digress from the main issue, which is the incarceration of innocent Americans on the sole basis of race is clearly uncontitutional. WHY DO YOU KEEP DEFENDING FDR'S SOCIALIST POLICIES?
I am currently reading "Unjust Enrichment" by Linda Goetz Holmes, which is about the "white" prisoners of war that the Jap corporations used during the war. I recommend it. And I commend your grandfather, for being able to live through it. If he's still among us, give him my best regards.
He not only had to survive years of "hell" in those mines but first had to survive the "hell ships" that transported him and his fellow POW's from the Phillipines to Japan.
I'm sorry if I don't have as much "sensitivity" for the "survivors" of the internment camps here in the U.S.. Sure, it would have been better - perhaps - if we had not done it, but they've been compensated. Now, it would be much better if they either supported reparations for your grandfather and the others who were horribly abused by the Jap corporations, or just shut up.
Talk about "manipulated" -- has everyone been bludgeoned enough by those sickening 'AD COUNCIL' TV ads, "I am an American", starring various "people of color"?
Maybe the AD should continue: "Despite our questionable U.S. citizenship status, our allegiance is still with any Muslim country of choice...
Come on. You mean those Muslim "Americans" that just happened to be given unmeritorious citizenship?
From the tepid reactions of many of these so called Moslem-"Americans" after 9/11, and subsequent revelation of domestic support for Al Qaida, etal., it is quite obvious they are having major allegiance conflicts.
I for one will never be convinced of their patriotism for the United States of America. THEY SHOULD BE WATCHED VERY CLOSELY.
You are mistaken.
I have, in fact, posted a page honoring ALL who came before us HERE.
and the word is spelled "muslim".
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