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."
he was very bitter about it, in a quiet way, but got even by banging white chicks from his classes. he kept a list in his college office.
I see. So a little children with no clue regarding history or politics are a threat to the state?
Why are you defending the socialist FDR? Trying to cover up?
I agree with your equation of Stalinist Russia and Hitler Germany to FDR. However, you are incorrect regarding apologies. EO9066 was revoked by President Ford (Republican). An apology was written and discussed by President Reagan (Republican). The token reparations (mostly at the end of lives permanently damaged) occured under President Bush.
The roles of Democrats in the process were:
1. FDR incarcerated people on the basis of race.
2. JFK and LBJ failed to address the situation.
3. Carter stonewalled.
4. Clinton stalled funding for 6 years for educational programs in the Japanese American community which would have educated the populous regarding the FACTS in this case.
The lame leadership of the Japanese American community contributed to this ridiculous hypocrisy by sucking up to the liberals for 60 years! Mineta is a turn coat to the liberal stallwarts in the JA political realms.
In my book, these threads are posted for two reasons.
1. Liberals are trying to break up the rapid conversion of California and Hawaii Japanese Americans to Republican conservatism.
2. Liberals are trying to resurrect anti-Japanese propaganda on the heels of the staunch support of GW by the Japanese conservatives.
Anyone want to read about the role of the US and Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war?
It should have been impossible for Japan to attack Pearl Harbor successfully. Never say never. FDR was wrong about a lot of things but this was necessary. These people need to quit whining. They were a casualty of WW2 like the tens of millions of other inhabitants of planet earth. At least they weren't raped like Nanking or marching in Bataan.
This is as far as I got in your post because I know you don't know what you're talking about. FDR didn't nuke anyone.
You sound like the other bleeding-heart, social-liberal cover-up artists... now that I've taken your sling and arrow, answer the rest of my original posting....then I'll give you a few more zingers to swallow.
Well, I think the American women (of Japanese descent) in the camps WERE RAPED. They were definitely traumatized by the events and got NO opportunity for ANY mental health services. This resulted in an entire generation of females who were traumatized by their childhood and have the lifetime scars to show it. If you look at the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, you will find many of the identical mental health problems in the families. Anxiety, mood disorders, and neurosis in those ethnic communities have an origin in the dark and evil world of governmental abuse (either Nazi or Democrat).
Only a class A liberal would think like you.
You support the ONLY example in US history where a sitting US president converted an independent, self-sustaining ethnic community into a bunch of welfare-dependent liberal stooges.
Is your last name "CLYMER"???
It is easy to determine, in hindsight, that many loyal American citizens, of Japanese ancestry, got rounded up. But it was also a fact that subversives were found among the internees.
My father-in-law, the son of Italian immigrants, jumped into Germany and earned a purple heart. He never bellyached about the Italians interned in Montana.
If it becomes necessary, I will support rounding up Muslims, for the same reason as Japanese, Italian and German origin people were interned during WWII. It is called pre-emptive self-defense, during conflict. It is not a question of absolute and perfect application of laws and rights, to later be evaluated in hindsight. It is a matter of immediate survival, and protection against vigilante violence, as well. Fire away.
Faked up facts???? Communist ink???? Your post is incoherent at the least, beyond that, I have not the slightest inkling of what you were saying.
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