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."
Firstly, did you read the Niihau affair, did you read of the Japanese traitors that were legion in the Phillippines???
We are discussing the Japanese-American question, no other race. I lived thru that period, lost my brother during that time, heard news reports, saw pictures of the traitorous Japanese in the Hawaiian Islands, in the Phiippines. The government did what it thought correct at the time. I am saying they did so with cause, it was not thru malice or anything else. Racism was never a question. War throughout the world caused for harsh measures to be taken.
But this does not mean we round up all young white males and put them in camps. It was a hectic time with a nation in shock and disbelief. I may have not lived through it but I have heard more stories then I can remember. America had never been attacked like that before. Americans were scared and for the first time did not feel safe inside their own borders. I have no doubts that this affair was a decisive factor in the camps being started. But it was wrong. It is a black eye for America. Maybe FDR knew it would come to that but felt he had no choice. They have been compensated for it and apoligies have been said. This is the beauty of hindsight. I can look back now and say it was wrong. How would I have felt then I do not know. Maybe it was seen as the thing to do then, the safest measure. But that does not mean it was right.
1) Ten people were convicted of spying for Japan during World War II. None were of Japanese descent.
2) Hawaiians of Japanese descent were not interned.
-Eric
Regarding Hawaii's Americans of Japanese descent, they WERE incarcerated by state and federal agencies without trial. They were incarcerated in mainland camps and I personally am aware of several cases where the male head-of-household was removed from the family and no communication occurred to wife or children for years (while the dad was incarcerated without any charge). This had the effect of debilitating churches and businesses in Hawaii also.
I was not aware that American born Japanese were a "race". I am aware of the issues related to YOUR racism.
No. You're too weak to debate FACTS. Coward.
Regarding Hawaii's Americans of Japanese descent, they WERE incarcerated by state and federal agencies without trial. They were incarcerated in mainland camps and I personally am aware of several cases where the male head-of-household was removed from the family and no communication occurred to wife or children for years (while the dad was incarcerated without any charge). This had the effect of debilitating churches and businesses in Hawaii also.I don't doubt this, but from what I've read the incarceration was not universal as it was on the west coast of the mainland. This in a place where there was a higher percentage of residents of Japanese descent, and many more potential espionage/sabotage targets.
People sometimes forget that those who come to America are inherently different from their counterparts who stayed behind in their original countries, and they live here for a reason.
-Eric
Then again, these people are similar to the racist Californicators who cheered when the Asian exclusion acts were passed and when many of their neighbors were interned by FDR with the collaberation of RINO Earl Warren.
Yep. Figuring out the machinations of FDR, like those of his soulmate Billzebubba, becomes much easier when one recalls the sage advise: "Follow The Money".
Yes, you are correct. It was not a wholesale slaughter of the ethnic Japanese community. In fact, in Hawaii the suggestion of extending Exec Order 9066 was made and quickly dismissed by military commanders. Because the ethnic Japanese in Hawaii were so instrumental in homeland defenses, the idea of sending them out on valuable passenger vessels was ridiculous. The US needed those naval vessels for ordnance and supplies, not to give passenger space to a bunch of cane field workers who were travelling the oceans for no real reason.
Where? Your entire statement is a defense of the worst example of socialist engineering in US history. Are you suggesting that the forced incarceration of 120,000 people on the basis of race was a conservative movement?
I asked you 3 or 4 questions because I didn't know the answers. You didn't answer any of my questions, you just called me names.
It's not "name calling" to label you as a defender of socialist public policy. If you can't stand the heat, don't post!
I'm starting to get suspicious.
Yes, I bet you are. After 60 years of permitting the liberals to paint the concentration camps of Manzanar with the prism of War Relocation Agency propaganda, the agenda setting by the liberals is over. You're a part and parcel of their agenda. Your poor reasoning and lack of facts is testimony to the WRA and FDR liberal propaganda.
Once again, here are the questions:
1. Were most (or all) of the adults in the camps Japanese?
It is my understanding that most of the adults in the camps were in fact American citizens. Most were born in the US. Of those who were first-generation immigrants, it was US law that specifically excluded Japanese people from being naturalized as US citizens. Is there a reason you fail to understand this crucial bit of US law? Somehow liberal defenders of FDR always fail to properly identify the FACT that FDR was specifically discriminating against immigration from Japan for 10 years prior to the onset of hostilities.
2. Did the Japanese belong in the camps?
What a moronic question! The reality is that they were Americans! Only socialists and communists believe in forcible displacement of people on political grounds. You remind me of a Stalinist defending movements of people to Siberia.
3. Did their kids belong with their parents?
There you go again! Only a socialist believes in taking and relocating children away from biological parents upon state custody.
Big Meanie = Big Red (without the One)
American-Americans recall the pain of Pearl Harbor deaths 60 years later...how much they gonna' pay us...
I've located first-hand information which may show collaboration between conservative Quakers and imprisoned people in Manzanar. It appears that a Quaker program was specifically attempting to get Japanese Americans out of the camps and into schools for education. Furthermore, I have not located successful Japanese-Americans between 60-80 years old who were not touched by the Quaker effort. Still, none of the liberals comment on the Quakers (other than one William Hohri who claims that the Quakers were socialists). Anyone with more info on the Quaker programs to rescue people from the camps should publish info here on the programs involved.
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