Posted on 02/05/2003 4:16:00 PM PST by Jean S
HIGH POINT, N.C. (AP) - 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.
A fellow congressman who was interned as a child criticized Coble for his comment on Wednesday, as did advocacy groups.
Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., made the remark Tuesday on WKZL-FM when a caller suggested Arabs in the United States should be confined.
Coble, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said that 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."
U.S. 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 called Coble on Wednesday and asked him to issue an apology, while the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee demanded that Coble explain his remarks.
It is "a sad day in our country's tradition when an elected official ... openly agrees with an unconstitutional and racist policy long believed to be one of the darkest moments of America's history," the group said in a statement.
AP-ES-02-05-03 1842EST
I haven't read the book you reference. However, my book on the subject was written after General deWitt's recommendations to President Roosevelt had been declassified. In those documents, deWitt made the incredible argument that 1) there were no known instances of Japanese-American sabotage, and 2) that lack of any sabotage was proof that they were "well organized" and therefore "dangerous."
It was on the basis of deWitt's report, with the support of Governor Earl Warren of California, that President Roosevelt issued his Executive Order. (I think that Warren became a screaming liberal as Chief Justice in part as expiation for supporting both the internment of the Japanese-Americans, and also a prior California law that made it illegal for the Nissei to own farm land in California.)
It doesn't matter to me what anyone wrote about this situation without access to the WW II internal documents. I had those documents, and got some of them declassified for my book. I stand by my historical and constitutional conclusions on this subject.
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest column for UPI, "Those in Peril on the Sea" (Now up on UPI wire, and FR.)
As the politician formerly known as Al Gore has said, my book, "to Restore Trust in America"
There are many newspaper accounts available on the net via google. Plus there are untold historical accounts.
In a nutshell, after the Jap plane landed, three Japanese-Americans aided and abetted him in trying to take over the little island. Finally, a Hawaiian native cut the throat of the Jap pilot before the military arrived to end the affair. One Japanese-American went to prison long term, I forget what the other two received.
It was a very sordid affair and was a basis for the anti-Japanese feeling in the government. The FBI was involved and made an estimation that of the Japanese-Americans on the mainland, there were at least 5000 that would be traitors. At the time and under the circumstances, this was deemed unacceptable.
The newspaper accounts are best because they have not been sanitized, historical accounts have been mostly made PC.
It is a very interesting story and well worth researching, it gives one a different approach to the internment.
Our government will have a good idea who did it. And normally wouldn't want to tell us.
You'll have 30% of the populace wanting revenge, some middle amount not knowing... and a leftist peacenik reaction like the US has NEVER seen.
We'll be on the brink of civil war.
IF they hit us with biologics or nukes... screw it. All bets are off. Declare war on Islam. They've already declared it on us.
Consider the option... We half-ass respond, and they'll only do it again. If they kill 20,000 the first time, and we bomb Iran for it... they'll kill 100,000 the next time and use another country.
Islam is a war cult.
You're right, we're pre-WW III. Why spend all the effort and blood that will be spilled - mostly on the side of our noncombatants?
I'm quickly becoming a proponent of Pax Americana.
Get the Russians on board, and split the whole ball of wax.
What the hell does that have to do with anything. The German's did the most unspeakable things to Jews, does that give Jewish Americans the right to confine German Americans? Freedom doesn't mean you can go to the grocery store when you want to buy some eggs. Stupid fat lazy American image is based on reality. Everyone here talks big crap about "Freedom", aka "Free Republic", but when freedom is truly tested, like in a time of war, we failed. And you here who make excuses and trivialize that failure prove that most of what we believe is a crock of dung. Oh, well, as long as it doesn't happen to me... right.
You have no concept of the reaction that will happen if a nuke or a smallpox attacks goes off in the US... do you?
You think it will be neat and clean, like the Shuttle coverage?
We lose a city, there'll be 50,000,000 people howling for blood.
However, a US District Court ruled, at Fred Korematsu's request in 1990 (give or take a year) that his conviction was illegal because its basis was unconstitutional. (That happened after General deWitt's internal documents were declassified.) The Circuit Court agreed.
The government then took that case to the US Supreme Court. In an instance which I think is unique in the entire history of the USSC, it refused the case and simply left standing a lower court decision which said it had acted unconstitutionally.
Can you think of any other instance when a lower court ruled that the Supreme Court had acted unconstitutionally, and the USSC did not take and review the case?
Billybob
Just damn.
And the damage from the Pearl Harbor attack could not have been repaired promptly, as it was, without the efforts of the Japanese-Americans who were left free by the on-the-scene intelligence of the General on Hawaii.
Billybob
Billybob
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. It's like excusing rape because the victim wasn't murdered. Well, at least they weren't tortured. Well, at least, we didn't dismember them and perform hideous experiments. Well at least they weren't gassed. I suppose you would have the same attidue if I borrowed your daughter for a few days. Hey, you'll get her back...
I also believe your footnote 2 is correct, given the den of vipers and socialists at the UN.
"Chicago Method" all the way with me, brother.
Billybob
P.S. Don't give me any of that cr*p about this being a fiction. If they'd done the same to German-Americans, I would have died in one of those camps. My book is not just words; it includes ample photographs, taken by the late, great Ansel Adams.
And that was the merciful stuff.
But that was all. Unless they got caught actually DOING anything.
Billybob
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