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
Lowman deals with that claim in his book.
And I loved Cobles bumper stickers...
Can't Feed 'Em, Don't Breed 'Em
And the Japanese-Americans are NOT complaining about anything. Given their culture, they just buckled down, worked hard, and achieved in excess of any other racial group in the US, including Caucasians.
Your post is off base on both points.
Congressman Billybob
Stupid.
You could make precisely the same argument about gun owners, with hand-waving percentages pulled out of thin air.
There is a huge difference between gun owners and Islamists. Charlton Heston, Wayne LaPierre, and other 2nd Amendment leaders are not calling on gun owners to kill non gun owners wherever they are found.
You do however have a virtually uncountable number of Islamic Clerics around the world calling for their followers to kill as many Americans as possible wherever they find the Americans.
First of all, leaving out the word potential enables your near-hysterical response.
Would "not yet activated" satisfy your semantic perfectionism?
You sound almost disappointed!
Did not the Supreme Court determine that that internment of these poeple was legal? It may have been wrong, but it was legal if the Supreme Court said so.
C. E. Order 92
All that portion of the Counties of Sacramento and Amador, State of California, within the boundary beginning at a point at which California State Highway No. 16 intersects California State Highway No. 49, approximately two miles south of Plymouth: thence southerly along said Highway No. 49 to the Amador -Calaveras County Line; thence westerly along the Amador-Calaveras County Line to the Amador-San Joaquin County Line; thence northerly along the Amador-San Joaquin County Line to the Sacramento-San Joaquin County Line; thence westerly along the Sacramento-San Joaquin County Line to the easterly line of the right of way of the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad from Lodi to Sacramento; thence northerly along said easterly line to its crossing with California State Highway No. 16; thence easterly along said Highway No. 16 to point of beginning.
Masonic Hall, Such permits will only be granted for the purpose of uniting members of a family, or in cases of grave emergency. The Civil Control Station is equipped to assist the Japanese population affected by this evacuation in the following ways: 1. A responsible member of each family, preferably the head of the family, or the person in whose name most of the property is held, and each individual living alone, will report to the Civil Control Station to receive further instructions. This must be done between 8:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. on Sunday, May 24, 1942, or between 8:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. on Monday, May 25, 1942. (a) Bedding and linens (no mattress) for each member of the family; A11 items carried will be securely packaged, tied and plainly marked with the name of the owner and numbered in accordance with instructions obtained at the Civil Control Station. The size and number of packages is limited to that which can be carried by the individual or family group. J. L. DEWITT May 23, 1942 |
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Only then the Army changed the name to "internment" or "relocation" camps. And nobody got out to "go to college" or "work on the East Coast." In my book is an Ansel Adams photograph of a soldier in the 441st, the "Christmas-tree Regiment" for its many decorations, visiting with his family behind the barbed wire of Manzanar, with fellow US soldiers in the same uniform guarding the perimeter.
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"
Nor much in the way of memory banks either? I guess the Trent Lott fiasco has already just sort of drifted away.....
By the way, I personally know Howard Coble. He is a very nice man. But I just can't believe he would make a statement like this. I have to wonder if this mistake on his part stems from the fact that his Chief of Staff, Ed McDonald, who has been with him since he was first elected, and was always with him and giving him great advice, recently left to go to work for the Maryland Governor. This could be fatal blow as far as his career goes.
I dare say you have never read of the Niihau affair???? If you have not, then your condemnation is in error.
I don't think any east coast J-A were interned, but I'm not sure.
I'll dig around for that thread.
PUUWAI, Niihau -- Military presence on Niihau dates back at least to Dec. 7, 1941, when a Japanese Zero bomber made a crash landing not far from here.
The plane, riddled with bullets, had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
The pilot had no choice but to land in a rock-stubbled pasture because the Robinsons had spent eight years plowing 2-feet-deep cross-hatched furrows in the flatlands throughout the island.
Keith Robinson, co-heir of Niihau, says an Army Air Corps major warned the family in 1933 the Japanese might try to seize the island as an advance base for a takeover of the Hawaiian Islands.
Mules pulled the plow for four years until a tractor was purchased. The project was completed the summer of 1941, Robinson says.
The bomber's landing gear was destroyed and Niihauans captured the dazed pilot. He was locked in a storage room until a second-generation Japanese schoolteacher on Niihau set him free and gave him a gun. The pilot terrorized the village for several days until he was killed by a Niihauan.
Most of the plane was quickly confiscated by U.S. forces, but remnants of the wing remain hidden under lantana trees. The cross-hatchings in the land are still easily visible from the air.
Over the years Niihauans have stripped off the plane's aluminum skin and re-fashioned it into eyes for their fishing nets.
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