Map of the camps.
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
Map of the camps.
Proves??? Hardly. You present a sanitzed story. Read the accounts as they happened in 1941 then tell me how they acted.
Here goes.
By 1940, the US military had broken the Japanese codes ("Purple", also called "magic"). We were reading most of their top level diplomatic cables in real time. This was so super sensitive that outside of the code breakers only FDR and a handful of top generals knew. Literally less that ten total.
FDR was in a terrible bind in 1940-41, (much like Bush is in today). He could march down to Congress with all the transcripts and convince them that war is coming, but if he does, the Japs know the code is broken and change it. FDR knows that keeping the secret of the broken codes will allow us to win the coming war. So he kept the secret. Not even Truman knew!!!
One of the things that FDR knew, and even FBI director Hoover did NOT know, was that in fact the Japanese had a spy and sabotage network in place on the West Coast. FDR knew the code names, real names, many mission taskings, everything.
If FDR handed Hoover the list and said "arrest these 100 Japanese spies", he would be telling the Japanese "we have broken your codes, so please change them." This he could not do! The broken Japanese codes were beyond priceless, they saved YEARS off the war toward victory.
OTOH, FDR could not just let these spies and sabateurs roam unmolested, sending messages etc. And if the FBI began following them and they detected it, they would report they had been blown, to the same result. ie, "How did the FBI know??"
Rounding up ALL the West Coast Japanese ensured that the spies and sabateur were put out of action, without compromising the secret of the broken Japanese codes.
FDR died, taking his secret decision to the grave, IOW, no memoirs. The entire subject of the codes was top secret for decades after 1945, all of the major history books written before the 1980s make no mention of it. Without knowledge of the broken "Purple" codes, historians had no context for the internment of West Coast Japanes other than racism, etc, and that incomplete history has stuck.
Footnote: The Japanese military alone ran the Pearl Harbor operation, and relied out of ultra caution on hand delivered messages and military-only comms pre Dec 7 1941. Because of Purple, we were somewhat cocky about the extent of our knowledge of Japanese moves. The Japanese Navy did not use the Purple codes for Pearl Harbor planning, and cold cocked us.
Footnote 2: Bush today is in many ways in FDRs position, and he opted to tell the world that we are sucking up every cell phone and walky talkie call between his henchmen. This was for the "payoff" today at the UN, but has forever "blown" a prime source of information which could have tipped "the next 9-11". Something similar happened when our listening to OBLs sat phone calls was disclosed during the NYC trial of the East Afrcan Embassy bombers. After that disclosure, OBL ditched his sat phone, got smarter, and pulled off 9-11 by using messangers etc and not sat phones.
After today, our enemies won't even use cell phones. We lost a great deal by today's "trade".
You overstate the threat slightly. Islamists are not killers, but potential killers.
How about we cut the number in half to 200,000? Feel better, now?
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
Or waiting.
Make no mistake - ONE WMD attack on the US, and we turn the MidEast into a glass parking lot. You'll have dozens of millions of us (me included) screaming to teach these people what war really is.
All of it? From Morocco to Pakistan, or where?
If, say, a bio attack is made next year which kills 20,000 Americans, and no one claims credit, how will you pick your retaliatory target?
Better yet, we need to convince American leftists that several endangered specie are hanging out around "so-called" "arms depots" in Iraq. And that environmentally friendly natives are producing veggie burger meat substitutes in a nearby kind village economy, in a noble effort to save the animals.
Surely only very prolonged nonviolent protest there could stop the US Aggression :)
You're right about that.
But if we're hit by a WMD you won't have to worry about the Muslims being interred.
We'll hunt them.
That's a marxist phrase.
We'll hunt them
I'm curious. Do you mean you will actually hunt down and kill people just because they are Muslim if we get hit by a weapon of mass destruction? I would like to know since I have a couple of Muslim families on my street and my children play with their children.
Too bad. Don't want him in the fox hole with me if he can't tell evil from good.
Hmmm..... now hold it just a second. This sounds like it could be a winner :)
Ummm... even I know we record every electromagnetic transmission in existence.
If the camel humpers don't know it, when it's available information in the mainstream world press, then they aren't much of a threat at all.
I suggest we kill them all now.
Do we hear 20,000?
I'm from the Civilian "Mosque to Parking Lot Redistribution Project".
You KNOW those bastards are planning in them here. The government will NOT deal with it....
When they hit us next, nothing with a minaret should be left standing.
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