Japanese American internment
The Japanese American internment refers to the period of time from February 1942 to January 1945, when 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were moved to ten "relocation camps" in the western United States. It was arguably the largest fuck-up of the FDR administration.
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[edit] Purpose
| The touchy subject of |
| Key concepts |
| Racism and racists |
Ostensibly, these camps were to remove the threat of Japanese espionage agents on the west coast of the United States. However, most historians have raised questions about the effectiveness of such a program, preferring to call the relocation a racist swipe against Japanese-Americans. 62% of the internees were US citizens, the rest being resident "aliens" on American soil. Several hundred internees were of German and Italian ancestry as well — they were citizens of their respective countries or members of organizations such as the German-American Bund.
The Canadian government also imprisoned citizens of Japanese descent, mainly those living in British Columbia.[1]
Oddly enough, the internment orders only applied to Japanese living on the West Coast of the continental United States and Canada, but did not apply to those Japanese who lived in Hawaii, the only part of the United States that was actually attacked.
[edit] Response
The prevailing attitude in the United States is that the camps were unjustified, a result of "wartime hysteria." This viewpoint is affirmed by Article I, Section 9 (guaranteeing the writ of habeas corpus), and the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution (which states that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law").
Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which included formal apologies and monetary reparations from the United States government to internment camp survivors (or their family members). George H. W. Bush signed an amendment to the Act in 1992 which continued reparations to ensure all were addressed — the program concluded in 1999. Recipients received formal letters with the president's signature (which might have been Bush or Bill Clinton depending on when they received it).
[edit] Another reason it was dumb
Perhaps the saddest irony of the whole thing was the fact that Japanese-American men of military age were permitted to and actually encouraged to enlist in the United States military. Partially they did it in order to get out of the camps, but also many felt the need to prove their loyalty to the United States.
In fact, the 442nd Infantry Regiment was almost entirely composed of Japanese-Americans; the 442nd was deployed to Europe, seeing combat in Italy, southern France, and Germany (even helping to liberate the Dachau concentration camp), and the unit was the most decorated unit of any during the war, with soldiers earning, amongst other decorations, 7 Presidential Unit Citations, 21 Congressional Medals of Honor, and 9,486 Purple Hearts.[2] Former Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye was a member of this unit, and lost his arm in a grenade explosion.[3]
[edit] Crankery
Conspiracy theorists often bring up this episode in American history as "proof" that the government has the will to round up dissidents and ship them to FEMA concentration camps.
Michelle Malkin wrote a lovely anthology of how to use logical fallacies pro-internment book, called In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror. It talks about a few specific cases of disloyalty by Japanese-Americans, which is then used as justification for detaining all of them based on race. It then jumps to the conclusion that we should do the same with Arabs and Muslims. Can we then assume that her next logical step would be to support the internment of all Caucasian Americans, based on the disloyal actions of guys like Timothy McVeigh, Lee Harvey Oswald, the KKK or that dude that shot Reagan?
Others actually point to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 as justification for the relocation (despite the law applying only to resident aliens, which doesn't justify imprisoning several thousand Nisei American citizens[4]), and cite Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the American Civil War. The latter is particularly funny to invoke because of the nature of the soldiers imprisoned.
On the other side of political interpretations, American history teachers have been known to compare these camps to the Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland at the same time. They have also been brought up among red herrings in Holocaust denial. While it is certainly fair to analyze the abuses of liberties that occurred on both sides, the biggest difference is that no Japanese Holocausts occurred in North America.
[edit] In pop culture
Nonetheless, the era of Japanese interment in the United States is often glossed over in public school textbooks, and is rarely addressed by the popular mediums of film or television. George Takei, who himself was held in in two different internment camps when he was small boy,[5] has been supportive of initiatives that put this black stain of our history, front and center:
- Allegiance is a musical about the internment camps themselves, and how they affected a single family.[6] Three generations of this family are represented, from the immigrant grandfather, to the children too young to understand.
- The Japanese American National Museum has a section devoted to the internment era (the building itself was a processing center for the internment camps).
- Snow Falling on Cedars (the novel[wp] as well as the film[wp]) while taking place in 1954 includes a backstory which draws heavily on internment and the Japanese-American murder suspect's kendo skills as reported by his former WWII officer.
- The Karate Kid[wp] (the original 1984 film). When Mr. Miyagi[wp] gets drunk he mentions that his wife died in childbirth in an internment camp while he was fighting for the U.S. in Europe. Especially poignant as the actor portraying Mr. Miyagi, Pat Morita[wp], had been an internee himself.
[edit] Other notable internees
- Robert Ito
- Pat Morita
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Internment Centres, National Association of Japanese Canadians
- ↑ The 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team
- ↑ Medal of Honor Recipients: Second Lieurenant Daniel K. Inouye, United States Army
- ↑ That doesn't particularly make it any better, but we're dealing with hyperbolas here.
- ↑ George Takei: Why I love a country that once betrayed me, TED
- ↑ Allegiance - A New Broadway Musical