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This Day in History: FDR orders Japanese Americans into internment camps
- nickpeterson 5y agoEvery time you see some great injustice in history, follow the money. I can nearly guarantee the political expediency derives from people who stand to make money. Racism helps but I don’t think it ever gets the job done on it’s own. As a Caucasian American I’m ashamed of this, if it’s any consolation to Japanese Americans reading this.
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- ChuckNorris89 5y agoI find it incredibly grim that the US at the time would round up and incarcerate its own citizens en masee because of their heritage, the same way how Nazis did it. Insane. IIRC the Brits also rounded up the ethnic Germans on their territory in a similar fashion. And Allan Turing was incarcerated for being a homosexual. The West was really at a low point in those times despite having won the war.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoI think a lot of people dehumanize nazis to cope with the brutalism, but we have to remember that we all have this capability… the same inner workings that lead to extreme cruelty. We can’t forget this or deny it, or we’re doomed to repeat it.
- superfunny 5y ago"the same way how the Nazis did" -- huh? How are these comparable? I didn't realize that Japanese-Americans were systematically murdered in the millions. Yes, Americans were the "good guys" - but we weren't perfect.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
- smitty1e 5y ago> The West was really at a low point in those times. We don't seem so far from them, conceptually or temporally. There is a need for a serious sit-and-think about whether we are slouching our way toward Big Brother. Would that the answer were a solid: "No, we are NOT creating Big Brother inadvertently."
- retrac 5y ago> IIRC the Brits also rounded up the ethnic Germans on their territory in a similar fashion. So did the US. Not to try to excuse the German internment since it had its own problems, but it's really telling to compare what the British, Canadians and Americans did with ethnic Germans and Italians, compared to ethnic Japanese. Basically, it was mostly restricted to Germans and Italians with much closer actual ties; first generation immigrants, people with business connections, recent travel. If the Americans, in particular, had taken the same approach to ethnic Germans and Italians that they did to ethnic Japanese - even one great-grandparent being proof of probable complicity with the enemy -- they would have had to detain roughly a quarter of all white Americans.
- cafard 5y agoOne of my great-grandfathers was a German citizen in Indiana during WW I. He had been a resident of the US for about forty years, and he had a son drafted into the US Army. But still, his citizenship papers are from 1921 or so. I assume that his wife was still a German citizen, too. There are no family stories of harassment.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoBefore World War I, there were many German language newspapers in Indiana: "German-language newspapers thrived as Germans became Indiana’s largest immigrant population by 1850. The Täglicher Telegraph und Tribüne, located near here, was among over 175 German-language newspapers published in Indiana, 1843-1920. These newspapers were important vehicles for readers in integrating and maintaining their cultural identities with American values. U.S. entry into WWI in 1917 created suspicion and antipathy toward German-American schools, churches, clubs and newspapers. Several of these Indiana newspapers, which had tried to present balanced war coverage, closed by 1918. This included the Täglicher Telegraph und Tribüne and papers in Berne, South Bend, Logansport, Evansville, and Terre Haute." https://events.in.gov/event/ihb-german-newspapers-demise https://events.in.gov/event/ihb-german-newspapers-demise Before World War I, many German-Americans sent their children to schools that taught classes in German. In 1919, Indiana banned the teaching of German in schools: https://blog.history.in.gov/when-indiana-banned-the-german-language-in-1919/ https://blog.history.in.gov/when-indiana-banned-the-german-l.... Before World War I, many streets and cities had German names. They were renamed during the war: "City and street names were changed from German-sounding designations to more Americanized ones. For example, East Germantown, Indiana, was renamed Pershing, Indiana. Ironically, Gen. John J. Pershing, supreme commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in France, came from a family that had changed its name from the German Pfoerschin." https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/summer/germans.pdf https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/su... Before World War I, you could drink beer in an beer garden in Indiana. The Indiana legislature ratified Prohibition in 1919 and two days later Nebraska did also which gave the amendment a three-fourths majority. Beer was outlawed. So in 1917, a German-American could live in Indiana on a German named street in a German named city, get their news from a German language newspaper, send their child to a German language public school and drink beer in a beer garden on a Saturday afternoon, and by 1920, that was all over. So yeah, I guess your great grandfather wasn't harassed any, but all of that was erased.
- choko 5y agoThis action alone should make FDR go down as one of the worst presidents in US history, yet many people still consider this monster great. There are some actions that cannot be washed away no matter how many other good deeds you may have done.
- pinephoneguy 5y ago
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- quickthrowman 5y agoYes, the Axis powers were clearly the good guys. Industrialized genocide was good and not bad. I have no idea how you can even begin to defend your statement, it’s absolutely ridiculous if you know the horrors that took place during WWII. Yes, I know the Allies firebombed Dresden and lots of Japanese cities. Japan and Germany did unconscionable things, the Holocaust and Rape of Nanking/Unit 731 were far beyond what the US or other Allies did. Everyone has blood on their hands in a war, but some have more than others.
- Jeema101 5y agoSadly, the reason he was able to do it because it was a popular policy among the majority of the population [1] [1] "The American public overwhelmingly approved of the Japanese-American internment measures and as a result, they were seldom opposed" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoAnd yet so many still think simple democracy is a good idea.
- adingus 5y agoHow do you define an "action that cannot be washed away no matter how many other good deeds you may have done"? Because I don't think anyone will ever be able to dispute you unless people can agree on a definition.
- HWR_14 5y agoJust a reminder, George Takai published a graphic novel memoir of his time in a camp called "They Called Us Enemy". He also has quite a few pretty moving talks about it.
- Day1 5y agoI’m curious why no one is bringing attention to political affiliation. These atrocities in US history are generally all linked with one party. (Another atrocity being slavery)
- kmos17 5y agoThat’s as ridiculous and argument as claiming a link between modern socialism and the nazi party because of a shared name. There is one party that’s all about « state’s rights » today, the same argument used to justify slavery.
- kcplate 5y agoWell that is some interesting irony within a single comment. Complain about about a people claiming modern association being the same as a historical one, then in the very next sentence do the exact same thing that you complained about.
- panick21_ 5y agoIts not just because of the name. The common history of collectivist thought is well document hand has been for decades. The first few Chapters of 'The Road to Serfdom' (originally planed to be separate book) have a whole intellectual history of what became Nazism and how it relates to Socialism. I mean to leading fascist in Italy was literally kicked out of the Socialist party. And not because his theory on Marxist exploitation was different. It can certainty be argued that Hitler took the original NSDAP into a different direction then it would have gone otherwise. And Hitler himself certainty wasn't much thinker in terms of that history. He was much more a pure German nationalist and a race theorist. But Hitler did deliberately build on that intellectual tradition.
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoBoth of these comments miss the point. The names and labels change over time, the phenomenon is always the same: tyranny, coercion, collectivism, trampling of individual rights.
- jmpman 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident The narrative I’ve heard is that the Japanese internment was done solely due to racism. Yet, in the first incident where Japanese American citizens are confronted with the option of helping Japan or helping America, both Japanese Americans side with Japan. This incident is suppressed as it doesn’t fit with the narrative that the internment was done solely due to racism. The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles has a fantastic display on the internment camps, and yet doesn’t once mention the Nihau incident. However the museum spends many sections explaining how the internment was driven due to racist farmers wanting Japanese American farm land. The plane from the incident was donated to a museum, and it appears that the late Senator Inouye prevented it from being displayed. Yes the internment was a horrible event in American history, and we should all try to keep it from happening again. But I’m disappointed when I repeatedly see evidence of the Niihau incident attempting to be erased from history because it doesn’t fit a narrative.
- lazyant 5y agoI don't disagree but are there any other instances where Japanese Americans had to choose? Also how many Americans would side with the Nazis? there was a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden a few years before and the government didn't put German-Americans in concentration camps so racism seems to have played a part too.
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- YATA0 5y ago>the government didn't put German-Americans in concentration camps so racism seems to have played a part too. This is factually incorrect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_America...
- lazyant 5y agoYour own quoted article says "1.2 million persons had been born in Germany, 5 million had two native-German parents, and 6 million had one native-German parent." "Many more had distant German ancestry. During WWII, the United States detained at least 11,000 ethnic Germans, overwhelmingly German nationals.[3] The government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few in internment camps". So millions with German ancestry, detained some who were German nationals and only a few in internment camps.
- egberts1 5y agoThank God and the gods that current US administration has learned from FDR for we can ill afford to have concentration camps of Anti-Vaxers today, not that it would have made much difference based on studies and hindsight.