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> In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the forced removal of Japanese American "enemy aliens". The Nagasawa heirs, who were st
by usui 4y ago
> In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the forced removal of Japanese American "enemy aliens". The Nagasawa heirs, who were still fighting the estate's seizure in court, were incarcerated in internment camps. Like the approximately 125,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned until after the end of World War Two, they lost any chance of reclaiming the property.
Absolutely disgusting that it took the United States 50 years from 1942 to acknowledge injustices like this had occurred as well as disburse the funds in an attempt to correct its mistakes. It was $20,000 in the 1990s, yay whoopee... I have friends whose families still, to this day, do not forgive the American government for what it did. A good majority of grandparents/parents were dead by then. Many returnees from the camps systematically tried to erase any cultural heritage they had by purposely hiding it and not passing it on to future generations, as a result of their treatment. Because of that, many Japanese perceive Japanese Americans from that time period as cultureless. Btw, the 442nd Regiment, comprised of Japanese Americans, received the most awards in U.S. history for military service in WW2.
Then you take into account the loss of capital from Nagasawa losing his vineyard, and it gets even worse.
- femiagbabiaka 4y agoNot surprising. The US has not paid reparations to most of the people it has wronged.
- rgrieselhuber 4y agoAmazing what sort of atrocities people will commit when fear and emergencies are invoked.
- asdff 4y agoYou don't have to invoke all of that to commit atrocities, just appeals to convenience work well enough to convince someone to forsake the rights of another person. Settlement of this country should have never happened, this is all stolen indigenous land whose conquest was legally justified by the handwaving of a patriarch of a religion hundreds of years ago. White settlers at the time saw native peoples as a pest much like a coyote is a pest to livestock, and much like coyotes they were allowed to kill off these people pretty matter of factly without recourse. There was no fear or emergency justifying that action, only that the white person would like to make profit grazing their cattle in the buffalo country on land that was offered to them by their government for next to nothing.
- rgrieselhuber 4y agoThat’s true. We did see that in recent years with people even such as Noam Chomsky arguing for ostracizing undesirables and withholding food from them.
- andrekandre 4y ago> even such as Noam Chomsky arguing for ostracizing undesirables and withholding food from them. wow, when was this?!
- coldacid 4y agohttps://nationalpost.com/news/world/noam-chomsky-says-the-unvaccinated-should-just-remove-themselves-from-society https://nationalpost.com/news/world/noam-chomsky-says-the-un...
- andrekandre 4y ago> Speaking on YouTube’s Primo Radical on Oct. 24, Chomsky said that for the unvaccinated people who are segregated from society, how they obtain groceries should be left up to them. “How can we get food to them?” asked Chomsky. “Well, that’s actually their problem.” hmm... while a bit harsh, im not sure that files under "withholding food" from the unvaccinated...
- rgrieselhuber 4y agoI think that’s exactly what he was saying.
- asdff 4y agoHe's really saying that these people made their bed and are forced to sleep in it, and they can't expect society to go out of its way to accommodate their disregard for society in general.
- rayiner 4y agoHas anybody ever paid reparations to anybody? Inter-Generational debt just isn’t a thing.
- skyyler 4y agoThis kind of stuff can easily be searched for. Here's a low-mid quality article: https://www.vox.com/2014/5/23/5741352/six-times-victims-have-received-reparations-including-four-in-the-us https://www.vox.com/2014/5/23/5741352/six-times-victims-have...
- akavi 4y agoAll but the last of those examples only paid out to the living survivors of the atrocity, and the last only earmarked 5% for descendants. So it does seem that inter-generational reparations are indeed very rare.
- skyyler 4y ago>$10 million out of court settlement with the victims and their families >$2.4 million today would be set aside to compensate the 11 or so remaining survivors of the incident, $800,000 to compensate those who were forced to flee the town, and $160,000 would go to college scholarships primarily aimed at descendants. Inter-generational reparations exist explicitly in two of the six examples in that article. Japanese interns that didn't collect their payment from the US left it up to their heirs to collect it, so I'll even add that as a technicality of inter-generational reparations. Also I'm rather sure Israel is still getting payments for what happened in the 1940s... But I could be wrong there. Inter-generational reparations are indeed rare if you don't look very hard for examples of it happening.
- rayiner 4y agoNow compare that to all the instances where people committed atrocities against other people. It seems like you’re talking about something vanishingly rare.
- 4y ago
- Cyberdog 4y agoTo this day I am dumbfounded that Roosevelt is still as revered as he is. He had other problems like poor economic policy that probably prolonged the Great Depression, but you don't even need to look at any of that - the dude implemented an executive order which put American citizens into effective prisons with no due process, based only on their ethnicity. Trump, who I'm told is a racist and a fascist and so forth, never even tried to do anything close to that. You want to start toppling statues and changing street names of dead white guys? Start with that one. What a creep.
- WillPostForFood 4y agoAlso, Korematsu v. United States, one of the all time worst Supreme Court decisions, maybe only second to Dred Scott. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States
- labster 4y agoInstead of starting with FDR, why not first cancel the US Presidents who literally owned slaves or who literally engaged in genocide against the natives? Just a thought. I mean, imprisoning people for just minding their own business, based mainly on skin color, is something that every president has done since the laws against marijuana were passed. Not sure why you’d single out FDR.
- ehaliewicz2 4y agoProbably because FDR is very relevant to the article.
- runjake 4y ago> Trump, who I'm told is a racist and a fascist and so forth, never even tried to do anything close to that. Central Americans might disagree with you. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/immigration-kids-trump-flores-concentration-camps/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/immigration-kids-t...
- 4y ago
- ch4s3 4y agoYeah, FDR's government really liked taking land from people. The TVA basically tossed black farmers out on their asses[1]. The Housing Act of 1937 was used to clear out "slums"[2] and required new housing be provided, but it was largely used to suppress and disperse immigrants and African Americans. The New Deal was pretty terrible if you were black and owned anything, not to mention the intentional setting of minimum wages to a level that would ensure black unemployment[3]. [1]https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a9ef5262e76846dfa1074cbd9b064f04 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a9ef5262e76846dfa1074cb... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Act_of_1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Act_of_1937 [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-racist-history-of-minimum-wage-laws-you-might-not-know-about-2017-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-racist-history-of-minimu...
- fakedang 4y agoYou also forgot the seizure of gold and the forced sale at below market rates. And the mandate that prevented Americans from owning bullion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
- ch4s3 4y agoI mean, I wasn't trying to write a term paper.
- photochemsyn 4y agoFrom your sources: > "While the Housing Act of 1937 looked to solve American housing issues, it became marred by inequalities and problems. The main problem that rose from the legislation was the power given to the local governments. The Federal government let the local governments and voters decided on where and how to use the federal funding. This lead to local governments maintaining segregationist housing policies as well as allowing many public housing locations to become neglected."
- ch4s3 4y agoYes, I'm vary familiar with the history. The law was written and implemented poorly. It didn't have any enforcement mechanism for reimbursing or resettling residents of cleared slums. It was apparent immediately that it was going to funnel federal funds to segregation.
- _8j50 4y agoAt the risk of being overly controversial, what would have been a better option given the times. Lynching black people was not uncommon back then for context of how minorities were treated. Of course taking away someomes property when they have done no wrong is wrong. Or the internment camps. They did bad things because it was war. Do you remember how muslim americans were treated and attacked after 9\11? The animosity of the majority of americans towards them? The point I am making is even now this is how people react but back then modern concepts of human rights and justice were not prevalent. The war effort then was not like any war effort afterwards. It requires mobilizing the civilian society "lose lips sink ships" for example was a big motto because a lot of people see stuff and if they repeat it, it can make it to the enemy. Combine that with the fact that the japanese emperror was regarded as a god by the japanese, you can see how much paranoia war time president and generals would have about anyone japanese related. I am not saying what they did was in any way justified but rather if I was in their shoes I would also be susceptible to committing such atrocities. Really, what I am trying to say is how easy it is to do what america did to the Japanese americans then and how we should not be so quick to pass judgement. Their motivation was fear and paranoia in the time of war not hatred like with Germany's camps. Judging people of the past is easy but learning from history is hard. The lesson I learned from this is you have to be strong (whatever that means) and resist attempts by the government to do these things in the future as well as educate people on history like this. It may not happen to japanese people but it can happen again. If there is war with China and they start sabotaging, extorting and bombing americans are you sure chinese americans won't be mistreated again? All it takes is 51% of people to agree in a time of war (fear of death and cruelty).
- giraffe_lady 4y agoI have to point out that these actions were condemned contemporaneously as well. Even in their own time, by others living through those times, this was considered an atrocity. Standards of socially acceptable harm to minorities may have been different then, but we also know that this was easily recognized as unjust at the time, by the fact that so many people at the time did condemn it as unjust.
- 4y ago