In honor of George Takei giving one of the best "Peace, y’all, I’m outta here" monologues I have ever seen come out of a reality television show after his firing from The Apprentice last week, I thought I would take a moment today to remind my readers of a piece of American history that most people probably were never taught, and most of the rest probably try to actively forget:
Once upon a time, America had concentration camps*, on her own soil, for her own citizens.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted the military to circumvent the constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of national defense.
The order set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.
These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.
They were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their jobs; in some cases family members were separated and put into different camps. President Roosevelt himself called the 10 facilities "concentration camps."
Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders.
Oh, and the "best" part of this wholesale abrogation of the very tenets that made America great?
At the time, Executive Order 9066 was justified as a "military necessity" to protect against domestic espionage and sabotage. However, it was later documented that "our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage." (Michi Weglyn, 1976).
Yeah, you read that right. We violated 120,000 American citizens’ rights simply because we were caught up in the hysteria of war. Maybe some of those folks might have eventually committed one of those acts of espionage or sabotage that the American people were so afraid of, but that certainly does not excuse the incarceration of all of them.
And people wonder why folks like me are concerned about the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 and all of the other, disturbingly-similar bills floating around in our federal government these days… American history, in and of itself, stands in mute witness to the cold reality that words, fear, dehumanization, and prejudice can – and did – result in American citizens being forced into concentration camps, which makes the panty-bunching idiocy of head-in-the-sand narcissists like Bill Quick all the more ludicrous.
Yes, I firmly believe that people should be allowed to express themselves as they see fit, as is guaranteed by the First Amendment, and yes, I firmly believe that (barring specific circumstances) individual, adult human beings are personally responsible for their own actions and decisions. None of that changes the truth that it is hardly "hysteria" to observe that some of the political sentiments we are seeing bandied about now have yielded disrecommended outcomes in the past.
Unfortunately, few learn the past any more. Hell, I challenge you to find a textbook from any pre-college school anywhere in America that actually mentions the concentration camps we set up for American citizens of Japanese descent during World War Two; I know I only found out about them by doing research on Mr. Takei’s biography (being the Trekkie nerd I was/am), running across a mention of the camps, and then going to my parents with a "WTF?" moment. Thankfully, sites like Densho and facilities like the Japanese American National Museum (Mr. Takei’s charity for Celebrity Apprentice, which sadly did not receive any funds) exist to ensure we cannot sweep unpleasant memories under the rug, and to help us hopefully learn from our mistakes in the past.
It happened here, and as sure as I know anything, I know this: some people are swinging back to the belief that the only thing wrong with those concentration camps is that they unjustly imprisoned the wrong people. I do not hold to that. It is incumbent upon all Americans to systemically and absolutely resist all future attempts at this kind of travesty, lest we be caught creating another shameful history annotation future generations would rather forget.
(* – Better Half disagrees with my use of this term; however, I stand by it, and fully acknowledge that it is a historically- and emotionally-laden term, and use it with full malice aforethought. Why? Because it is the correct term to use:
Let us review the main points of the debate. Over 120,000 residents of the U.S.A., two thirds of whom were American citizens, were incarcerated under armed guard. There were no crimes committed, no trials, and no convictions: the Japanese Americas were political prisoners. To detain American citizens in a site under armed guard surely constitutes a "concentration camp." But what were the terms used by the government officials who were involved in the process and who had to justify these actions? Raymond Okamura provides us with a detailed list of terms. Let’s consider three such euphemisms: "evacuation," "relocations," and non-aliens." Earthquake and flood victims are evacuated and relocated. The words refer to moving people in order to rescue and protect them from danger.
The official government policy makers consistently used "evacuation" to refer to the forced removal of the Japanese Americans and the sites were called "relocation centers." These are euphemisms (Webster: "the substitution of an inoffensive terms for one considered offensively explicit") as the terms do not imply forced removal nor incarceration in enclosures patrolled by armed guards. The masking was intentional.
… And because the person who signed the Executive Order creating the camps called them that himself:
In response to a reporter’s question about the West Coast "evacuation," the President called Nisei "Japanese people from Japan who are citizens," and went on to state ". . . it is felt by a great many lawyers that under the Constitution they can’t be kept locked up in concentration camps."
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, Press Conference, November 21, 1944, FDR Library, #982.
To be certain, the concentration camps in America were drastically and markedly different from the concentration camps run in Nazi Germany, but they both satisfy the Merriam-Webster definition of "a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined". The Nazis, of course, went above and beyond that basic notion into the realm of torture, wholesale slaughter, forced labor, and so forth, but the term applies to both.)
(Picture of Tule Lake Relocation/Detention Center, the second camp where Mr. Takei and his family were detained, courtesy of Darkchilde.)
I often wonder what might have happened to those poor souls had Midway gone pear shaped and the Japanese established a significant foothold here. Would we have moved them, murdered them or let them fall into enemy hands?
I know this part of our history and I thought it was wrong, but I have never looked at the bigger picture of what it meant, what it could mean.
Great post, and I think I have something important to add.
Hawaiian Japanese were not rounded up. If their excuse was that the Japanese might sabotage the U.S., that excuse was completely destroyed when they left the most vulnerable part of the U.S. to Japanese attack (as had already been shown with Pearl Harbor) well populated with 1st and 2nd generation Japanese citizens.
Hawaiian Japanese were rounded up. However, may prominent (and not so prominent) non- japanese-hawaiian citizens stood up and vouched for their servants and service empoyees.
This should be remembered.
Strangely, the hawaiian japanese young men volunteered for military service….the mainland ones did not…..Wonder why?
“There were no crimes committed”
False. See below.
“However, it was later documented that “our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage.” (Michi Weglyn, 1976).”
That is (probably deliberately) misleading in the extreme, a pre-Clinton parsing of words on an epic scale. Espionage and sabotage are only two of the many threats posed by Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_Incident
The internment was a reasonable reaction to the behavior of some Japanese-Americans in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
@ Oliver Perry: Honestly, I am not sure, but given the baseless hysteria that was gripping the country at the time (after all, we certainly did not have concentration camps for Germans, or Italians, or…), I am rather glad we did not have an opportunity to find out.
@ agirlandhergun: Not to be casting aspersions about anyone’s ages, but I would wager yours was the last generation where the history of this incident was actually taught in school – I can guarantee it was not in mine.
It is this history, though, that makes me twitch every time anyone, from any political bent, starts making cracks about ‘reeducation camps’ or somesuch crap. They are (probably) joking, but the basis of such comments being humor is the all-pervading belief that “it could never happen here”. Bullshit. It DID happen here, and only we stop it from happening again. More and more, those folks like the “Troubador” Roberta X highlighted make me wonder how soon it will happen again…
@ L4ZY3YE: In fairness, about 1200 Hawaiian residents and citizens of Japanese descent were rounded up and sent to camps, or volunteered for them to be with / find families, but, yeah, for the most part, they were not interred with the rest of the population (there were about 150,000 personsos of Japanese descent on the islands).
While the Islands were technically under martial law at the time, and thus the theory was that dangers from them would be reduced because of that, it does rather shoot down the whole “ZOMG, THEY ARE A DANGER!” argument…
@ B: According to historians, there were a host of reasons they were not deported – logistics (moving 150,000 folks from the Islands would have been… difficult), the fact that they made up a significant part of the labor pool, the fact that the Islands were under martial law and thus people figured they were “safer” than mainland America, and, as you say, some key political figures standing up and defending them, up to and including the territorial governor of the Islands (and he actually spoke out against using the Niihau Incident as an excuse to imprison any Japanese other than the guilty parties).
And, in fairness, 1256 men from the mainland camps did volunteer for service, with about 800 of those actually being inducted… but, after what their country did to them, I can hardly fault anyone who did not.
@ Gunnutmegger: So, wait; let me get this straight. You are claiming that it is somehow “reasonable” to imprison 119,997 other persons of Japanese descent – American citizens all, children for the most part, without trial, and without any crimes being committed by the persons being incarcerated apart from the one individual from the Niihau Incident who made it to a camp – simply because three other folks who happened to look the same helped a downed enemy pilot and got thoroughly pwned for their actions?
Are you dumb, daft, or just trolling?
GReat post to remind us how fragile freedom really is.
Sing it, Linoge!
Failure to obtain all of the facts before forming an opinion is what causes people to take silly positions. Like claiming there was no justification for the internment.
If you had read the article I linked to (which in turn linked to other sources; but hell, any source other than the one-sided source you are using would be an improvement), you would see that it wasn’t the number of Japanese-American collaborators that caused alarm, it was the swiftness & ease with which they abandoned their “Americanism” and threw their lot in with the Japanese thatcreated a sense of distrust.
Since the internment occurred, we will never know what would have happened if the U.S. government left the Japanese-Americans loose.
Those who claim that there wouldn’t have been more collaboration with the Japanese, are, at best, deluded.
And, for the record…if there was a way to definitively segregate & intern German-Americans (without interning non-Germans), I would have supported it too.
@gunnutmegger: You said, “Since the internment occurred, we will never know what would have happened if the U.S. government left the Japanese-Americans loose.”
So that allows us to focus on what we DO know. 10s of 1000s of American citizens had their rights violated for something that someone thought they MIGHT do! You own a gun. You might become insane one day and use it on an innocent. Should you be arrested, incarcerated, and condemned? By your statements, your resounding answer should be “Yes!”, but I bet that’s different isn’t it.
Next you said, “Those who claim that there wouldn’t have been more collaboration with the Japanese, are, at best, deluded.”
But you, yourself said, ” Since the internment occurred, we will never know what would have happened if the U.S. government left the Japanese-Americans loose.” just one sentance earlier, so which is it? Again, you are prosecuting someone based on race for what they MIGHT do. Unconstitutional and morally void.
Then you said, “And, for the record…if there was a way to definitively segregate & intern German-Americans (without interning non-Germans), I would have supported it too.”
And what exactly is YOUR nationality? Are we, were we, or is there any potential we would go to war with a nation that resembles your heritage? If so, I expect YOU to be the first one in line to claim your reservation and room to a place you might not be able to check out of.
Here is a current case in point. Do we have concentration camps for people of middle eastern heritage or those who have chosen Islam as their faith? Answer (which I’m sure you hate) is: NO we do not. Have they all risen up against us and suberted the security of our nation from within? Answer is: NO they have not. Have there been a handfull who have tried? Answer is: YES there has. Have their attempts at terrorism been thwarted (even despite the TSA)? Answer is: YES, EVERY TIME since 9/11.
So what you are telling us is this:
1.) YOU are a racist and you are afraid of people who are different than you on the outside.
2.) YOU would sacrifice freedom for security.
3.) YOU do not support the US Constitution excepting when it benefits you and your deluded opinion.
4.) YOU probably rub one out at the thought of the “Minority Report” becoming a reality.
and lastly, but not leastly (heh.)…
5.) You have shown in this instance that you have far more in common with the anti-gun/anti-rights crowd than you ever will with those who support the ring of freedom for the great people of this great nation.
This should be a wake up call to you. YOU AREN’T HELPING OUR CAUSE SO PLEASE STOP TRYING. If you should decide to wake up, smell what you are shoveling, and stop believing your own racist, ignorant, Constitutionally corruptable crap then you can come sit on my porch anytime. Until then…. well I’ll let you have all the rope you want and leave you to your own devices. YOU are part of the problem.
Respectfully (to the US Constitution),
Disavowed With Honor
I almost forgot…
H/T to Linoge for a great post!!! I learned about it in 1992 my senior year in high school. A coworker who graduated in 2000 said he had never heard of it.
So gunnutmegger is for imprisonment (for the duration) without trial or due process or any evidence of breaking a law if a citizen shows insufficient “Americanism” and if enough members of their race or nationality are disloyal. What ratio for concentration camp?
And he’s for the internment of other citizens that happen to be of the same race of a nation the US is at war with… provided they’re easy to segregate out from the general populace.
Good to know he’s for collective punishment if the group being singled out is sufficiently easy to round up. And a lovely trust in the wisdom of the state and the necessity to abandon all those icky Constitutional limits.
As Disavowed said you better be willing to turn yourself in if your $GROUP gets its number up. And there’s the delicious irony of how most of the antis would happily agree with this line of thinking.
@ SGB: That is, indeed, the important take-away from all of this. Right now, it is considered a “conspiracy theory” for Our Glorious President to write an Executive Order demanding that X social/cultural/political group be rounded up and sent to “reeducation camps”, despite the fact that such beliefs have historical precedence within this very country. These camps were not an outgrowth of a bill appropriately routed through the House, Senate, and President. These camps were not a law-enforcement exercise. These camps were the direct result of one man signing one piece of paper and unjustly interring 120,000 people without trial or even criminal charges.
And it happened here.
The precedent is already in place – how soon until someone remembers that?
@ Roberta X: It is not hard when someone has done me the courtesy of writing my outline
.
@ gunnutmegger: … Wow.
Just… plain… wow.
I am not even sure I can formulate a cogent response to… that… but damned if I will not try.
Failure to have much more than a child’s understanding of statistics, individual rights, and the Constitution is one of the things that cause people to act like complete idiots in front of an audience. Like claiming that the actions of three people are sufficient to imprison another 119,997.
I did read the article, but unlike you, I actually thought about it, especially in terms of the rights that are protected by the Constitution and should bloody well be protected by us. It does not matter how many people helped the downed Japanese pilot. It does not matter how quickly they decided to do so. The only thing that matters is they were the only ones who specifically and individually took actions against the United States, and the actions of three people, no matter what their motivations were or how quickly they came to their conclusions, are wholly INsufficient to imprison another 120,000 people without trials or even charges.
Hell, “3″ is not even a statistically viable sample body upon which to determine the actions of 120,000 people, no matter how similar their cultures, upbringings, or genetics might be. Regardless, and thankfully, our justice system, as outlined by the Constitution, does not operate on actuarial tables.
And speaking of a justice system, it does not work off hypotheses, it does not work off “might”s, it does not work off possibilities, and it sure as hell does not work off guesses. It is bloody well supposed to work off cold, hard facts, and the fact is that the of the 120,000 or so American citizens of Japanese descent who were imprisoned in those camps, all of ONE is recorded to have committed any crime. One. And yet here you are, happily tap dancing away, explaining how locking up those innocent, unconvicted, non-criminal Japanese was the RIGHT course of action because of what they MIGHT have done. Maybe instead of idiotically picking nits, your time would be better spent reading – and trying to understand – the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendments?
Congratulations; you just became part of one of the many problems afflicting our country these days.
It does not matter if 1000 Americans of Japanese descent committed verifiable crimes against the United States and were convicted of the same. Imprisoning the other 119,000 on the basis of the actions of those thousand is wrong. Period.
The real irony of this entire argument, though, is how quickly you are erecting your own figurative concentration camp – you do understand, do you not, that the exact same tortuous “logic” you are using to unjustly imprison tens of thousands of American citizens is the same exact “logic” the anti-rights cultists would use to disarm you of your firearms, do you not? “Some” people do very bad things with their firearms, so all people’s firearms should be taken away. “Some” Japanese do very bad things, so all Japanese should be taken away.
I would be laughing my ass off right now at the ridiculousness of it, if it were not simultaneously so repugnant.
@ Disavowed With Honor: Honestly, I think “xenophobic” is a more appropriate description of Gunnutmegger’s position than “racist”, but it all works out to the same in the end – assuming people of similar color/features/genetics will behave one way simply because some tiny-assed segment of their population behaved that way, and then fearing/hating/dehumanizing them because of his baseless assumption.
Likewise, thanks for the confirmation of what I feared – the deletion of this particular event from history books. I graduated high school in 2000, and do not recall seeing it there either… To be sure, history education eventually becomes a question of what to delete and what to keep since the subject matter constantly grows, but, damn, of all the events to omit…
@ Jack: I seem to recall various and sundry countries doing similar things in the past – and even to today – and pretty much to a country, they were generally universally reviled and hated for those programs, and it is quite arguable that those programs eventually resulted, or at least contributed, in the collapse of those countries.
More specifically to our particular country, such programs are inherently antithetical to the Constitution, and I find myself rather disturbed that someone would propose such things even to this day and age. I had rather hoped we had learned better, but considering that we apparently are not teaching the very material we should be learning the lessons from, I guess I should not be surprised.
Disavow,
Wartime is different than peacetime. We all understand that. I do, anyway.
Likewise, my right to bear arms is contingent upon my fitness to do so. A convicted felon cannot legally own guns. And a segment of the population that shows disturbing disloyal tendencies during wartime isn’t entitled to a blanket presumption of innocence. Rights carry responsibilities.
I am no fan of FDR; quite the opposite. But given his knowledge of the documented turncoat behavior of Japanese-Americans under the best of circumstances (on American soil, with numerical superiority over the lone Japanese pilot, no direct threat to them or their families), his decision was the right one given the fear and uncertainty that gripped America at that time. I am not happy about the internment. But I understand why it happened.
As to my nationality, I am a euro-mutt. My family has been American citizens since at least the early 1800s, based upon property records I have seen.
Regarding muslims: sharia law, honor killings. Get your google on, and be dismayed. Or would you rather “respect” their right to impose muslim sensibilities on the rest of America? I wonder, if you had a young daughter who began dating a devout muslim, would you be even a single iota more observant of him? I mean, they (muslim men) do have these dendencies towards spousal abuse, stoning women to death for trivialities, and female genital mutilation. But you expect us to believe you wouldn’t treat him with a molecule more suspicion than a protestant boy scout? Please, say you wouldn’t so that we can all know for sure that you are a liar.
And your laundry-list of concocted ad hominem attacks has all of the moral weight of a 13 year old girl throwing a tantrum because her parents won’t let her stay out all night.
The world isn’t a sand-table model in an ivory tower. Sometimes we have to see how the sausage gets made. Sometimes we even have to make it.
And, “Jack”, I have not written those words you claim I wrote. I suspect you are projecting.
@gunnutmegger So your rights are limited in peacetime? Last I saw there was nothing saying the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, or any right guaranteed to the citizens of the United States is contingent upon being at peace.
Do you realize that most of those interred lost everything as well. Their homes, their property, and were left with just the shirts on their back. No due process, no trial, nothing other than, “I don’t like how you look.”
Regarding comparing this to Sharia law makes no sense. We have the constitution which is the supreme law of the land. Just because I might be suspicious of someone does not mean I have a right to deprive them of life, liberty, or property. You however seem more than willing as long as it is something you disagree with. So by your claim all Muslims are guilty without crime and should be locked up. News flash, not all Muslims are that way, you’re taking the most extreme example and saying that is representative of the entire population. I suggest you take a statistics class pronto.
Fact, there are people who would round up gun owners for merely owning a gun because of the actions of a statistical minority.
The fact is you’re are an intolerant bigot who only seeks tolerance when it suits yourself.
And Jack is right, your own words:
You claimed that the deprivation of life, liberty, and property is justified over the whole because of the actions of a few.
LOL. So many insults.
I don’t know how much more plainly I can say that the 2nd Amendment rights of U.S. citizens are not comparable to the issue of allegiance to a foreign power during wartime.
The only person that I can say for certain took a college-level stats class (and passed it with an A) is me. Because I was there. If I had to guess, based solely on the logic I have been presented with in this thread, I am alone in being able to claim that.
But this issue is not and never has been about looking deep into the past with 20/20 hindsight and being a Monday-morning quarterback with statistical models. And especially not about doing it with half the facts missing.
The issue is about what actually happened, and the reasons why it happened.
“the actions of three people, no matter what their motivations were or how quickly they came to their conclusions, are wholly INsufficient to imprison another 120,000 people”
That is your opinion, made from the safety of a 60-year interval of time with no threat looming over your head, and less than half of the facts in your possession. (Tell the truth: you had never heard of the Niihau Incident before I posted it. You know it, I know it, it was obvious from your naive portrayal of the internment; but you had already made up your mind about the internment, didn’t you?)
The government, who was there at the time and subject to the threat, disagreed. And no one involved with the decision was punished for having been involved.
And you once again make the amateur’s mistake of viewing the internment as a civilian legal procedure, and trying to impose that set of rules upon it. It wasn’t, and they didn’t apply.
Fact: The war was not even 24 hours old, and already nearly every Japanese-American that encountered a member of the Japanese military had switched allegiance.
Fact: The U.S. government did not know the Japanese intentions, or their capabilities, or their locations with any certainty.
Fact: California (the area of the continental U.S. closest to Japan and thus most vulnerable to an invasion) was heavily populated with Japanese-Americans.
Fact: If actions were not taken quickly to prevent additional Niihau Incidents, it would be nearly impossible to contain a potentially disloyal Japanese-American population later (not without significant bloodshed, anyway).
Given that reality, the government did what it thought was best.
I am sad that the internment was necessary. The camp abuses, and loss of property, were unjustified, and (since we cannot undo them) should have been remedied.
And, I wonder which of you scholars can tell me what happened to Japanese-Americans in the military during WW2. Was it “wrong” to forbid them from fighting in the Pacific theater?
I can’t believe anyone would still defend this action. So what other groups are you in favor of locking up due to the actions of a few of their members?
Well, that’s what I get for posting without checking my numbers. I knew it was little to no Japanese-Americans pulled from Hawaii because the islands would have near shut down without them working. Thanks for correcting me.
As far as what Gunnutmegger is saying, it blows my mind that people are so willing to give that kind of power to what is essentially a psychopathic monster.
“Sure he kidnapped that nice Japanese family next door because the voices told him to, but he swears that the voices would never tell him to do that to me, so I don’t think I need to call the police”
@ Gunnutmegger:
So by your statements there. We should inter every last Muslim for fear of them being a terrorist.
Every one of your facts is predicated on “Fear” and fear is being used as the “Necessity“.
So would we have been right on the morning after 9/11 to lock up every last Muslim in this country. HELL NO.
The government at that time acted unlawfully. PERIOD. Just because nothing ever happened to anyone involved doesn’t make it legal. People were scared, no doubt. However fear is not an excuse, yet here you are using it exactly as such.
If tomorrow the American Government said that it was fearful of anyone armed in the American populace that there is an armed resistance and a threat to the republic, under your statement, they could issue and executive order to 1) collect weapons, 2) imprison those who are armed.
You aren’t sad internment was necessary, stop lying. Instead of learning from that horrible example of history and using it as a lesson you’re holding it up as an example of “this was a good thing”. You stated it was necessary, if it was necessary you can’t be sorry. They are mutually exclusive. The only reason you would feel sorry is if you did something and it was unnecessary.
I was aware of that incident long ago and I never considered it justification for the deprivation of the rights of 120,000 other Americans.
Also, with regards to civilian vs military law, when was martial law declared in the CONUS during World War II? You can make that excuse in Hawaii, you cannot try that excuse on the mainland.
Why don’t you just come out and fully admit you’re for the deprivation of rights under color of law already as long as you’re not the victim? Because that’s exactly what you’re saying.
@ Barron Barnett: Thank you for more-concisely expressing what I was trying to. You and Jack are quite correct – Gunnutmegger’s words, as accurately represented by Jack, has damned him in his conversation thread as nothing more than a self-blinded, xenophobic bigot.
Unfortunately, having had past dealings with him, this is something of a systemic failure on his part.
And to jump down to your second comment, good call on the “apology”. People only apologize when they realize what they did (or, in this case, supported) was wrong. Or if they are being dishonest in an attempt to appear more rational than they actually are, which is more accurate in this particular case.
@ Gunnutmegger:
Strawman; no one said they were. We are saying that if it is good for one Amendment, it is good for them all. If one (or, in this case, somewhere around four) Amendments can be arbitrarily ignored without due process or trial simply because it is “convenient” for the government in question to do so, why not ignore another one while we are at it?
And you would be wrong. But that seems to be the only rhythm you know, given this thread.
No, that is pretty much fact. A sample size of three is a wholly insingificant sample size to determine the actions of 120,000 other people, especially since your confidence level needs to be somewhere around… oh… say… 100%.
Which is exactly why our justice system does not work on statistical distributions or probabilities. We force the people who committed the crimes to suffer the consequences of their actions, not random-assed strangers who just happen to share a few genes with the violators in question.
And they, too, were wrong. I am sensing a pattern. The sad thing is that federal government is willing to admit they were wrong, while you remain staunch and steadfast in your idiocy.
Wrong. Again. Still. The persons imprisoned in those camps were largely American citizens. They were not American military members, and thus not subject to the UCMJ. Neither were they foreign enemy combatants, and thus subject to the various and sundry rules and regulations concerning them. They were American citizens, and thus retained the full privileges and protections of the United States Constitution… that the American government simply ignored because they were afraid, because they were hysterical, and because it was convenient.
Again, if you think the Constitution is so meaningless as to be simply cast away whenever and wherever it best suits the “needs” of the government or society at the time, I wonder why you bitch and moan so much about the grim spectre of “gun control” on the horizon – given the various spree shootings taking place across the country, it would seem as though a man of your lacking moral stature would welcome the abrogation of the Second Amendment with open arms!
Your pathetic attemps at gotchas and nitpicking amount to naught – 120,000 American citizens and residents were neither convicted nor even accused of committing a crime, yet they were unjustly confined to concentration camps for up to almost three years. That was wrong, wholly without reason, and was fueled by nothing more than senseless fear. You are welcome to continue disagreeing all you like, but in light of history and the facts, your opinion amounts to naught.
@ Jennifer: But… but… it was different, you see! Just like guns are different!
The rationalization going on here makes me sick, moreso given that it comes from someone who should know better.
@ L4ZY3YE: No worries, I was unaware of the specific numbers myself, so it was good to look up.
And, anywise, it is ok to senselessly and unjustly lock up people in concentration camps because the government thinks it is ‘necessary’. Duh. Did you not see that clause in the Constitution?
@Linoge, Barron Barnette, et. al. (except gunnutmegger),
I appreciate the mental jousting, though one side had a lance made from Balsa Wood. As I have always said, I welcome those who disagree with me. It only serves to strengthen my resolve, especially when I am supported by historical fact, and knowledge of how our Constitution is written/should work.
@gunnutmegger,
I sincerely hope that you are a anti-rights troll. If not, please refrain from associating yourself with pro-gun and pro-rights movements. You have shown here that you are nothing more than someone who supports the subversion of someone’s rights for something as trite as your own fears, and moreover you have shown your willingness to be a blood dancer on someone’s rights and those that died in those camps for no justifiable reason. Please tell Joan we all said hello and that we are still here because WE ARE WINNING!!!
God bless you, unless you think Christians should be thrown into internment camps because of Timothy McVea, Jim Jones, or the Bad Guy in Poltergeist II.
Good Day to you Sir,
Disavowed With Honor
One last thing… I sincerely hope that white “euro-mutts” never start a war with America. If they do, I can only hope that gunnutmegger supports his own beliefs and checks in first. I, personally, will be waiting for an email from him describing the condition of the facilities. Best of luck!
Disavowed With Honor
It’s always good of the domestic enemies of liberty to announce themselves. –But unlike the approach Gunnutmegger advocates, I think he should not be locked up unless he acts on his words. And the Constitution, as amended, backs me up.
LOL.
So much projection, so much namecalling, so many strawmen being erected in my name and furiously knocked down.
And yet none of you “patriots” has addressed the full body of facts of the internment. My but you do love to cherrypick the facts you like, don’t you?
No troll here. Time to find some other pretext to bury your head in the sand and ignore reality, Disavowed.
“I can’t believe anyone would still defend this action. So what other groups are you in favor of locking up due to the actions of a few of their members?
Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The Democratic party.
“We should inter every last Muslim for fear of them being a terrorist.”
Never said it, and don’t advocate it. But if it makes you happy to lie about me, well have at it. Try to make them more convincing though.
“if it was necessary you can’t be sorry.”
Barron, that is an idiotic statement. Ask your parents if they were happy when they had to spank you for misbehaving. Or just maybe, they weren’t happy about having to do something that was necessary but unpleasant? Do you think that’s possible, Barron?
Or, based on your behavior, were you one of those kids who never got physically disciplined, and grew up to become an ill-mannered narcissist?
“You can make that excuse in Hawaii, you cannot try that excuse on the mainland.”
Says who?
The fact that the internment happened means that someone did more than “try” that excuse.
“Why don’t you just come out and fully admit you’re for the deprivation of rights under color of law already as long as you’re not the victim? Because that’s exactly what you’re saying.”
Since that isn’t what I said, and it isn’t what I believe, I cannot in good conscience say that.
But I also won’t perform the circus trick of standing on a soapbox to thump my chest while burying my head in the sand to engage in a metaphorical dick-measuring contest to see who can more blindly miss-state legal principles and rewrite history.
“A sample size of three is a wholly insingificant sample size to determine the actions of 120,000 other people, especially since your confidence level needs to be somewhere around… oh… say… 100%.”
Statistical manipulations 60 years after the fact cannot be used to rewrite history.
Let me try to give you an analogy that you can relate to.
I do not know what the laws in your state are with regard to the use of deadly force. But in my state, the use of deadly force is justified if the actor (user of force) is deemed to have reasonably believed that he/she, or some third party, was in imminent danger of death or grave bodily harm.
If, after the fact, it is learned that the dead crook’s gun was fake, or empty, that does not invalidate the reasonable fear that the actor felt at the time. It is 100% true that the actor was not in any real danger, but that fact is utterly irrelevant for the purposes of determining their guilt.
Based upon the many statements in this thread, I sure hope that none of you people serve on a jury in a self-defense case.
Someone please tell me that in the same post he did not show support for MAIG and bring up measuring male genetalia!
So he supports left wing anti rights organizations, mentions the whole “measuring” thing, AND has no issue with the subversion of peoples rights without due process. The trifecta is complete. The only thing he hasn’t said is, “I’m a gun owner, but…”. If it wasn’t so serious I would be laughing and wishing I had placed bets earlier. What is it about the left that makes them hate so much that it makes them willing to blood dance?
To answer your question gunnitmegger, the issue began and ended the moment almost 120K people were denied due process and their rights were subverted. Period. No justification for it. It wasn’t legal. It was morally void. No excuse, fear, forethought, afterthought, like, dislike, or excuse changes that. It’s that simple. Show me where civilian law and the US Constitution makes this legal. A point you have avoided with your head in the sand from the beginning. UCMJ does not apply to non-service members. Show me where it does. For someone who got an “A” in the class you sure missed the point, compared to the rest of us.
In your lethal force analogy you had some errors. Japanese Americans were not posing an imminent threat or posing an immediate danger. They also did not have “a gun”. So to accurately state this, “You” shot the Japanese American because you THOUGHT they MIGHT have a gun. Even if they did have a gun, they weren’t directly threatening anyone with it so there is no reasonable threat. Again, you are only justifying your fears, which still does not excuse the violation of US Constitutional Rights of ANY American citizen. PERIOD! Then, now, or in the future. That is the full body of the facts. One’s rights under the Constitution are not arbitrary as you would have it. We (that includes me, you, everyone else, and our government) do not get to pick and choose who the Constitution applies to and who it does not. That’s why we have it. But I guess you know more about it and you are better at it then the architects of that document, the first of whom is God himself via providing the inspiration of said document in the first place. When I say my prayers tonight I’ll let HIM know HE has some competition down here and ask HIM if HE thinks he’s you. Fortunately I think HE appreciates a little sarcasm every now and then. God gave Japanese Americans the same rights HE afforded the rest of us in case you haven’t figured it out, and I don’t know of any text that shows God said it didn’t apply to them and I don’t know of any Constitutional documentation that approves it either. That’s where it stops. That’s the whole of it. You have the right to your opinion even if it’s wrong.
Disavowed With Honor
Another analogy strikes me: Say you were accosted by a mugger and it turns out his gun was a fake. Sure, deadly force is justified. The person made themselves out to be a clear that.
But getting into your van to round up the mugger’s family (or anyone that looks like the mugger’s “type”) and keeping them in a cell on your ranch out in the desert isn’t justified.
And anyone that thinks the State can put aside any constitutional limits in order to round up people that have committed no crime and detain them indefinitely… Well, what’s there to say?
Disavowed: I’m a bit surprised “penis compensating” didn’t come up earlier. Though the internet tough guy is coming along nicely.
@Gunnutmegger: “A” in college-level Statistics class here. In high-school, I might add. Followed up by five terms of various forms of Calculus. Also aced, I might add. (OK, enough bragging; it’s not my style.)
So many refutable points, but I’ll stick to the most recent post.
“And yet none of you ‘patriots’ has addressed the full body of facts of the internment.”
If you have facts we don’t, spill them. If your theory has merit, you’ll have something more substantial to back it up than, “Because I believe it so it must be so.” Prove. Your. Point.
“Never said it, and don’t advocate it. But if it makes you happy to lie about me, well have at it.”
“Never said it,” I’ll give you. But I think deep down, you would advocate it. This is called “deductive reasoning,” wherein we look at the evidence and draw conclusions based on it. You claim to support the decision to “intern” all of the American citizens of Japanese lineage, based solely on the war we were fighting and the actions of a tiny minority (didn’t your “A” grade in statistics teach you that 0.0025% is statistically insignificant?). It is therefore reasonable to deduce that you would support the “internment” of all American Muslims based on the “War on Terrorism” and the actions of a tiny minority. Or gun owners. Or free speech activists.
“But I also won’t perform the circus trick of standing on a soapbox to thump my chest while burying my head in the sand to engage in a metaphorical dick-measuring contest to see who can more blindly miss-state [sic] legal principles and rewrite history.”
This is exactly what you’re doing. If you can show the “legal principles” that state the “internment” was appropriate, justified, and Constitutionally-allowable, do it. Where is the Supreme Court precedent saying this is OK? Which legislative session approved it? Once again, from the top: Prove. Your. Point. And there is a subtle difference between “acknowledging” history and “rewriting” it. I’m doing the former. Which are you doing?
“If, after the fact, it is learned that the dead crook’s gun was fake, or empty, that does not invalidate the reasonable fear that the actor felt at the time. It is 100% true that the actor was not in any real danger, but that fact is utterly irrelevant for the purposes of determining their guilt.”
Although true, this is a strawman argument. The discussion was not about self-defense or justified shootings. But let’s roll with it. Using your logic, if the dead crook was a [insert racial epithet] guy, then all the [racial epithet] guys on the street need to be arrested and thrown in jail without legal counsel, without charges filed, without trial, and without a conviction, simply because they share a common appearance with the dead crook. And somehow that’s OK because they’re [racial epithet] guys and therefore can’t be trusted, right? Sorry, but I prefer to hold individuals accountable for their actions, and not place blame on everyone else.
“Based upon the many statements in this thread, I sure hope that none of you people serve on a jury in a self-defense case.”
I can honestly say the same about you.
Good day, sir.
Also @gunnutmegger: “And, I wonder which of you scholars can tell me what happened to Japanese-Americans in the military during WW2.”
The all-”Japanese-American” 442nd Combat Regiment was and still is one of the most highly-decorated regiments in US military history. Also, it should be noted that the only reason it was “all-Japanese” was because the Army wasn’t willing to allow Japanese men to serve alongside everyone else. But the segregation was before the Civil Rights movement and against Americans of “dangerous” Japanese lineage, so that makes it acceptable, right?
@Linoge: Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant.
I graduated high school in 1999, and I’d not heard of the Japanese “internment” camps until college, in a Humanities & Cultures class taught by an excellent instructor (who happens to be of Japanese lineage). I think you’re 100% correct: as scary as it sounds, the internment went down the Memory Hole of the public school system.
Part of the required reading of the H&C class was “Farewell to Manzanar” by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. It contains one of the most powerful quotes I’ve ever read. Put in context, the author’s father – a Japanese immigrant and fisherman, both respectful of his heritage and utterly loyal to America – was arrested and held for nearly a year away from his family, being questioned continually by US military personnel. When asked who he wanted to win the war, he didn’t (couldn’t) answer. After several times asking, his response finally came out: “If your mother and father are fighting, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?” Powerful stuff, no?
On a more nit-picky (in a nice way
) note, I disagree with the use of hyphenated names to describe the sub-cultures within this country. They do nothing but reinforce the dividing lines between culturally-diverse groups of Americans in the name of political correctness. I found this post a while back, and it sums it up quite nicely.
Cheers!
I’m waiting for “Your Momma”, “So”, “FU”, “Go away”, or some other freshman response at this point.
Disavowed:“Someone please tell me that in the same post he did not show support for MAIG and bring up measuring male genetalia!
So he supports left wing anti rights organizations,”
Maybe you should read it again. Nothing I said could be interpreted as support for MAIG or the Democratic party.
And I am not the guy trying to out-outrage the other commenters to see who can be the most indignant. Is there a prize for that?
“In your lethal force analogy you had some errors. Japanese Americans were not posing an imminent threat or posing an immediate danger.”
The decision-makers at the time felt otherwise.
“I’m waiting for “Your Momma”, “So”, “FU”, “Go away”, or some other freshman response at this point.”
Maybe you can scroll up and see who started the namecalling (which I haven’t engaged in, BTW). Or maybe you just don’t care what the facts are?
I am leaning towards the latter.
Archer:“Prove. Your. Point.”
You first. I provided citations. You have provided…nothing.
““Never said it,” I’ll give you. But I think deep down, you would advocate it.”
So now you’re a mind reader?
And, you’re still wrong.
“The all-”Japanese-American” 442nd Combat Regiment was and still is one of the most highly-decorated regiments in US military history.”
…and it was formed long AFTER Pearl Harbor, primarily from men recruited AFTER Pearl Harbor.
Now, go back, read the question again, and try answering it correctly.
Was it wrong to treat serving members of the military differently because they were Japanese-Americans?
@ Gunnutmegger: And this is why you fail:
If that is the case, why were you the first to propose it? After all, it was you who said that based on the actions of three people, it was “reasonable” to imprison another 120000 people. That is, at its very core, a prob/stat question, and that statement was false when you made it, all of your scrabbling since has not made it any more true by one iota, and here you are now saying you never should have made that statement to begin with.
I tend to agree with you, but I wonder if you are capable of comprehending what you just did?
No matter, this tells me all I really need to know:
This is a blatant lie, followed by some purebred projection. In truth, we addressed all the facts of the situation, not just the ones you think support your position, and if you are so willing to haughtily dismiss the other 15+ comments in this thread simply because they did not meet your arbitrary and self-absorbed requirements, well, there is not much point in continuing, is there?
I, for one, am done with you.
@ All Others: I would remind you of something L4ZY3YE reminded me of on Twitter – you cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into in the first place. Neither Gunnutmegger’s nor the WW2 government’s positions are, in any way, based on rational thought or reason, and are instead driven by nothing more complicated than base fear, intolerance, insecurity, and hysteria. Obviously our politicians are people and subject to those flaws as much as anyone is, but that is why there are Checks and Balances in place… Checks and Balances that were blatantly ignored, because too many people succumbed to the same ailments. But they still stand as wholly insufficient reasons for what transpired.
@ Disavowed With Honor: In fairness, he did not say he supported MAIG; rather, he said that he would prefer to arbitrarily lock up MAIG (and anyone who self-identifies as a Democrat) in a concentration camp simply because they disagree with him and a few of their members have committed illegal actions. If that does not send chills screaming up and down your back, I am not sure what would.
@ Roberta X: And that is what all of this boils down to, is it not? We can point to chapter and verse of the United States Constitution that supports and defends our positions and the rights we are defending. Gunnutmegger… cannot. And if a government, or its people, are simply going ot ignore the Constitution whenever it is “convenient” for them, then why bother having it? Or, on the flip side, why bother having that government?
@ The Jack: Nothing. There is literally nothing to say. We are coming at this argument from two radically different positions – we from the Constitution, he from fear and intolerance – that there is simply no point in having it.
Nice analogy, though – note how he ignored it?
@ Archer: No apology necessary. And, thankfully, I asked my sister-in-law, who graduated high school in 2009, if she had learned about the concentration camps in school, and she replied in the affirmative. Granted, she went to a magnet school, and she only learned about them in AP US History (and was somewhat unclear if they were taught in the “normal” class), but at least one school, somewhere, is still teaching about them.
By and large, I try, very much, to avoid the whole “hyphenated-American” bullshit, exactly for the reasons Teddy laid out. Of course, I occasionally slip, but our country – and the premise upon which it was founded and still exists – truly has no room for that.
“We can point to chapter and verse of the United States Constitution that supports and defends our positions and the rights we are defending. Gunnutmegger… cannot.”
In addition to being incorrect, your example is meaningless, Roberta. Here’s why:
How much success did “pointing to chapter and verse” have in stopping the internment?
Or, more topically, how much success has having a clearly-worded second amendment been in stopping anti-gun legislation?
There’s winning an argument in the faculty lounge, kids, and then there’s what happens out here in the real world.
I’m going to drop this here. No sense in giving you people more opportunities to hurl ad hominem attacks at the messenger.
But feel free to email me if there’s something you need to get off of your chests.
@ gunnutmegger:
Just because people ignore the law doesn’t make it not illegal.
And yet, here you are supporting breaking the law and violating the supreme law of the land. No we’re not in the faculty lounge and it’s people like you who are destroying the rights a freedoms of others that they disagree with.
I’m not the one supporting the internment of the law abiding. I’m not the one supporting the violation of the law. I’m not the one rationalizing the destruction of our Constitution. Feel free to email Linoge or I though if there’s something you need to get off your chest.
@Linoge and @gunnutmegger:
I stand corrected on my statement of saying gunnutmegger supports MAIG… I would blame it on bedtime and reading from an iphone, but as I usually say, the maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters. I stand corrected. I do find the parallel ironic though. That he supports the same actions the left would have with our rights under the 2A (for starters) since our WW2 government managed to do it successfully to the 4A, among others. Somehow it was OK then, and now it’s OK to do it to MAIG and Democrats. Way to be like them, only better.
I too am done here. Probably.
DWH
@ B:
Mainland Japanese young men did TRY to volunteer for military service, but they were generally not allowed.
@ Barron Barnett: Did you not get the memo? Gunnutmegger belongs to the “Japete School of Logic” – if it happened, it MUST be legal. Duh.
Y’know, despite the fact that the Supreme Court reversed its opinion, and that the Housa, Senate, and President all passed a resolution admitting that the internment of American citizens in concentration camps was the wrong thing to do, and that the Constitution clearly indicates that such things are explicitly illegal.
*sigh* There is just no helping some people.
And, really, what would I have to get off my chest? I am right, I know I am right, and history clearly supports the fact that I am right. Does he want us to gloat or something?
@ Disavowed With Honor: As the saying goes, if a person does not support one of the Amendments, he does not support any of them – given that Gunnutmegger does not support four, individual, separate Amendments, I can see how your confusion over the Second Amendment would arise.
@ Carson from Canada: Well, that is where the 442nd came in.
[...] a reminder, it has happened here and it just as easily could happen again with more severe consequences the second time [...]
“And, for the record…if there was a way to definitively segregate & intern German-Americans (without interning non-Germans), I would have supported it too.”
Like that “Eisenhower” guy. Frickin’ Krauts are troublemakers.
Linoge, don’t feed the trolls.
I know, I know… “Putting people in camps” is one of my hot-button issues, because we do know better, and I simply could not get past someone actually trying to defend that activity.
Still cannot, for that matter…