This is a response to Were the stories about Japanese internment during World War II unbalanced? Two letter writers think so in the LA Times. Here is a reminder of something else they published many years ago:
A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatchedso a Japanese-American, born of Japanese parentsgrows up to be a Japanese, not an American. Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1942 (Source)
I had hoped we had learned a lesson and moved past this kind of hateful rhetoric, but it seems history is trying to repeat itself.
On December 7th, the U.S. commemorated the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a truly horrific tragedy that will live on in American memory forever. In our household, we also remember December 6th. Two years ago on that day my grandmother, Margaret Shoji, passed away. My only regret was that I never talked to her about her experiences during the Internment, when our family and 120,000 other people of Japanese descent were denied basic rights, and forced into the internment camps. This was a civil rights travesty and one of the most shameful episodes of American history. But we all know that, dont we?
Apparently, we are supposed to have an open debate about the Internment, including justifications and rationalizations of what happened. I was surprised to see a rational defense of the Internment appearing in the LA Times in 2016, but I decided to respond as best I could below.
1. I see that writer Carolina A. Miranda has attached herself to the I feel-good contingent that feels sorry for the Japanese here in World War II [Relevant Journey, Nov. 27]. But this is just another anti-U.S. remake of history.
Steve Hawes, the first author, dismisses a previous article on the Internment, and says that to feel sorry for the Japanese and Japanese-Americans living in the U.S. during World War II is anti-U.S. I would counter by arguing that blindly loving your country without acknowledging its mistakes is a dangerous breed of nationalism that encourages civil rights disasters like the Japanese Internment.
2. Remember, this was war for the life of our country. The Japanese had a clear way to land invading forces in California but lost their chance because they did not realize it.
Regardless of the historical accuracy of this statement, what does this have to do with Japanese Americans and how does this in any way justify locking up 120,000 civilians, many of whom were American citizens who had never even been to Japan? In fact, the majority of people interned were women and children. How does this justify denying my family their civil rights?
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blockquote class=”content-list-component” pull-quote”> Blindly loving your country without acknowledging its mistakes is a dangerous breed of nationalism that encourages civil rights disasters like the Japanese Internment.
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3. Japanese have an extremely strong attachment to family, and even more so back then. First generation and, to a lesser extent, Japanese here would have been expected to follow the wishes of their elders in Japan. Some, most or almost all might have refused, but the threat was there.
This has no historical basis in fact. There are no documented cases of Japanese American espionage, and yet you are implying that at least some Japanese Americans would both receive orders from their families to commit acts of espionage and execute them, something that never happened. And again, THIS DOES NOT JUSTIFY DENYING 120,000 PEOPLE BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS AND DIGNITY.
4. Had the Japanese been left on the streets of our city they would have been subject to hostility, injury and death at the hands of other citizens whose emotions ran high.
This is a classic rational defense of the Japanese Internment. It was for our own good. It doesnt work for a few reasons. The guards were pointing their guns inward, not outward.
One Jap became mildly insane and was placed in the Fort Sill Army Hospital. [He] attempted an escape on May 13, 1942 at 7:30am. He climbed the first fence, ran down the runway between the fencing, one hundred feet and started to climb the second, when he was shot and killed by two shots, one entering the back of his head. The guard had given him several verbal warnings.
FBI Report of the death of Ichiro Shimoda, a gardener from Los Angeles who had been taken from his family on December 7, 1941 (Source)
Yes, people were killed for trying to escape an unjustified imprisonment.
Why should a solution to bigotry in our society be to lock up those who are the victims of that bigotry?
Also, dont forget the economic aspect. Homes, property and businesses were stolen during the Internment. My great-grandfathers home was stolen during the internment, and my other relatives lost much of their property because they only allowed you to take what you could carry with you.
5. The U.S. government needed to concentrate on the war effort, not keep track of every reported espionage claim leveled against the Japanese. By the way, there were also internments for U.S. Germans though not as extensive as the Japanese.
That still doesnt justify the Internment. The government needed to fight the hysteria and paranoia, not fuel it by punishing its victims. A much smaller scale internment of people of German descent in the U.S. also does not diminish the suffering of Japanese Americans.
6. Virtually everyone in the U.S. was assigned jobs to help the war effort. The Japanese were assigned the job of staying out of the way and not causing complications. Millions of Americans were assigned far worse jobs. Hundreds of thousands were wounded or died.