I have read a few accounts of the Japanese who were interred and although they didn't like it, some of them didn't have much argument with the logic behind the decision. Some went so far as to claim that they knew for a fact at least some of their friends would have assisted the Japanese were there to have been an invasion. Its a far sight better than Americans were treated by the Japanese when you balance it all out.

And Ted don't get too righteous lest you forget the deeds of the Netherlands in Indonesia.

Originally Posted by LeEnfield

boris116....Are you saying that they allowed other family memebers to stay behind and keep the property

In many cases, yes. Especially in Hawaii. They were allowed more time to deal with the property

It did differ from state to state...

I voted wrong because I'm not in favor of taking somebody's freedom and possessions away just because they don't look "the right way" and talk in a funny language.

Originally Posted by bulldogg

And Ted don't get too righteous lest you forget the deeds of the Netherlands in Indonesia.

Yeah that makes sense. Just because he happens to have the nationality of a country that's done something you disagree with in the past, he's not allowed to argue against something your country has done in the past.

If you were joking, we're cool.

Since the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, many members of the Japanese American community have spoken out against the ill treatment of Muslim Americans. Sixty years ago, in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Americans became the victims of a widespread onslaught of racial discrimination and were viewed as a national security threat by both the general American public and the U.S government. Regardless of citizenship status, Americans of Japanese descent required registration and were subjected to random search and seizure raids, freezing of bank accounts, curfews, property confiscation including the seizure of all guns, short wave radios and cameras. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe military detention zones in which to detain “enemy aliens” for an unspecified period of time. In the months that followed, over 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent were forced to evacuate their homes and communities on the West Coast and relocate to internment camps in federally designated military zones further inland. Japanese Americans remained in these camps until 1944, when President Roosevelt rescinded his original evacuation order.

Originally Posted by LeEnfield

Since the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, many members of the Japanese American community have spoken out against the ill treatment of Muslim Americans.

This was very generous of them....

However, could you imagine the Japanese - Americans waving the Japanese flags on December 7, 1941 somewhere in Manhattan or in Chicago?

Unfortunately, I have seen the Palestinian people celebrating 9/11 in Chicago. I repeat, CELEBRATING!

They were doing this without any regrets for the innocent lives lost and WERE SEEKING the media attention...

It was racism, pure and simple. AFAIK, there were no spies or even very few Japanese sympathisers who were rounded up, and all of the Japanese who were in the US at the time were there by choice. If it was the right thing to do, how come the US and Canadian governments did not also round up all of the ethnic Germans and Austrians in North America? I think that the only result of this policy was to create Japanese sympathisers where there had previously been none. In addition, the units that were recurited from thesde camps were sent to fight the Germans. Apparently, they were one of the most decorated units in the US Army. I guess they had something to prove...

Dean.

Originally Posted by Dean

It was racism, pure and simple. AFAIK, there were no spies or even very few Japanese sympathisers who were rounded up, and all of the Japanese who were in the US at the time were there by choice. If it was the right thing to do, how come the US and Canadian governments did not also round up all of the ethnic Germans and Austrians in North America? I think that the only result of this policy was to create Japanese sympathisers where there had previously been none. In addition, the units that were recurited from thesde camps were sent to fight the Germans. Apparently, they were one of the most decorated units in the US Army. I guess they had something to prove...

Dean.

I think, you were right, Dean, that, in most part, the racism has played an important role here.

However, I believe, you are wrong on the Germans' internment.

There are a lot of pages on the Intrenet about that, for example:

http://www.foitimes.com/
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1:9990...fid=ency_topnm

Okay, I'm going to weigh in on this one. In reading the previous posts I see myself and bulldogg being pretty close on perspective (which is kinda scary )

I think we can all agree that hindsight is 20/20, and in hindsight we all know it turned out to be a bad thing. Many times Japanese-Americans lost everything just so that white Americans could profit from it. That's pretty much the worst of it. A far cry, as bulldogg pointed out, to what the Japanese did to whites - whether they were military or not. Another truism we all know is that two wrongs don't make a right, but in comparison, there really is no comparison. Rape, torture, slave labor, violent and brutal death just can't compare to losing your belongings and money.

Too often we judge people in history by what we know years later and not in the context of their times. I think this is one such case. For example, Hawaii was mentioned. I wonder how far the internments would've gone if it weren't a fact that there was sabotage done by Japanese-Americans during the Pearl Harbor attack. Racism has been mentioned, and yes, that certainly played a part, but much more so was the fact of a devastating and unprovocted attack with no declaration of war. We are so knowledgable now of that period we'd like to forget that we have forgotten that in WWI something very similar happened to German-Americans due to their sabotage (while we were still neutral) and sinkings of ships carrying Americans.

So, my answer is this, if you don't want something bad to happen to your people, don't do something bad to another people first.

The bad part of the internments is that some unscrupulous Americans took advantage of the Japanese-Americans by cheating and outright stealing their land and businesses. The good part was that the internees were treated humanely and although humiliated, no one was starved to death and families lived together. Some also forget that, after the war, Japan was built into a major world economic empire and the Japanese-American communities were extremely resilient and recovered most of their property through the legal system. While tragic, I'm not judging a wartime Government existing before I was born for their security policies. My family has a very hard to miss German Surname and more than once told some people that we were Dutch.

Originally Posted by Missileer

My family has a very hard to miss German Surname and more than once told some people that we were Dutch.

My family did the same for the same reason, Missileer. Even when WWII came around and my father was the first of our family to volunteer for service as America entered the war, he was not allowed to serve in the European Theatre and so joined the Marines and went to the Pacific. Later, as war needs became more urgent, his brother was allowed to join the 101st Airborne where his fluency in German came in quite handy at the Battle of The Bulge.