An exclusion order posted at First and Front Streets in San Francisco directing removal of persons of Japanese ancestry.
On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. There was no mention of relocation centers in the EO, because initially none were envisioned. The purpose was for those of Japanese ancestry to relocate voluntarily, anywhere within the interior, away from the West Coast and areas of strategic military importance.
On April 25, 1992, as a UCLA student, I went by bus from campus on a pilgrimage to Manzanar, 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles on the 50th Anniversary of the internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans into relocation camps during WWII.
As sympathetic as I am to the Japanese-American experience (my mom being Japanese, I identify more with …Japanese-American culture than Thai/Thai-American), I’m going to go ahead and anger a lot of people and extol some of the non-PC merits of Michelle Malkin’s book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror
.
The imposing beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountains, marred by having to see them through barbed wire fences.
Photo taken by Wordsmith
Whether you agree or disagree with Malkin’s points in the end, I see nothing at all that is “racist” about her book, unless one knee-jerks into PC-induced sensitivities as substitution for thinking.
It is revisionist dishonesty (or unfortunate ignorance) for anyone to claim there were no instances of Japanese issei or nisei who displayed commitment to the ultra-nationalistic tradition of “doho” (unbending loyalty to the Emperor regardless of residence or citizenship status). Malkin provides a number of examples of where there was evidence of Japanese-American disloyalty.
Even moreso than racism and prejudice, the possibility of fifth column saboteurs and the dangers of further attacks on the West Coast were very real, and supported by the best military and civilian intelligence analysis at the time. This included the MAGIC messages which were intercepted diplomatic communications that revealed Japan’s espionage activities in regards to the West Coast, Hawaii, and the southern border.
Throughout Europe and the South Pacific, there were instances of Japanese immigrants who consorted with their ancestral homeland, revealing where their loyalties lay. Same held true with Germans who no longer lived in Germany (which brings up the point that it wasn’t just those of Japanese ancestry who were interned by the Department of Justice- of the 31 thousand enemy aliens from Axis nations, nearly half were European).
The conventional perspective, of course, is exemplified by the following passage from “Yankee Samurai“, by Joseph D. Harrington- a perspective that rings heroic for me, with selfless patriotism, bitter sorrow, honor and conflicted loyalty, and unconditional love and service to country:
“Before leaving New Guinea, Walter Tanaka had faced up to a major crisis in his life. He had done everything he could to dissuade his angry and disappointed father from renouncing the U.S. and returning to Japan. This was not easy to do while soaking wet in a foxhole with the enemy shooting at you. The moisture on Walt’s face was more than rain when he read what he feared was his father’s last letter on a painful subject.
America had disappointed him. Tunejiro Tanaka told his son, as he recounted the family troubles. He intended to go back to Japan as soon as he could. But, he had other ideas concerning Walter. ‘When a tiger dies, he leaves his skin,’ Tunejiro wrote, quoting an old Japanese adage, ‘but when a man dies he leaves only his name. America has rejected me, and I am going back to my native country, Japan. You, however, are to stay in America. It is your country. Defend it. I charge you not to do anything that will dishonor my name.”
-Ch. 12, pg 258
And we are all proud of the selfless patriotism and heroism of Nisei who found themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of having to prove their loyalty, fighting for a country that uprooted and held their families in internment camps.
To my knowledge, the all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team remains the most highly decorated unit in American military history. And those Japanese-Americans who acted as translators for military intelligence played a large role in saving lives by winning/shortening the war.
Today, civil rights activists want to draw parallels between the Japanese-American experience of then to that of Muslim-Americans, today.
Vigilance against prejudice is ok; but we shouldn’t be crammed with so much political correctness as to throw common sense out the window.
Profiling is not the worst evil in the world. It is a logical process of identification. You do this naturally in your everyday activity. If I see someone wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt concert, the natural conclusion for me to reach is that, chances are, the guy’s a fan of their music. I could be wrong, sure. But percentage-wise, I’m probably correct in my initial assessment, without yet verifying and confirming.
There are all kinds of profiling: Racial/ethnic, national, religious, behavioral…
The act of profiling doesn’t mean you automatically are thinking “guilty before proven innocent”.
If a certain terror cult had a strange fixation with wearing Casio F91W wrist-watches, it only follows that one should scrutinize those wearing the favored watch more closely than those without; it does not mean that ALL and even MOST people who choose to wear that watch are terrorists. It’s just one clue on a list of potential traits to be on the lookout for.
The fear of racial/ethnic/religious/national profiling- of being labeled “racist”- failed to protect us against 9/11 terrorists. Ronald Kessler‘s The Terrorist Watch, pg 30-31, pg 33:
When he wrote the Phoenix memo, Williams was investigating an individual who was a member of the al-Muahjiroun, an Islamic extremist group whose spiritual leader was a supporter of bin Laden. The man was taking aviation-related security courses at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Why was he interested in aviation security? Perhaps so he could hijack a plane, Williams thought. Others taking flight training could have the same nefarious purpose.
Headquarters passed the memo off to low-level analysts, who wondered whether interviewing Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons or aviation security courses would raise issues of racial profiling.
~~~ the FBI operated in a politically correct atmosphere that Congress, the Clinton Administration, and the media fostered. Focusing on Arab men was a no-no.
In Defense of Internment, pg XXVIII-XXIX:
Williams recommendation to canvas flight schools was rejected, FBI director Robert Mueller later admitted, partly because at least one agency offical raised concerns that the plan could be viewed as discriminatory racial profiling. “If we went out and started canvassing, we’d get in trouble for targeting Arab Americans,” one FBI official told the Los Angeles Times.
To be sure, the Phoenix memo was not enough to warn of the 9/11 plot (Williams himself only marked the memo for “routine” attention and never dreamt of the possibility of hijackers flying planes into buildings); but what is revealed is the aversion to conduct the kind of profiling that would raise the hackles of civil rights groups.
And today, we are still hamstrung by our political correctness sensitivities and fear to offend, as demonstrated by the Ft. Hood shooting (and what have we here….5 U.S. soldiers plotting together?!). That one should have been preventable.
So long as this remains the case, we will treat grandmothers and young, Middle-Eastern men in their 20’s with equal levels of scrutiny, taking off belts and shoes, and being prevented to bring aboard a simple gift like a snow globe. Because discrimination is such a naughty word and profiling an act of great evil and injustice.
When civil liberty activists hyperventilate about “That’s profiling!”
My answer, in classic Cheney-fashion, is…
“So?”
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
I posted a long comment on this subject over at AoSHQ, one that makes a connection between Nisei Internment and the Battle of Midway (!). It is a perspective I have not seen presented before, and folks here might find it interesting.
http://minx.cc/?blog=86&post=298556#c8902687
Excellent (OT) comment #124!
A few observations:
First, the quote regarding the Tanakas. It reminded me of Robert E. Lee, when he was choosing his loyalties during the civil war. He was torn between his loyalty to the United States and his Virginia. Of course, it was acceptable in that time to question the loyalties of any southerner. However, it seems the left rewrites history and say that type of questioning is illegal and immoral.
Second, to say that there were not Japanese operatives in the United States is ignorant. There were no spy satellites or U2 spy planes back in the 1940s, but the Japanese were able to get detailed information on the location of US bases, equipment at those bases, names of battleships and a myriad of other information so detailed that it puts the current US intelligence community to shame. Moreover, Japan was able to use balloons with bombs attached to attack the mainland, and receive battle damage assessment on those attacks. Once again, this could not be done without one the ground intelligence gathers.
Finally, for all those who would accuse the US of “racism” need to reconcile their opinion of racism with the current Japanese xenophobia. Non-Japanese in Japan are treated like slaves. Even if they are legal permanent residents, they have no right to vote, no right to socialized health care, and are treated more harshly by law enforcement. In the past several years, there have been mass protests by service workers for more equal treatment and pay that have been largely ignored by the Japanese government and US liberals. Maybe those liberals should be questioning the “racism” of current Japan before they criticize the US.
It didn’t help that the first Japanese-American who was called upon to choose sides proved to be a traitor. A Japanese pilot downed in the attack on Pearl Harbor was captured by Hawaiian islanders. They asked a Japanese-American to translate and the pilot convinced him to come back with guns. The primitively armed Hawaiians fought heroically and killed the pilot and the traitor. [See “The Ayoob Files,” by Massad Ayoob, American Handgunner Magazine, January/February 2002.]
The most profound legacy of internment may be the disastrous United States v Korematsu Supreme Court case that in-effect established that the Constitution is no longer the supreme law of the land. Thanks to Korematsu, any constitutional provision can now be set aside, not just in deference to another conflicting constitutional provision, but in deference to ANY “compelling state interest.”
How far has the “compelling state interest” test degraded in the last 65 years? In the 2003 Grutter v Bollinger case, the court found that Michigan had a compelling state interest in using affirmative action to enhance the quality of white people’s educations by exposing them to black classmates. (Using affirmative action to advantage black students had already been declared unconstitutional, so this new necessary-to-edcational-quality tack was tried.) Here the court accepted a trivial and completely dishonest excuse for affirmative action as sufficient to set aside the 14th Amendment requirement for equal protection (which the Court acknowledged was being violated).
Why did the Korematsu court allow mere state interests to take precedence over constitutional requirements (effectively ending constitutional supremacy) when the Korematsu case itself involved a straightforward conflict between constitutional provisions (equal protection vs. the war-making powers of the political branches)? Because they were trying to hide the fact that they were pulling off a different kind of constitutional coup: interpreting the 14th Amendment to apply to the federal government, when it explicitly does not. I have a fuller telling of this amazing story here.
As this was, seemingly, a historic date in American history we must remember that on this very same date in 1945, the United States military forces stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima and for twenty-six days fought against a heavily foritified and resistant Japanese force, on th island. This was the day to remember, not the day when the Japanese in the United States were interred in camps on the continental United States.
I’m with you, Colin.
Thanks, Tom. It’s unfortunate that we have so little time to review our history. This country has some of the greatest historical periods of any country in political history. Winning two World Wars, defeating Communism (at least for a little while) and other instances. Why, oh why, do we always have to beat ourselves up when in actuality we, and the rest of the world, should be applauding ourselves/us, as a nation. I don’t include the government in that statement because I don’t trust, nor do I like this government, since Reagan. Even then, people fail to remember that Reagan had to deal with some of the most nefarious individuals, one from my very home state, Massachusetts: Tip O’Neill. I could go on. Again, thank you.
After reading With The Old Breed for the third time, I have more sympathy for the 18 year old American boys forced to fight an amoral and fanatical enemy. Or the 2000 + sleeping sailors murdered by the “brave Japanese pilots” at Pearl Harbor.
Sorry, I have just had it with political correctness.
56:29 in.
@Colin McCauley: Tip and Ronnie showed that opposing pols can get along.
As long as they’re IRISH and the Jameson is handy.
D-DAY +4 FLAG RAISING Sec Nav Forrestal wading ashore looks to SurIbachi–turns to Marine CG “Howling Mad” Smith “THE RAISING OF THE FLAG MEANS 500 MORE YEARS OF THE MARINE CORPS.”
52 down 448 to go Semper Fi
LT John Wells who led the charge up Suribachi died 2 weeks ago at age 94.
-:
I can certainly see the reasoning behind an internment camp during WWII. We have no idea how much damage/sabotage may have been prevented by them. Was it ‘profiling’ absolutely not. It was good sense.