Why doesn't anyone ever talk about the Japanese American internment camps of WW2?

In school in Germany people learn all about WW1 and 2 and what led to those events. Part of the reason for this is to prevent that happening again. Japan has done sweet f-all to address the atrocities they have committed. Unit 731 was particularly disturbing.

Just shows how racist America was. No chance that second and third generation Germans were put in such camps!

cometogether wrote: »

Just shows how racist America was. No chance that second and third generation Germans were put in such camps!

They interned some Germans and Italians but it wouldn't have been practical to intern them all, let alone everyone of German or Italian origin. The same way they didn't intern people of Japanese origin in Hawaii as they were ~30% of the population.

cometogether wrote: »

Just shows how racist America was. No chance that second and third generation Germans were put in such camps!

Who would make the beer? But seriously are you trying to argue that there was not widespread anti-German attitudes in the US because of WWI & WWII? The Japanese population was relatively small and based along the coast - the same place they feared they would be attacked. The German population numbered millions and was manly based in the interior and played a big role in industry. Not really a shocker that a settled population that played a big role in politics and was relatively wealthy would be treated different no matter what color they were.

BetterThanThou wrote: »

In World War 2, the US put 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry into internment camps because they were afraid the Japanese were planning an attack on the west coast and had planted spies. 60+ percent of these people were American citizens.
Why is this unethical decision never talked about? You often hear about unethical decisions on all sides of World War 2, but this is something I've only heard of recently. Is this something that people try hide away to protect the name of the US?

It certainly is talked about if you grew up in the US & generally people admit that it was a terrible decision based on on racism and propaganda rather than any threat. I grew up in the States & learned about it in high school & even before then most of us had heard of it from children's books - there are quite a few notable ones written from the perspective of kids in the camps & I'm fairly sure they were among the summer reading options from time to time.

It's understandable that you guys might not hear about it as much simply because some American history is going to be edited out of Irish education the same way we don't learn extensively about Irish history in ours. Plus I do think there is a bit of a distinction between the internment camps & concentration camps - places like Auschwitz and Dachau were designed to kill, not to intern. While the American ones did have quite bad conditions, they were not camps designed to facilitate genocide, they were designed to essentially be 'holding pens.' While that doesn't excuse it, I do think that plus the fact that the US admits it was wrong and misguided means they don't remain in the public consciousness as much as the Nazi camps.

And for the poster who said people of German heritage weren't treated badly during the war - while camps would have been unfeasible in the US (& essentially depopulated the midwest) people of recent German ancestry were certainly viewed with deep suspicion & subjected to bigotry as well. But then I think its important to realize these were different times. Not saying it wasn't wrong but racism between all ethnicity was common & accepted back then. All we can do from this point in history is acknowledge the mistakes of those ways of thinking, recognize it was wrong, & try to move away from it.