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

BetterThanThou

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?

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Temptamperu

George Takai always talks about it.. books and everything and i think everyone and their granny like him on facebook so his message seeps out.

What about the japanese ones holding american/allied?

MilanPan!c

Temptamperu wrote: »

George Takai always talks about it.. books and everything and i think everyone and their granny like him on facebook so his message seeps out.

What about the japanese ones holding american/allied?

Yep.

It's not endlessly discussed because NOTHING is endlessly discussed.

But the US doesn't hide it; it's taught in schools and discussed in public.

Capt'n Midnight

Temptamperu wrote: »

What about the japanese ones holding american/allied?

The Japanese treatment of Asian and Pacific Island civilians was far worse.

The Japanese don't talk about it. It's like the mentality is still that of the "surrender" speach made by the emperor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyokuon-h%C5%8Ds%C5%8D[QUOTE"the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage".[/QUOTE]

Officially WWII is still going on because Japan and Russia haven't signed peace treaties because of occupation of islands. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20131229_12.html

It's important to remember the past because people forget.

The Japanese aren't allowed to have Aircraft Carriers, but they have the Hyūga and Izumo class Helicopter Carriers

The Koreans don't have aircraft carriers, because the Dokdo Class aren't Aircraft carriers.

And the Chinese have an aircraft carrier , but it's not operational.
Though Iran says the are making one http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/23/341418/china-announces-building-npowered-carrier/

Skylinehead

dede12 wrote: »

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.

Actually, you're not making enough of a distinction. Auschwitz was an extermination camp, while Dachau wasn't designed to kill people (although plenty still happened).

Capt'n Midnight

Skylinehead wrote: »

Actually, you're not making enough of a distinction. Auschwitz was an extermination camp, while Dachau wasn't designed to kill people (although plenty still happened).

Only a small part of Auschwitz was an extermination camp.

Forget all the stuff you've seen of huts and prisoners. In the extermination camps the men would be in the gas chambers within 8 minutes of getting off the train. For many of those camps there were only single digit number of survivors.

Fox_In_Socks

clairefontaine wrote: »

I wonder how many Irish get coverage of how much Marshall plan money they got even though it was/is a neutral country.

It was in our history course when I was in school in the late 90s/early 2000. We got a tiny fraction of what participants in the war got and where did the Irish government decide to invest the money? Start up industry? Something new and worthwhile? No.

Drainage. That's where.

5live

Fox_In_Socks wrote: »

It was in our history course when I was in school in the late 90s/early 2000. We got a tiny fraction of what participants in the war got and where did the Irish government decide to invest the money? Start up industry? Something new and worthwhile? No.

Drainage. That's where.

They targeted the money at the largest industry and employer while taking advantage of the demand for food post'45. In fact that money spent on drainage is still yielding a dividend in agricultural productivity and the down-stream jobs in transport and processing and export earnings.

How could they be so wasteful:pac:

If the same plan was available today then, rightly, it would be targeted in a different manner to different sections of the economy but there was little industry available to invest in after the war.

WoollyRedHat

Anytime a public commemoration happens, it just invites polticians and others with a set ageneda with an opportunity to gloss over and mythologize events and leave out the uncomfortable truths in the search for a more satisfying history w. Observe the 1798 rebellion celebrations of 1998 where the bi-cential was being remembered, they completelly omitted any mention of the war as set down in the parameters of a governmental dossier and conspired with historians to create a narrow picture of history, leaving the less murky parts ou due to uncomfortable acts of violence that would have to be acknowledged t i.e secetarian acts of violence in Wexford, in the burning of mostly protestants in a barn in Scullabogue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scullabogue_Barn_massacre

Killer Wench

I live in Seattle where there is a large Asian American population. Not far from here there was a former site; I even visited the memorial located in Portland. It's definitely talked about here.

osarusan

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The Japanese don't talk about it.

You can't just make a blanket statement like that.

Some talk about it, some don't talk about it.

There are plenty of academics knowledgeable about Japan's role in WW2.

kowloon

SamHarris wrote: »

Though your right that there was a strong racial aspect to all the South East Asian wars (the Japanese state having a similar "super race" theory to the Nazi's) and the American propaganda playing on the idea of the "little yellow man" you could not be more wrong in that they were shocked when they learned they could fight. The opposite is the case.

The lack of prep, and they had the time to do so, would suggest otherwise. Soviet-Japanese border conflicts were putting the Japanese to shame. Khalkin Gol made the Japanese look bad, particularly after the Soviets had so much trouble in Finland not long afterwards but long before Pearl.

As for the public, you'll hear veterans accounts of how they thought they were going to give the Japs a beating and just how wrong they found out they were.

The British were similarly surprised by the Japanese. The withdrawal from Burma being an example of the Japanese hooking around through the jungle and roadblocking a retreating western force.

The contempt for the Japanese only turns into grudging respect after the war had begun. I have a 1944 Handbook on Japanese forces where the high degree of training and indoctrination is stressed over and over again. They still considered the Japanese to lack initiative.

Wurzelbert

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?

because the americans won the war and, as we know, history is always written by the winners...not the only sad example...

Wurzelbert

Cydoniac wrote: »

Well, from a Japanese perspective, I don't think they'd want the likes of Unit 731 brought up, which is a genuine dark mark in history. I haven't heard much about this before, must look it up.

the mention of unit 731 brings to mind a cool song...
not like human experimentation would have been unique or limited to ww2 era japan or germany, though...

Duck Soup

Because people like simple stories and they like a folk history that proves they're good at heart. So Germans are innately bad people, but I doubt that Hitler would have come to power or kept it had The Final Solution or plans for it been widely known by German people. As for the undeniable racism, every country in the world practised it at the time, particularly against Jews.

Even on this thread, again and again we have the notion of the evil and cruel Japs, which has bog all to do with the Americans throwing thousands of their own people into internment camps. But people are hard to shake out of their simplistic notions. There seems to be an underlying thread of thought that says that the Japanese-Americans had it coming to them, through some shared responsibility for their racial evil.

It's funny, I was wondering earlier in the week which nations you could lay the charge of genocide at - I've been reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - and there's a few. Germany, obviously. Britain, through their handling of The Famine (not forgetting concentration camps for Boers), America (up to 10m native Americans starved, infected with disease or massacred), Russia on its own people under Stalin, China on its own people under Mao.

Germany, Britain, USA, Russia and China. Instinctively many Westerners would separate that list out into "force for good" countries (Britain and the US) and innate/naturally cruel or evil (Germany, Russia and China).

It's bollocks. The British and US in particular bury their previous misdeeds to propagate a favourable, romanticised narrative about themselves. The truth is that every country has the potential for cruelty, depending on how they exercise power.

The internment of Japanese-Americans (ironically the basis for the Springsteen's song "Born In The USA") is not talked about because it doesn't fit that romanticised narrative of white picket fences and wholesome families. This would have been going on the same time as segregation of the races in the South, as well as the lynchings of black people and the debarment of Jews from many clubs and societal institutions.

The world is never as simple as the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

qaf

Duck Soup wrote: »

It's bollocks. The British and US in particular bury their previous misdeeds to propagate a favourable, romanticised narrative about themselves. The truth is that every country has the potential for cruelty, depending on how they exercise power.

The internment of Japanese-Americans (ironically the basis for the Springsteen's song "Born In The USA") is not talked about because it doesn't fit that romanticised narrative of white picket fences and wholesome families. This would have been going on the same time as segregation of the races in the South, as well as the lynchings of black people and the debarment of Jews from many clubs and societal institutions.

The world is never as simple as the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Having romanticized views of one's own country is hardly unique to the US or British. I can say from my own experience that people that I have come across from big countries like India, China, or Russia are just as bad if not worse.

Also everything you mentioned is covered extensively in US schools, books, films, etc. If anything could be said against the US is that they spend too much time studying their own domestic history in schools and their foreign policy history is an afterthought.

Capt'n Midnight

osarusan wrote: »

You can't just make a blanket statement like that.

Some talk about it, some don't talk about it.

There are plenty of academics knowledgeable about Japan's role in WW2.

Imagine an archbishop blessing old men dressed in Nazi uniforms, in a cathedral.

That's Japan today.

There's been almost no reconciliation with the neighbours, very little compensation, very little collective guilt - if any.

Lots of bad things happened during the war.

The most forgotten people would be the excess deaths in Asia from famines and massacres. Gruhl estimates POW deaths in Japanese captivity at 331,584. Detailed by country: Netherlands 8,500; U.K. 12,433; Canada 273; Australia 7,412; New Zealand 31; and the United States 12,935.
Nearly 90% of those were deaths were China 270,000 and Philippines 20,000;

Civilians deaths as a result of Japanese actions were a lot higher The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that "the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese" - this total is at the very highest estimate but if you start the clock in 1937 and include preventable deaths through famines and disease then it's not impossible.

3DataModem

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?

The British did the very same with Germans. Many of them just down the road from my house.

BofaDeezNuhtz

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?

Dude the Japs fukked the poor Chinese up bigtime before. Millions kilted...
Russians killed way way more people (including alot of their own) then
ze germanz ever did.

And yeah since hollywood is run by Jews we get a slwewed version from them.

WWII was a total cesspool, forget the history book version.

Killer Wench

Duck Soup wrote: »

The internment of Japanese-Americans (ironically the basis for the Springsteen's song "Born In The USA") is not talked about because it doesn't fit that romanticised narrative of white picket fences and wholesome families. This would have been going on the same time as segregation of the races in the South, as well as the lynchings of black people and the debarment of Jews from many clubs and societal institutions.

http://www.bijac.org/

http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp

http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06internment.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://asla.org/guide/site.aspx?id=35744

http://www.topazmuseum.org/

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/japanese_internment/

http://www.arkansas.com/attractions/detail.aspx?id=95982

Cuz, you know, we don't talk about it.

FatherTed

The issue is certainly covered in history/social studies classes at my daughter's high school here in the US, we were just talking about it recently. It is also worth noting the US government did also apologize for this back in the 80's I think. Doesn't make it right but the notion that is expressed on here that it is swept under the rug is far from correct.

jank

osarusan wrote: »

Why? That's not what the thread is about.

The OP asked the following question.

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?

Clearly the OP is naive as the US have apologised and compensated victims of Japanese internment during WWII. Not FDR's finest hour but in someways given the history of the time and fear of the Japanese advance on the pacific in 1941-1942 somewhat understandable. Future US presidents have apologised for the states involvement in this action and this episode is taught in schools across the US. So there is no white wash of silence here.

Now, compare that to the present Japanese administrations portrayal of their own actions during WWII which was infinitely worse than what the US did. Only two weeks ago the present prime minister of Japan visited the shrine that is closely linked to the leaders of WWII japan including Tojo. Would it be acceptable for Merkel to visit a Nazi shrine? How would the world rightly react if a future German PM wanted to revert an apology to victims of German/Nazi violence as Abe hinted at recently in regards to comfort women.

That is all I meant to say. If one wants to learn about the pacific theatre of conflict during WWII then they should also look at the treatment the Japanese dished out to the native population they conquered. Not pretty reading by any means. One also notes that the UK interned Germans and Italians.

Duck Soup

Killer Wench wrote: »

http://www.bijac.org/

http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp

http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/us/06internment.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://asla.org/guide/site.aspx?id=35744

http://www.topazmuseum.org/

http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/japanese_internment/

http://www.arkansas.com/attractions/detail.aspx?id=95982

Cuz, you know, we don't talk about it.

http://www.closeronline.co.uk/2009/08/car-lover-confesses-i-have-sex-with-my-car

http://www.motortorque.com/news/five-to-show-documentary-on-men-who-have-sex-with-cars-15539

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mechaphile-sex-thousands-cars-now-2356854

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/10/10/man-has-had-1000-lovers-999-of-which-are-cars/

http://www.zgeek.com/mechaphile-admits-to-having-to-have-sex-with-over-1000-cars/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/my-car-is-my-lover/

Articles that explore the lives of mechaphiles - men who like to have sex with cars. Cuz, you know, if you can find some web pages on something it's obviously being discussed seriously, extensively and continually.

Links234

jank wrote: »

Would it be acceptable for Merkel to visit a Nazi shrine?

Except that the Yasukuni shrine couldn't be compared to a "Nazi shrine" at all, it commemorates all those who died in service of Japan, including civilians, stretching back to civil wars of the mid to late 1800's. So it's a little more complicated than that

Nodin

Suzuki_TL1000R wrote: »

Dude the Japs fukked the poor Chinese up bigtime before. Millions kilted...
Russians killed way way more people (including alot of their own) then
ze germanz ever did.

And yeah since hollywood is run by Jews we get a slwewed version from them.

WWII was a total cesspool, forget the history book version.

...always one....

InTheTrees

BetterThanThou wrote: »

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?

Where do you live?

I know here on the west coast of the USA they certainly talk, and have talked, about it a lot. Ive seen many documentaries about how it happened and the experiences of the internees.

Terrible.

Also remember the context; that Americans had been reciving pretty graphic news of the japanese occupation of China right before ww2. The Rape Of Nanking was particularly brutal but it happened all over. Bayonet practicing on children? 300,000 massacred. And remember Shanghai was an "international" city with Brit, US and French sections so this wasnt hidden from the western countries. (Nanking is between Shanghai and Beijing).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

It also wasnt some remote island country the other side of the world as it was for people in Europe. After HAwaii the next stop for the japanese was California. Add that to the humiliation of the defeat at Pearl Harbour and you have a very paranoid population who were very afraid of a Japanese invasion.

But still I agree and I'm not making excuses that the internment was wholly unwarranted.

Capt'n Midnight

InTheTrees wrote: »

But still I agree and I'm not making excuses that the internment was wholly unwarranted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_%28United_States%29

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army was a regimental size fighting unit composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese descent who fought in World War II, despite the fact many of their families were subject to internment.
...
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare. The 4,000 men who initially came in April 1943 had to be replaced nearly 2.5 times. In total, about 14,000 men served, ultimately earning 9,486 Purple Hearts. The unit was awarded an unprecedented eight Presidential Unit Citations.Twenty-one of its members were awarded Medals of Honor. Members of the 442nd received 18,143 awards, including:
...
[ long list ]
...
The stellar record of the Japanese Americans serving in the 442nd and in the Military Intelligence Service (U.S. Pacific Theater forces in World War II) helped change the minds of anti-Japanese American critics in the U.S. and resulted in easing of restrictions and the eventual release of the 120,000 strong community well before the end of World War II.

However, the unit’s exemplary service and many decorations did not change the attitudes of the general U.S. population to people of Japanese descent after World War II. Veterans were welcomed home by signs that read “No Japs Allowed” and “No Japs Wanted”, denied service in shops and restaurants, and had their homes and property vandalized.

Killer Wench

Duck Soup wrote: »

http://www.closeronline.co.uk/2009/08/car-lover-confesses-i-have-sex-with-my-car

http://www.motortorque.com/news/five-to-show-documentary-on-men-who-have-sex-with-cars-15539

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mechaphile-sex-thousands-cars-now-2356854

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/10/10/man-has-had-1000-lovers-999-of-which-are-cars/

http://www.zgeek.com/mechaphile-admits-to-having-to-have-sex-with-over-1000-cars/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/my-car-is-my-lover/

Articles that explore the lives of mechaphiles - men who like to have sex with cars. Cuz, you know, if you can find some web pages on something it's obviously being discussed seriously, extensively and continually.

Really? You're comparing newspaper articles to links to Japanese-American Internment Memorials and Museums?

Watch it. Your bias is showing.

Wurzelbert

Suzuki_TL1000R wrote: »

Dude the Japs fukked the poor Chinese up bigtime before. Millions kilted...
Russians killed way way more people (including alot of their own) then
ze germanz ever did.

And yeah since hollywood is run by Jews we get a slwewed version from them.

WWII was a total cesspool, forget the history book version.

true. i’d like to add that ww2 should not be seen as an isolated event, as many seem to be doing nowadays, but can only really be understood in its historical context…preceding decades and centuries led to and paved the way for the world wars and all associated mayhem in the 20th century…

InTheTrees

Duck Soup wrote: »

http://www.closeronline.co.uk/2009/08/car-lover-confesses-i-have-sex-with-my-car

Articles that explore the lives of mechaphiles - men who like to have sex with cars. Cuz, you know, if you can find some web pages on something it's obviously being discussed seriously, extensively and continually.

Srsly?

Manic Moran

Drove past the Manzanar camp recently. It's a National Historic Site. http://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm

As others have mentioned, that it's not often brought up in Europe is not massively surprising as it's a domestic USian affair. But it's certainly not hidden under the carpet in the US and I'll wager most of the population knows about it.

Jimoslimos wrote: »

The counter-argument usually claims that x million lives were saved through shortening of the war, which IMO is complete bullsh1t. The Japanese were on their last legs, air and sea blockades were effective and would eventually have surrendered regardless. There were two principle reasons for deploying the bombs.

1) The US military had spent billions on developing an expensive new toy and needed to justify the cost.
2) The Soviets were fast approaching.

3). IJA documents indicate that the Japanese expected to lose some 1.5 million civilians due to starvation as they continued to resist the Americans. I'll try to dig up the source when I get home if you want (I'm travelling right now).

There was no indication, either domestically, or visible to the US, that the Japanese were about to surrender. Even after the decision was made, after the bombs were dropped, there was still a coup attempt to keep going. Be careful about applying our current values to what the Japanese were thinking at the time.