Jananese soldier killing Chinese
Baby
Courtesy gregnwoko.blogspot.com
Click image for a larger view
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The Truth about Japanese Internment
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. . and why the interment of Japanese
By
Patrick Tillery, editor
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Seuss cartoon —
Typical cartoon of time
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If you were not around or aware in 1942; if you sometimes wonder how Americans
could be so . . . well . . . un-American as to haul Japanese and Japanese-Americans
off to internment camps; if you are embarrassed that your parents and
grandparents could do something so unfair--Read this book (The
Rape of Nanking) It tells of the systematic torture and murder of more
than 300,000 Chinese residents of Nanking – more killed than by both
atomic bombs combined.
After reading it, be
aware that Americans living then knew little of Nazi atrocities but
lots about those of the Japanese — they were well documented. Discover
by reading this and other books that these Japanese atrocities were
not individual aberrations as in MyLai but organized efforts by the
Japanese command. Also know that Americans had every reason to believe
those same atrocities could and would happen in American cities if they
were occupied.
Seuss cartoon
depicting common fear
Click image for
a larger view |
Americans saw the Japanese
juggernaut crush resistance in the Philippines resulting in the
infamous Bataan death march. Americans saw the "invincible"
British navy and land forces in the "Unconquerable fortress
Singapore" fall swiftly to the Japanese. Americans also suffered
the shelling of a west coast city by a Japanese submarine, the
bombing of Oregon, and balloon bombs dropping in the U.S.
and Canada. America was, not only fighting for it's very existence,
but to prevent these horrors from happening in Honolulu! Add to
this, actual reports in San Francisco newspapers of a few resident
Japanese celebrating the attack on Pearl Harbor and proudly and
openly pledging loyalty to Japan — a disconcerting thought
to those afraid of saboteurs. Consider all of this when judging
your grandparents. See Suess cartoons depicting this fear.
It was, perhaps, a sad chapter in American history. In hindsight
it was unfortunate because many loyal Japanese-Americans were swept
up. |
But, look at it through the eyes of the
Americans who were there and had reason to be afraid and you might be
more tolerant. "Reparations" have been paid and apologies given
to those unfortunate Japanese - Americans who were
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interned, both to the loyal ones and to
the ones who might not have been. Japan and Japanese companies
that used American prisoners for slave labor have never even acknowledged
their guilt - much less pay reparations. GIs of all ethnic groups,
however, were also uprooted from their homes and sent to fight
a vicious life or death battle in foreign lands. While we are
loudly wringing our hands over a few that were unfairly but benignly
and comfortably interned, wounded GIs, including Japanese-American
ones, rotted, forgotten in dirty VA hospitals. Neither they nor
their dead buddies got reparations.
Note: The internment was a project of
the president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pushed by California
Governor Earl Warren (later SCOTUS), and upheld in the Supreme
Court's Korematsu decision. It was written by Justice Hugo Black.
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Seuss cartoon —
Typical cartoon of time
Click image for
a larger view |
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