Back in 1942 over 100,000 Japanese were relocated from their homes into camps in the Japanese American internment. Would they have been justified in using their guns to resist relocation?
It is interesting that the US was putting Japanese in camps at the same time Germany was implementing their ultimate solution. Certainly the Jews would be justified in using guns to prevent their relocation since we know they were going to be put to death. It seems that the Japanese might have that same justification since it would be unknown what fate ultimately awaited them at their camp.
Morally yes, it’s sort of like the people involved in John Brown’s raid. It was moral at its core, but extremely unwise (and the JB Raid was executed in a way that crossed the line into immorality as he killed people like an emancipated slave train conductor who had no logical association with the slaveholding class or slaveholding society.)
The Japanese would have died by the thousands if they had resisted, and they mostly didn’t when they went to an internment camp. So while they’d have been justified, it would not have been wise.
It was a little different for the Jews in places like the Warsaw Ghetto, they both were justified and would have fared no better or worse by not fighting.
I think you are comparing applies to oranges. The Japanese internment camps however degrading and uncomfortable simply were not death camps which you acknowledge in your premise. While the governments actions were heinous, they did not rise to level in which armed resistance was justified, if for no other reason than that such action which could not be successful would only further endanger the American Japanese community.
This happened on a smaller scale to German and Italian immigrants, too. The difference is that it only applied to non-citizens.
Part of me thinks people should be allowed to defend their home with deadly force, immigrants or not. But then, what about eminent domain? If the government wants to put a mall where you live, does that warrant deadly force?
Okay so maybe the crime was involuntary imprisonment without trial, not being forced from their homes. In that case, do Gitmo detainees have a right to escape using deadly force?
I generally agree that the Americans who were interned during WWII had the right to fight back, I’m just not 100% sure when they should have used that right and what specifically justified it.
There are plenty of people who are wrongfully imprisoned by our government even today, are they justified in fighting back with deadly force? What about the police and enforcement officers? Once they are being fired upon by people under their care, are they justified in firing back in self defense? They’re just trying to do their government ordered job, after all, and may not have much clue what is actually going on.
There’s really no way the Japanese-American victims of this could have known this at the time- for all they knew, they were being hauled away to their deaths. That’s why it’s always morally wrong for force to be used by those in power to intern, relocate, imprison, etc. (except for actual and accused criminals and prisoners-of-war), and in my opinion, it’s always morally justified (if not necessarily always wise) for someone to fight for their lives, if they reasonably feel their lives might be in danger. It was morally justified for a slave to kill anyone trying to keep them in chains, and it’s morally justified for anyone to fight for their lives (if not always wise) if they’re being interned or imprisoned for political purposes.
It seems both groups would be uncertain about their fates in camp. They thought they would just be relocated to the camp and not killed. Or maybe both groups thought they might be killed. So it’s hard to say that one group is justified in fighting back while the other is not. Both groups had similar assumptions about their fate.
I don’t think internment of citizens can be jestified or villified by what happens to those citizens after they are interred-it is the internment itself that has to be at the heart of the matter.
Not 100%. Under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (of all things) some citizens (even born citizens) of German ancestry were detained and arrested with no real due process. Most were higher profile and politically active in the various German-American Bunds.
While not treated as specifically as I would like in a cite, there is always
(One of my wife’s great-uncles got caught up in all that)
They would have been looked upon as scum deserving of death; they were the wrong skin color. Most “supporters of gun rights today” would probably cheerfully take a trip back in a time machine and shoot the internees themselves. Racism is deep on the Right.
Just this once would you mind not giving a rebuttal until an initial response is posted? I’m sure posters are perfectly capable of giving their own opinions if they wish.
Anybody who looked at the historical precedent of the US government would have realized that there was little threat of them being killed. Plus how far does this right of violent resistance to internment go? If I say get arrested for murder and know for certain I haven’t done it, does it make it morally right to shoot at the police officers who try to apprehend me?
Not the same thing at all. We are talking about internment without trial for an indeterminent length of time for who you are, not arrest and trial for what you did. As far as I know there are no laws on the books currently against being a certain race, nationality or sex.
In addition to what John Mace said, a clearer precedent would have been the internment of certain German-Americans and war opponent during World War I.
