Internment

[Lissa]

*Originally posted by DrDeth *
**Oddly, in some wierd way- the racial profiling we did so- by interning Nisei Citizens- protected them from being imprisoned. Some 50000 of them refused to sign a statement saying they were loyal to the USA, and would serve in the armed forces. They simply continued to be “interned”, whereas US Citizens of other heritage would have been sent to Leavenworth for 5 years for refusing to serve.
**

Out of curiosity, I researched this statement of yours and this is what I found. According to this site:

The segregation of internees into “loyals” and “disloyals” began with the controversial questionnaire that the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and the U.S. War Department devised ostensibly to facilitate the leave clearance process. By the end of 1942, a few Nikkei had begun leaving the camps to enter colleges or work in factories in the Midwest and East Coast. The WRA subjected them to loyalty investigations before they were ever allowed to leave. In late January 1943, a Loyalty Questionnaire was produced, not only for those leave clearances, but also to screen young Japanese Americans for military service eligibility. The WRA eventually made the questionnaire mandatory for all internees over the age of 17 years. This process, referred to as “registration,” asked Japanese Americans to declare their undivided loyalty to the U.S. The reasons were never made clear to the the internees, and this questionnaire, implemented in a coercive manner, became a kind of wartime inquisition of Japanese Americans. All internees aged 17 and older were required to answer an extensive questionnaire. The two most problematic questions were numbers 27 and 28:

#27: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States whenever ordered?

#28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any and all attacks by foreign or domestic forces? Will you also forswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese emperor, or to any other government, power, or organization?

Issei (First Generation Immigrants), who were denied by law the chance to apply for US Citizenship, feared that answering “Yes” to #28 would leave them with no country. Nisei (Second Generation), being Americans by birth, were insulted to be asked to “forswear” an allegiance to an emperor that they had never given to a foreign emperor. Some Japanese suspected the question to be a “trick” question. With no information from the WRA, many feared that answering “Yes” to #27 was a good as volunteering for the Army. Some Nisei qualified their answers: “Yes, if my rights are restored.” Many pressured their children to answer as they did, fearing that their families would otherwise be separated.

One Japanese American by the name of Tsukasa Matsueda , recalls being interviewed by camp officials at the age of 17 about his answer of “Yes-No-If.” Matsueda when interviewed stated, “I said you know, I don’t know anything about the emperor, I mean I do know, [of him] because I went to Japanese School [In the US] and everything, but loyalty? Are you kidding me? And what is that? I said we’re family, I mean we’re individuals caught in a situation where we have no choice. So I just said, my loyalty is to my family. All this talk about loyalty to the emperor, loyalty to the United States. I said it doesn’t mean anything.”

** Altogether around 75,000 internees filled out the questionnaire, from which 12,173 so-called “disloyals” were identified and sent to Tulelake. **

(Bolding mine.)

So, basically, the questionaire was administered AFTER they had already been imprisoned, and 12,000, not the 50,000 you claimed were deemed “disloyal” due to their answers, also including those who refused to fill out any forms at all. (Not all of the internees were subjected to the “loyalty test.”) As of yet, I have not found evidence that Germans and Italians were asked to sign similar forms, but I’m still looking.

**

. Being interned protected them from this- and also to a large extent allowed them to go home. (The USA had so many more Axis citizens that the Axis had US citizens that most of ours got back to the USA, whereas only a few of theirs were exchanged)

**

The Axis powers were relatively uninterested in civilian exchange. They were a burden on the government, having no homes or jobs, and their loyalty was questionable. (Quite a few of those who were taken out of US camps to be sent to Germany ended up in German camps because the Germans were afraid they might be spies.) There were two exchanges involving the Germans kidnapped from South America and brought to the US for that purpose, but in all, exchanges were very few when compared to the overall number of internees. Exchange is a flimsy excuse indeed.

This site talks about Bergen-Belsen which was osetnsibly to hold Allied prisoners.

When Bergen-Belsen first came into being in April 1943, it was called an Aufenthaltslager, which means a holding camp. Its purpose was to hold prisoners who were suitable for exchange with the Allies for German citizens held in internment camps. Although Bergen-Belsen was from the beginning under the jurisdiction of the camp administration in Oranienburg, near Berlin, it was not until December 1944 that it was designated a concentration camp.

According to a Bergen-Belsen Memorial Site booklet, the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp was not called a civilian internment camp because this would have meant that access must be allowed by international commissions according to the Geneva convention. That is why the term Aufenthaltslager, which means “camp of staying,” was used instead.

<snip>

Although the initial plan for the Bergen-Belsen exchange camp was to detain as many as 30,000 Jews for exchange with the Allies for German citizens being held in Internment, as it turned out, there were only 358 of the Jews at Bergen-Belsen who obtained their freedom through a genuine exchange for other prisoners.

Internment would not have been a protection against acusations by the Japanese government of “aiding” the US war effort, either, because, according to this site:

When Japanese Americans entered the concentration camps, the government and the WRA decided that the internees would be used to some extent as a source of labor. The government did not want the internees to become wards of the state, dependent upon it for all their needs. However, the evacuation and internment had stripped Japanese Americans of their ability to earn a living.

<snip>

The WRA also established work projects supporting the war effort in the camps. At Manzanar, Poston, and Gila River, hundreds of internees made camouflage nets for use in the war.

[Monty]

Dr D:

It was wrong to intern (imprison) anyone who was not guilty of any crime. Requiring the citizens of countries with which the United States was at war did not require imprisoning them and those who just happened to have descended from other citizens of those countries.

[DrDeth]

Lissa- nice cite. But go back & read it. Bergen-Belsen was not for Allied citizens. If it had been , it would have been under protection from Genva. It was used to hold Jews & others who had contacts or relatives in the USA. Yes, things were horrible there- true, less horrible than in the true “death camps”, but nothing like an internment camp. AFAIK, nearly all the USA citizens interned by Germany were exchanged.

[Lissa]

*Originally posted by DrDeth *
**Lissa- nice cite. But go back & read it. Bergen-Belsen was not for Allied citizens. If it had been , it would have been under protection from Genva. It was used to hold Jews & others who had contacts or relatives in the USA. Yes, things were horrible there- true, less horrible than in the true “death camps”, but nothing like an internment camp. AFAIK, nearly all the USA citizens interned by Germany were exchanged. **

Sorry about the Bergen-Belsen misatributation. My mistake. I was typing too quickly, and not paying close enough attention.

Here are some sites about Allied citizen internees:

This site states that 18,745 American citizens were held by the Axis powers during WWII. 1,704 died of starvation and disease while in the camps. Some were not released until the end of the war. The article (the second to last on the page entitled "Congressional Record) does not even mention prisoner exchange. It focuses primarily on one internee in particular, but the * Congressional Record * article gives some statistics on other internees.

This site says that of the almost 19,000 prisoners, 14,000 were held by Japan (which leaves close to five thousand in Germany.)

[DrDeth]

Yes- I searched, and the web is full of sites about the US interning the Germans, or the Japanese, etc. But very little about the US citizens who were interned by the Axis- or if there is more, it’s lost in the mass of other info. The term used is “repatriation”, and certainly citizens were repatriated- but I can’t find anywhere how many.

However, it appears I was wrong- most Citizens were not exchanged- Japan exchanging few. Some were, but I can’t find how many. Mostly we exchanged with Germany, and very few with Japan. A WAG might surmise that as many US citizens were in Germany/Italy as Japan, and thus since there were 15K internees in Japan, and 5K in Germany that 10K were repatriated- but that’s just a WAG. I can’t back this up with any solid numbers, despite hours spent searching. Thanks for the sites, I had found one of them myself (Congressional record).
There is a twist on the Bergen-Belsen story. These relatives & such of Allied citizens were kept to be exchanged for Germans interned in Allied Internment camps. The Nazis wanted to exchange something like 20000 of the Jews in this camp. America was all for it, but Britain nixed the deal. They pointed out (correctly) that we didn’t need another 20000 loyal Germans working to help the German war industry. There was also some issues about their relocation to Palestine/Isreal. IMHO, this was short sighted on the part of the Brits. We certainly would have won anyway, the Germans would not have made that big a contribution, and many Jews there would have been saved.

Oh, and not to open up a new can of worms, but- If we had invaded, or starved Japan out (instead of dropping “the Bomb”)- there is little doubt that the 15000 US Citizens interned would not have survived until the end. They were already going fast- along with some 30K US POW’s. That’s something like 40000 americans who would have starved also, along with untold millions of Japanese.

Still my point remains. Even if you disagree with interning “enemy aliens” it still was a recognized part of International Law, and at that time was not controversial. But- interning your own citizens simply because they are of a certain racial background is undeniably wrong. The two issues are not the same, and should not be indiscriminately mixed together when writing about them.

[Lissa]

*Originally posted by DrDeth *
**Still my point remains. Even if you disagree with interning “enemy aliens” it still was a recognized part of International Law, and at that time was not controversial.

**

And, as I said before, neither was slavery.

** But- interning your own citizens simply because they are of a certain racial background is undeniably wrong. The two issues are not the same, and should not be indiscriminately mixed together when writing about them. **

The facts remain that:

1. Japanese people were barred from becomming citizens.

2. Internment had no benefits as to national security.

3. Internment was largely based on racism and cultural xenophobia.

4. Internees were, in effect, declared “guilty” without any due process.

Even if wholesale internment of aliens can possibly be considered “legally” right, by no stretch of the immagination can it be considered ethically right. Imprisoning people simply because of their nation of orgin is wrong, plain and simple. Despite the fact that they are not citizens, I can’t see how declaring them guilty without possiblity of proving their innocence can be justified.

If an *individual * can be proven to be a danger, then he should be either deported or imprisoned. People cannot help where they were born, but they are responsible for their behavior. It only makes sense to punish those who have earned it.