As a post script, good to see that you are capitalsing your posts again, CG. I was finding it difficult to read some of your e.e. cummings’ efforts!
Just to add a little tidbit here. The U.S. gave reparations to the Japanese, but not to the Italians or Germans. I’m not even sure a formal apology was even given to the two latter groups.
And, in fact, the total number of European detainees was slightly higher than the number of ethnic Japanese who were detained.
However, the Germans, Italians, Roumanians (WWII spelling), Bulgarians, and others were only detained after the FBI actually made an investigation of each individual and decided that a specific individual was an actual risk if left free to roam the country. The people so interned were nearly all foreign nationals. It was quite possible for a man with specific ties to the Fascist organizations of his home country to be interned while that man’s wife and family remained free. In contrast, the Japanese were rounded up, wholesale, based exclusively on their ethnicity, regardless of the fact that they were U.S. citizens, and compelled to sell their property so that they could be relocated.
I’m not sure what your point was, but your statement left out a lot of information.
It was a tidbit I learned a couple of years ago and it surprised me because I had heard much of the Japanese Internment and the reparations, but nothing of the others. Do you have a cite for the info you provided. Im not doubting you, I just find that whole chapter in our history interesting.
It should also be noted that not all Japanese were put into the camps. I think it was only those living within 300 miles of the West coast. And even they had the opportunity to remove themselves and move to, say Chicago. I will volunteer that much of what I know of this I got from, :eek: , Michelle Malkin’s book. I know she’s not held in high regard around here, so if you have any other places to steer me, it would be appreciated. Also, Tom, have you read her book and do you have a first-hand opinion of it?
Thanks, Walloon.
The other interesting thing is that, later on in the war, someone in the DoD realised that the people they had in Internment Camps… well, they spoke Japanese, which could be put to use for the War Effort- and despite having been locked up arbitrarily, large numbers of Japanese-Americans were still prepared to work for the USA.
Quite a few of them went into Combat, and in at least one case was able to convince a group of Japanese soldiers one one of the Pacific Islands to “Cease hostilities” against the Americans. The Japanese soldiers complied because it never occured to the enlisted soliders that any of the Foreign Devils could possibly have mastered the Japanese Tongue, and that anyone ordering them about in Japanese must be a Japanese Officer, and it wasn’t for them to question the orders of their high-ups or The Emperor.
All in all, an unpleasant episode in US history (detaining people in prison camps because of ethnicity), but most Nations have rather unpleasant episodes they’d prefer to forget…
My father, the combat vet, had the utmost respect for a member of our small farming community. An American, who was a second generation Japanese, who was *never * referred to by anyone of the redneck community as a Jap, Nip or Gook. IIRC from 35 years ago, Mr. Shigenori. This guy used to take papers and uniforms off of dead or captured Japanese soldiers and then recon behind enemy lines. Not once but routinely. :eek:
Go For Broke is a pictorial history of the Japanese-American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Regimental Combat Team active in the World War II European theatre. The Japanese-American Nisei warriors fighting on the side of American and the Allies earned 9,486 purple hearts and numbered 680 of their comrades in arms as killed in action. Their individual decorations for bravery include a Congressional Medal of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, 588 Silver Stars, and 5,200 Bronze Stars. Their unit recognitions include 87 Division Commendations, 36 Army Commendations, and a truly remarkable seven Presidential Unit Citations. These fighting men were allowed to volunteer while being male Japanese-American internees as the result of a war-time hysteria which had resulted in the internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans (70,000 of whom were native-born American citizens) into ten concentration camps scattered around the United States. Go For Broke is a unique military history and a Japanese-American triumph.
(I apologize for not using CAPS when I post from my PDA)
Just to make is clear i’m from Australia (Brisbane for those of you interested).
I take Japanese as a subject (i’m a high-school student). we use ‘Jap’ to refer to the subject all the time, i probably wouldn’t use it to refer to a person, but in the context of a subject i haven’t encountered anyone who thinks it’s offensive.
On the subject of Aboriginals, most politically correct thing to say is “Indiginous Australians”.
I do. Indeed, not only is the word considered vulgar in both uses, but it’s too vague for my use.
On musical theatre sites, using the word “Jap” to refer to a Japanese production will get you a warning. Continued use gets you banned.
Also, Japanese applies only to people from that country. There are plenty of other Asian countries; make sure you’re referring to the right one when talking about an individual (I know a Filippino who goes balastic when referred to as a “jap” or a “chink.”)
With all due respect, Martini, your declaration of the word to be no longer offensive means nothing.
In the U.S. (a country which you acknowledge you have never lived in) refering to a person as “Jap” is still perceived as a racial slur. If you won’t accept that from me, perhaps you’d like to talk to our children – all of whom are under the age of 25, and all of whom have had the word directed at them as an insult. For that matter, talk to my wife, who still hears the term occassionally. It is no less offensive to her now than it was when she was a child.
In our experience, when a person uses that word, it’s because the person knows exactly the level of offense the word carries with it, and uses it precisely because it’s offensive.
And the proper response by someone who has inadvertantly used a term that offends someone is “I’m sorry. I didn’t know and didn’t mean to offend.” Not, “that’s Ancient History.”
The most likely reason for that construction is that in spoken Chinese, identifying someone by nationality is done in precisely that manner: “Mei guo ren” = “America man” (well, “America person”, most literally); “chung guo ren” = “China man” are the ones that come to my mind most readily. In Chinese, these aren’t considered offensive terms; it’s just how you say where you’re from.
So it’s not too hard to imagine a Chinese immigrant trying to learn English and identifying himself as a “China man”. It’s also pretty easy to imagine people mocking him for it.
I’ve been called a “Chinaman” before, though not to my face. Apparently, the secretary went ballistic when she heard the guy say it and threw him out of the office, telling him not to come back until he could grasp that I should be called “Doctor”.
Indeed, that does not seem to be the case, from the responces here- the opinions seems roughly equally divided. It is your opinion, and that’s fine.
If it is a “slur” it’s no more of a slur than “Yank” or “Brit”.
I have used a site that provided an excellent overview (with substantial detail) of the entire Enemy Alien and Internment situations during WWII. Unfortunately, the last time I referred to it was in a thread that has been archived and I have not yet found it again. I’m going to keep looking, because it is definitely a story that too few people realize and it is important to know about it.
Resident aliens from Europe definitely were incarcerated in large numbers and those who had families who were U.S. citizens had to face the difficult choice (if the Feds decided they were a threat) of separating the family or having the family join the alien in detention. The last few detainees were not released (for some stupid, bureaucratic reason) until after 1947, although the majority of those detained were released within weeks or months once they had established (via interviews with neighbors and employers, membership in “good” and not “bad” organizations, etc.) that they were not a threat. (The flip side of that was that any citizen could report them as a problem and the FBI and WRA personnel were likely to take anonymous tips regardless of their credibility.)
In all, slightly more citizens of European countries were detained than citizens of Japan, (although the majority of the Europeans spent less time in detention than the Japanese did).
In contrast to the U.S. citizens of German and Italian descent who were in jeopardy only if they were minor children of aliens, however, all ethnic Japanese in Military District 1 (the lands within various distances from the border of Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona) were ordered to abandon their homes.
If that is an example of the stuff that Malkin wrote, I can see why every historian I have read has condemned her work as self-serving nonsense. It is true that after a period of time, some Japanese were permitted to seek other places to live–provided they could find sponsors and find an employer and come up with the money for moving expenses and places to live. These citizens were never permitted to simply declare that they were going to move East and walk out of the camps. Here are a couple of examples of the manner in which they were placed into the camps:
Instructions to all persons of Japanese Ancestry, San Francisco, April 1, 1942 Family heads had to pick up instructions on April 2 or April 3 and the families had to report to be moved with no more baggage than could be carried by the family members by April 7.
Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry, Alameda County, May 3, 1942 Pick up instructions on May 4 or 5 and be moved by noon, May 9.
Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry, Santa Barbara County, Alpril 23, 1942 Pick up instructions on April 24 or 25 and be packed and ready for shipment by noon, April 30.
I’m not sure what Malkin believes those citizens were supposed to do to get to Chicago when thousands of people were being forced to sell at the same time and their movements were restricted. There was also little in the way of advance warning. Executive Order 9066 was issued on February 19, with very little publicity in the news. The War Relocation Authority was established on March 18. By the end of April, most of the people in Military District 1 had already been ordered to move, generally on five to seven day’s notice.
Now, there were, indeed, Japanese citizens who were rounded up earlier. Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527 (regarding Japanese, German, and Italian citizens) had been issued immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. These were the orders under which the non-citizen aliens were held. However, after the initial roundup around December 9, a lot of those European detainees were released. The law and the Presidential orders both stated that the government had to have cause, (unfortunately, the government was not required to show cause to the accused), in order to detain a person. Once Executive Order 9066 was implemented, however, all Japanese on the West Coast (where the overwhlming majority lived) were subject to relocation, regardless whether the government could demonstrate cause.
Maybe in an Australian context but not in an American one. Yank and Brit are clearly demunitive forms of American or British. These words can be used in a negative way as in “fucking Yank.” Let’s not even go down the road that “septic” is a polite form of address.
Jap is a word that was clearly used to demonize the Japanese in WW2 (let’s all agree that the Japanese in WW2 have a LOT to answer for), and at a minimum vestiges of that demonization are still attached to the word today. Demonization of an entire race of people, most of whom were not even born in WW2.
Kunilou nailed this much better than I already with “the person knows *exactly * the level of offense the word carries with it, and uses it precisely because it’s offensive.”
Again waiting for your cite that Jap is the short form for the “convicted war criminal government of WW2 Japan”
I too would love to see a cite to the effect that “Jap” is the shortened term for “Convicted War Criminal Government of Japan in WWII”. It’s certainly not a use I’m familiar with.
So, if I understand:
We can agree that Jap was used in a negative sense by Europeans during WWII- which was, as must be remembered, a long time ago.
We can also agree that it’s use in the modern day US may be considered offensive.
Further, we can also agree that it’s usage outside the US (say, by people in Australia or the UK) may not be considered offensive, depending on context, and indeed, prima facie, should not be construed as deliberately offensive, after giving due regard to the person speaking said word and the circumstances thereof.
Kunilou, I’m sorry your kids have to put up with that sort of thing, but I’m not going to apologise for finding a word to be generally non-offensive purely on the grounds that it’s only offensive in the US and that common usage elsewhere contradicts the US experience.
It’s interesting that “Jerry” for Germans isn’t seen as especially offensive (although it is a bit quaint/outdated/Stiff Upper Lip), although “Kraut” or “Hun” isn’t really suitable for mixed company dinner-table conversation, and if you referred to them as “Bosche” people would assume you were talking about power tools…
If I might be permitted a minor sidetrack, I’ve often wondered what makes certain words “Offensive”.
I mean, “Nigger” and “Coon” have a loooong history of deliberately being used offensively and malicious contempt- indeed, as hate speech. It’s use in modern society by Europeans is therefore (quite reasonably) to be considered extremely offensive, and I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet who disputes that- including groups which use the term because it’s offensive.
Similarly, “Slant” and “Yellow Peril” all date back to the Gold Rush days, when Asian immigrant suffered terrible discrimination (the White Australia policy being one example of this), and “Gook” has, I believe, connotations of being a either Viet Cong guerrilla (with the unspoken addendum “And we should have killed the lot of them” or a “Me love you long time, $5 sucky-sucky” stereotype- which is unpleasant in a variety of ways we don’t need to go into, for obvious reasons.
But the best anyone seems to have come up with for “Jap” being offensive is A) It was used negatively in WWII Allied Propaganda and B) There are still some people in the US who haven’t realised the War’s over, man. AFAIK, Japanese civillians were not arbitrarily shot or lynched during the war (outside combat zones- the Allied soldiers’ revenge was furious and terrible to behold, and basically no better than the Japanese treatment of POWs in the first place- which is why it’s hushed up these days- but that’s a different thread)
I mean, there are ethnic slurs for White People, too. “Cracker” and “Honky piece of shit” spring readily to mind- Although, I’ve yet to met a European person who is, or even could be, offended by them. I’m sure there are others, but those are the two I get directed at me by certain homeless/itinerant indigenous non-reflective persons on the occaisons I decline to provide them with spare change.
It’s very simple: I’m not advocating that everyone should have the right to walk around yelling “JAP! JAP! JAP!” to all and sundry, but I am saying that outside the US, the term isn’t automatically a heinous ethnic slur designed to convey contempt and hatred of a specific ethnic group to all within earshot. Having said that, I realise there are people on this board who may find the term offensive (and as someone else pointed out, it’s about 50/50 from the looks of it), and so I shall make a note to refrain from using the term outside the appropriate historical contexts.
Can we at least agree on that? 
As I said in my earlier post, I lived in japan for two years. I asked about 15-20 Japanese people about the use of the word “Jap”. All of them disliked it. All of them said they did not want it used about them. They did not really know enough English to explain why.
I’m on your side on the central issue, but I must nitpick; “Yank” is quite obviously not a diminutive of “American.” “Yank” is a diminutive of “Yankee,” which has a totally different etymology than “American.”
Orthographically, “Paki” should be no more offensive than, say, “Afghani”, “Turkmeni” or “Tadzhiki”, all of these people coming from "-stan"s. On t’other hand, people of the other three extractions probably haven’t been given hard times under those names as Pakistanis have over here. So, “people who come from the country of the people called Paki” it is, I guess.
I cherish the small-c “chinaman” as a cricketing term, the same way as I will use the verb “to welsh” (predominantly not about people nicknamed Dai), but I wouldn’t dream of calling a Chinese person either that or a Chink.
…well we can’t really. I’m a 32 year old kiwi, and while in your experiences you may have found the word “jap” to be inoffensive, I would be shocked if any of my friends used the word. Just because you don’t know anyone who would be offended by the word doesn’t mean the offense is limited to the United States.