# Japanese Internment **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 20, 2012, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395 "2012-02-20T04:19:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/41 "2012-02-21T14:37:41Z")
I understand what the OP is saying, but I ask you to try and put yourself in their place. Sure, a lot of immigrants that come here never lose their culture…tons more embrace their new country though. Imagine being told - you are so alien we don’t even trust you and all you people band together anyway. Of course given a chance you will betray state secrets! So let’s just lock you away so you never even have a chance. No educating, nothing like what happened after 9/11, with Dubya even telling people that not all Muslims were evil. And we won’t even talk about the “Yellow Peril” posters. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/42 "2012-02-21T14:41:24Z")
The important thing to remember is that the internment and exclusion orders were almost solely based on the prejudices of the Army command responsible for defense of the West Coast. From Justice Murphy’s dissent in Korematsu v. US, 323 U.S. 214: > [@](#): > > That this forced exclusion was the result in good measure of this erroneous assumption of racial guilt, rather than bona fide military necessity is evidenced by the Commanding General’s Final Report on the evacuation from the Pacific Coast area. In it, he refers to all individuals of Japanese descent as “subversive,” as belonging to “an enemy race” whose “racial strains are undiluted,” and as constituting “over 112,000 potential enemies . . . at large today” along the Pacific Coast. This is apparent from the fact that the internment itself was totally unnecessary: > [@](#): > > No adequate reason is given for the failure to treat these Japanese Americans on an individual basis by holding investigations and hearings to separate the loyal from the disloyal, as was done in the case of persons of German and Italian ancestry. > > \ > > Yet nearly four months elapsed after Pearl Harbor before the first exclusion order was issued; nearly eight months went by until the last order was issued, and the last of these “subversive” persons was not actually removed until almost eleven months had elapsed. Leisure and deliberation seem to have been more of the essence than speed. And the fact that conditions were not such as to warrant a declaration of martial law adds strength to the belief that the factors of time and military necessity were not as urgent as they have been represented to be. > > \ > > During a period of six months, the 112 alien tribunals or hearing boards set up by the British Government shortly after the outbreak of the present war summoned and examined approximately 74,000 German and Austrian aliens. These tribunals determined whether each individual enemy alien was a real enemy of the Allies or only a “friendly enemy.” About 64,000 were freed from internment and from any special restrictions, and only 2,000 were interned. The dissent noted that if the British government could vet 74,000 alien residents, the Pacific command could certainly have vetted the 70,000 Japanese internees who were US citizens. [QUOTE=Slithy Tove] Yes, and the Korean I slept next to for 20 years had freckles. If we’re going to demand exact Pantone Matching System standards, we only “white” people I’ve ever seen were Japanese geishas. Yet another conversation killed by the offenderatti. [/QUOTE] I wish you luck with your “some of my best friends…” defense. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/43 "2012-02-21T15:52:54Z")
What is I’m charged with? ---
**Author:** ![wedgehed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8edcca/32.png) [@wedgehed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wedgehed)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/44 "2012-02-21T16:12:42Z")
Interning the Japanese-Americans probably took a lot of heat off all the other Asian-Americans. I’m not saying it was right, but I don’t imagine that Americans of Chinese or Filipino descent were shedding many tears about it. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/45 "2012-02-21T16:17:19Z")
Appologies - as my syntax shows I’m proccupied and let my irritation level rise. I appreciate the scholarship that has been brought to this thread by those who have made that effort; among whom I am not, ---
**Author:** ![Chicagojeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@Chicagojeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicagojeff)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/46 "2012-02-21T17:19:38Z")
As Professor Peter Irons pointed out when they re-opened the case of Fred Koramatsu the justice department had prior knowledge that their was absolutely no proof of sabotage or espionage when the case went to court… they (govt) also never gave the defense this information… You can’t justify the obliteration of due process rights by saying we were saving them from possible criminal actions against them… pure folly. It sounds like Judge Lemle’s theory of holding off on school integration in Ark because Gov Faubus was promoting mob rule… ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/47 "2012-02-21T18:06:05Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Out of all the posts in this thread, you can’t find a rational logical reply to respond to? You aren’t looking very hard. I can find a few, but the vast majority are irrational. There is a distinction between being curious about a thing and advocating for that thing. That so many Dopers don’t get that distinction is a little frightening. Is there even a name for that logical fallacy? ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/48 "2012-02-21T18:21:15Z")
That was actually part of the reasoning for British internment of German citizens (note, German citizens, not people of German descent) during the second world war. But those internment camps were apparently pretty good places to live, according to my step-nan; she was a German Jewish refugee during the war and she described the internment camp as ‘like Butlins.’ Butlins is a holiday camp, FTR. They were allowed relatively free movement and families stayed together, according to her - her Mum and brother were with her (her Dad was dead). [This site](http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWgermansBR.htm) says completely the opposite - that treatment was terrible and that families were separated. Perhaps it depended a lot on the classification of the German citizen - the site says they were classified as A, B or C, with people in the C group being just released and allowed to live normally, and people in the B group living in the camp but with freedom of movement. Perhaps the B group differences were much larger than that, especially with children like my step-nan. She never seemed to think that her own internment was a bad thing. Feeling against Germans was high enough that imprisoning the people who might have attacked them would have meant imprisoning half the population. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/49 "2012-02-21T18:26:25Z")
> [@florez](#): > > So then why were German Americans not also put into camps? If they were German citizens (or Italian citizens) they were. You have to understand that interning “enemy aliens” is a normal and accepted part of war. If you are a CITIZEN, you are expected to be loyal to your home nation. This does protect the internees also as then they can’t be accused of being traitors by continuing their jobs, say in a war industry. So, the USA would have been OK had we only interned the Japanese who were still legally Citizens of Japan. Where we went wrong and off on a racist tangent is when we interned the American Citizens of Japanese descent. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/50 "2012-02-21T18:39:44Z")
For what its worth (not much, I’m afraid), Manzanar is\* beautiful\*. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/51 "2012-02-21T18:42:47Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > …those internment camps were apparently pretty good places to live, according to my step-nan; she was a German Jewish refugee during the war and she described the internment camp as ‘like Butlins.’ Butlins is a holiday camp, FTR. > > \ > > [This site](http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWgermansBR.htm) says completely the opposite - that treatment was terrible and that families were separated. Sounds quite a lot like Butlins, really. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/52 "2012-02-21T19:33:08Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Sounds quite a lot like Butlins, really. 😃 Yeah, I did wonder if it was more of a comment on Butlins than on internment. 😃 But it is odd how different her experience was to that outlined on that site - the only one I could easily find about British internment of Germans in WW2. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/53 "2012-02-21T20:04:57Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > But it is odd how different her experience was to that outlined on that site - the only one I could easily find about British internment of Germans in WW2. [This BBC writeup](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6651858.shtml) sort of hints at poor treatment in the camps (and certainly on the ships on which some of the internees were deported). ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/54 "2012-02-21T20:10:29Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > So, the USA would have been OK had we only interned the Japanese who were still legally Citizens of Japan. Where we went wrong and off on a racist tangent is when we interned the American Citizens of Japanese descent. Some of whom had grand-parents who were born in the US (including Hawaii.) Their families had been in the US longer than most Italian-American families. My college girlfriend’s parents were interned and they, in true Japanese fashion, were humble about it and said that it wasn’t so bad and that they had dances and played sports. They were glad to get the reparation money in the 80’s but said that they didn’t feel like it was necessary. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up with a lot of Japanese-American kids. That generation (now in our late 40’s) is way more bitter about it than their parents. This does not in any way mitigate the evil of internment but it’s an interesting view on the generational difference between the people who were there and their kids. ---
**Author:** ![florez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@florez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/florez)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/55 "2012-02-21T20:33:06Z")
[quote=“hajario, post:54, topic:613395”] Some of whom had grand-parents who were born in the US (including Hawaii.) Their families had been in the US longer than most Italian-American families. My college girlfriend’s parents were interned and they, in true Japanese fashion, were humble about it and said that it wasn’t so bad and that they had dances and played sports. They were glad to get the reparation money in the 80’s but said that they didn’t feel like it was necessary. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up with a lot of Japanese-American kids. That generation (now in our late 40’s) is way more bitter about it than their parents. This does not in any way mitigate the evil of internment but it’s an interesting view on the generational difference between the people who were there and their kids.[/QUOTE Sometimes it must take a generation before it fully sinks in -what happened and how unfair it was. My Step mother and her whole family were interned during the war, and always minimized the hardships they endured while in the camp. Their children and grandchildren, however, kept at them about the loss and suffering, because they knew that the family had land and a thriving floral business before- but not after-they were interned. The elders continued to be good citizens, as they had been for two generations, and they never expressed bitterness for what happened to them during the war. I always found that remarkable. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/56 "2012-02-21T20:35:06Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > [This BBC writeup](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6651858.shtml) sort of hints at poor treatment in the camps (and certainly on the ships on which some of the internees were deported). So perhaps she was on the family camp on the Isle of Man (if I ever knew where her camp was, I don’t remember). I suspect treatment there was a lot better than at camps where they were holding single adult males. I guess also, from her POV, it was a hell of a lot better than being a Jew in Germany. TBH, the ships taking child evacuees don’t seem to have been much better, and one of them was also bombed, leading to 77 out of the 90 children dying. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2012, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/57 "2012-02-22T09:40:32Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > I can find a few, but the vast majority are irrational. > > There is a distinction between being curious about a thing and advocating for that thing. That so many Dopers don’t get that distinction is a little frightening. > > Is there even a name for that logical fallacy? Yes, the fallacy is “writing an unclear OP and getting upset when you get answers you don’t like”. If you only want to know “Was an unintended benefit of the interment that attacks on Japanese-Americans (or asiatic-looking people) decreased?” than a more or less factual answer can be found. But if you ask “Well, the internment was bad, but was it also a good idea because it had the benefit of protecting Japanese-Americans from mob violence?” then you shouldn’t be surprised if people take it as silent assent of the idea that putting people in camps is the correct way to deal with mob violence agains them. And people will point out that this idea / chain of logic is bad. Moreover, the factual part has been answered early that there weren’t many mob attacks in the first place. How many would have happened instead if the Japanese-Americans hadn’t been in the camps is impossible to know, we can only look at figures before, or at attacks against non-Japanese, but oriental-looking people during that time. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/58 "2012-02-22T13:47:10Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Yes, the fallacy is “writing an unclear OP and getting upset when you get answers you don’t like”. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. It wouldn’t have been that hard to ask a few clarifying questions. Instead people immediately jumped to “You’re a racist bastard!” To me that form of ignorance is far worse than an unclear OP. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2012, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/59 "2012-02-22T13:50:59Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > It wasn’t that hard to figure out. It wouldn’t have been that hard to ask a few clarifying questions. Instead people immediately jumped to “You’re a racist bastard!” To me that form of ignorance is far worse than an unclear OP. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2012, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395/60 "2012-02-22T14:15:44Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > It wasn’t that hard to figure out. It wouldn’t have been that hard to ask a few clarifying questions. Instead people immediately jumped to “You’re a racist bastard!” To me that form of ignorance is far worse than an unclear OP. A question like an OP can be asked: In neutral form or in leading/ aggressive form. or in unclear form. If your OP is unclear, people will usually try to figure out what you mean and answer that and/or ask back clarifying questions. If however the question is worded in a leading form - such as yours - the assumption of a certain intent is appropriate, and people will react to that intent. If you don’t see or understand the difference between the way you formulated your OP and a neutral form, than that’s already part of your problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-internment/613395.md?page=4)