Never Forget. Never Again.

[flabbybody]

Meanwhile in Europe, the US wasn't so squeaky clean after the end of the war and commited attrocities that should have landed Eisenhower before a tribunal. Google "Disarmed Enemy Forces Eisenhower" if you want to see how horrific the states were to the Germans that exceeded the inhumane treatment that the Germans afforded their own camp residents.

I read it. Where's the American "attrocities" ?
Looks like Eisenhower got stuck with all the German soldiers because they knew surrendering to the Soviets was certain death. Please note: The Soviet Union refused to sign the Geneva Convention and 90% of German POW's held in Russia were never again heard from after the end of the war.
Ask yourself this.... If you were a German soldier in 1945, would you rather be captured by the Americans or the Russians ?
Case closed

[BigDF]

While I agree with the basic idea that it should never have happened, if you look at the date and think about the state of the country at the time, it's easy to see how and why it happened.

In February of 1942, the West Coast, where most of the internment took place was still SCARED of a Japanese invasion. The Japanese military was a powerful force as they had demonstrated all over the Pacific by that time and very few people in our own military had any real idea of their strength.

We have always been a very racist country and it was very easy for people to believe that Japanese-Americans would choose to ally themselves with Japanese forces, should an invasion take place, especially given the Niihau Incident Niihau Incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that took place after Pearl Harbor. This more than anything else would have influenced FDR at the time.

I will admit I haven't looked at George Takei's material. I have no doubt he was frightened as any young boy would be in such a situation. Personally, judging from the posts on here about certain comparisons being made, I don't think I will bother with it. Life was really tough for a lot of folks in WW2, most of whom had it much tougher than young George did. This happened, it has been remedied as much as possible and if he wants to produce a show about it more power to him.

[Stavros]

You may not know this, but in Britain during WWII there were families who were split up, and children sent miles away from their parents. There were several waves of evacuation, I've actually heard elderly people still talk about this today. And I have read somewhere that there were Germans and Italians who were sent off to a camp on the Isle of Man, where apparently the conditions weren't too bad, all things considered. How a nation treats people within its own borders in a time of war - it's an interesting subject, and although undoubtedly a forum like this with its inbuilt limitations isn't really the place to get into it, maybe this thread will serve to pique the interest of the odd passer-by, who'll go off and do a bit of reading in their own time ... you never know.

In an earlier post I made the point about German and Italians being interned in the Isle of Man and also being sent to Canada, as well as the Canadian example, with links to two short accounts.

I think the point is buried in the 'one of our own' phrase. As BigDF points out Americans were shocked by Pearl Harbour (Darwin in Australia was attacked in similar fashion in February 1942); these kinds of stress produce irrational fears which can lead to collective punishment -and there were Black Shirts in the UK who were sympathetic to and aligned with Mussolini, so there may have been Japanese Americans who were impressed with the old country's Imperial ambitions. As recently as the 1970s and 1980s being Irish in Britain could be even more damaging than it already was owing to the residual prejudices against the Irish, and so on. 'One of our own' in the US may be different because most people are either immigrants, or descended from immigrants and slaves; but the US has not interned every American Muslim since 9/11 so I think we can argue that the country has moved on even if some Muslims feel hard done by for something they had no part in and did not approve of.

[Niccolo]

Apparently the whole point of bringing this up was the fear that it might happen again, & to make sure it did not. (As though posting about it here would help achieve that goal in any way.)

Personally I'd be more inclinded to work towards preventing another Pearl Harbor or 9/11, than worrying now about what might happen thereafter, in the context of a new global war.

If that ever came to pass, we'd all have a whole new set of problems to deal with, and I guarantee we'd all be far too busy looking after our own asses to give a flying fuck about whatever Mr. Zulu from Star Trek thinks ... about anything.

[lisaparadise]

Apparently the whole point of bringing this up was the fear that it might happen again, & to make sure it did not. (As though posting about it here would help achieve that goal in any way.)

Personally I'd be more inclinded to work towards preventing another Pearl Harbor or 9/11, than worrying now about what might happen thereafter, in the context of a new global war.

If that ever came to pass, we'd all have a whole new set of problems to deal with, and I guarantee we'd all be far too busy looking after our own asses to give a flying fuck about whatever Mr. Zulu from Star Trek thinks ... about anything.

co-sign.gay guys are the worst people to deal with,everything seems to be so dramatic.i wonder how he feels about his people getting hit by a nuke?and how he feels about all our men and woman viciously killed in a surprise attack on pearl harbour?all i see is him holding a grudge for 70 years and asking for donations to put his show in a theatre while he sits on his own millions,if it meens that much to him maybe the cheap fuck should use his own money dontcha think?

[sunairco]

I guess you don't consider an order to contain and totally neglect thousands of people denying them food,water, and some protection from the elements inhumane. The number is probably over a million and then the official US position was the Russians did it. Furthermore, countless others were worked to death just like the Germans did in the work camps. This however wasn't considered an atrocity, it was considered peacetime reparations. No, the numbers aren't equivelent to what the Japanese or Germans did, but none-the-less were just as horrendous for a country that claims to take the high road. This was all about Eisenhower's personal hatred of the Germans.

I read it. Where's the American "attrocities" ?
Looks like Eisenhower got stuck with all the German soldiers because they knew surrendering to the Soviets was certain death. Please note: The Soviet Union refused to sign the Geneva Convention and 90% of German POW's held in Russia were never again heard from after the end of the war.
Ask yourself this.... If you were a German soldier in 1945, would you rather be captured by the Americans or the Russians ?
Case closed

[trish]

German’s ate soup. Americans did the same thing.

German’s loved music. So did Americans.

Germans had a standing army. So did Americans.

Germans imprisoned their own citizens in special camps based on their ethnicity. So did Americans.

Parallels are parallels.

Germans exterminated their encamped citizens. Americans didn’t.

Did American character, or the character of American democracy, our specific purposes or simple contingency stand between interment and extermination. A question for historians.


Thank you BeardedOne for the original post.

[Stavros]

Trish
I think these are misleading parallels. The Americans interned Japanese and Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbour because they were perceived to be a real or a potential threat to the security of the USA. The Germans began by passing laws that defined who was and who was not Aryan/German; the camps that were set up, initially for political prisoners and 'undesirables' were part of a campaign of 'purification' or 'cleansing' which was intended to remove all non Aryans from the country, this is wholly different from the American experience in terms both of its intentions and its practise.

With regard to Lisa's comments about the use of nuclear weapons, historians now tend to agree that the end of the Pacific War was a practical reality by August 1945 because of the saturation bombing of Japanese cities, and the occupation of Okinawa in June 1945. However, the actual decision to surrender was made after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki AND the Soviet Union's entry into the war and its defeat of Japanse forces in Manchuria. The Japanese decision-making machine, which consisted of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, and the almighty Supreme War Council, were deadlocked on the decision, which was therefore made by the Emperor who normally kept out of decision-making.

The USSR committed to the Japanese war in February 1945 but not until the war in Europe was over. The argument that the Atomic bombings ended the war and in doing so saved millions of lives, is only partially true. The bombings were also a deterrent to further Soviet incursions into Japanese territory, which ended with the occupation of the Kuril Islands, which are still in dispute today and which mean that, in a technical sense, the Pacific War has not been entirely ended; as is also the case with divided Korea, where an Armistice was declared in 1953, but no peace treaty ever concluded.

But I do also think Mr Takei could probably use his remaining years to better purpose in trying to improve Japanese-US relations...

[trish]

I think these are misleading parallels. The Americans interned Japanese and Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbour because they were perceived to be a real or a potential threat to the security of the USA. The Germans began by passing laws that defined who was and who was not Aryan/German...

Parallels are parallels. It's what is made of them that's misleading. Both are nations of soup eaters. How is that misleading in and of itself?

Germans interned Jewish citizens because they were perceived to be a threat to the purity of their national Aryan heritage. Almost always hatred and fears present themselves as perceived threats. Because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans surmised that Japanese residing in the U.S., even those who were citizens, might be a threat. When we engaged Germany, German-Americans were not perceived to be so great a threat as to warrant internment.

Both Germany and America interned their own citizens in response to a perceived threat. Both threats were entangled with racism, as well as cultural and religious differences.

The divergences are 1) what was allegedly threatened (Aryan heritage within Germany vs the national security of the U.S.) and 2) the ultimate purpose for internment (extermination vs temporary isolation). Sometimes we respect peoples who wish to preserve their genetic and cultural heritage. Sometimes we don't. There doesn't seem to be a discernible rule regarding the matter. Sometimes we respect nations who in various ways undertake to guard their national security. (The U.S. for example, engaged in a preemptive war with Iraq in the name of national security). Sometimes we don't (e.g. Iran's nuclear weapons program). Upon closer inspection lines (diverging or parallel) usually get fuzzier than they appeared to be at a distance.

[sunairco]

Intentional starvation and death due to exposure and denial of any care is extermination by any metric. What does it take to convice someone that if you round up several thousand people into a fenced-in enclosure with guards only duty to prevent anyone from escaping. Deny them food,water,any form of comfort such as a roof to protect them from the elements and just let them starve and rot. That's extermination.

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Germans exterminated their encamped citizens. Americans didn’t.

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