Never Forget. Never Again.

[BeardedOne]

George Takei, probably best known for his role as Sulu in the Star Trek television and film series, makes a habit of posting upbeat and often funny comments, photos, and links on his blog and Facebook feeds. Some days he posts several things that bring a smile.

Today is different. Last night he gave a head's up to his friends and fans that he'd only be making a single, yet very important post today. Some, who have known and followed him over the years knew or could guess what his post may be about.

As I expected, George posted a brief message and link to remember the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Executive Order that created the Japanese internment camps during World War II. While Germany was rounding up people and putting them in camps, the United States was quietly doing the same. Arresting Japanese Americans, entire families, and holding them without charge or trial, for no other reason than the fact that they were of the same race as those that bombed Pearl Harbor. Many of them were US citizens, born and raised in the United States.

It was a shameful moment in our history, one that disturbingly few Americans know of or recall, and one that we seem to be trying to repeat.

Here is a link to a brief PSA by George Takei where he mentions his years in two of those camps. He also speaks of a not-for-profit theatre project that will tell the story in the hopes that we will never forget and never again treat our citizens in such a way.

http://www.allegiancemusical.com/video/never-forget-never-again

[BeardedOne]

For those interested in the original boilerplate:

Executive Order No. 9066

The President

Executive Order

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104);

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area hereinabove authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House,

February 19, 1942.

[F.R. Doc. 42–1563; Filed, February 21, 1942; 12:51 p.m.]

[PantyBoy69]

thats sucks an were americans and we are so pose to be better than that.

[Niccolo]

The American government was NOT "doing the same" as the Nazis, and it's intellectually and morally dishonest to claim that they were.

Most people forget, or have never even been taught, that the Nazis oppressed their own people for many years, and the "final solution" came at the end of a long, dark road.

Remember Sophie Scholl and The White Rose!

[BeardedOne]

Granted 'the same thing' is relative here. I understand that what the Nazis did was long coming and far more tragic. It's still a matter of herding your own citizens into camps without any due process, no matter the reasoning behind it.

[Niccolo]

"Granted 'the same thing' is relative here." -TBO.

Moral relativism? Please.

They were either "doing the same thing" or they were not.

And - obviously - the assertion that the Americans were "doing the same" as the Nazis is FALSE.

The American policy may be deserving of criticism. However, as I said, it is intellectually and morally dishonest to equate the American policy during WWII to that of the Nazis.

If the American policy really is worthy of criticism, or even outright condemnation, then it should be possible to criticize or condemn it without resorting to such methods. If you can't criticise the policy for what it actually was, rather than claim it was like something else and criticize it on the basis of what it clearly was not, then the policy couldn't have been as bad as you're trying to make out - if you see the point I'm making.

Btw have you ever seen the movie about Sophie Scholl? Incredibly powerful. I defy anyone to watch it and not have a tear in their eye by the end of the movie. An exceptionally brilliant performance by Julia Jentsch.

[Merkurie]

Its a matter of standing by while your neighbors are rounded up and sent to god knows where.

I do not think the Germans knew their Jewish neighbors were going to be exterminated. They were told that the Jews were being taken to the East for re-settlement.

The issue is whether you will stand by, as people who are not quite like you are rounded up and shipped away to an unknown fate.

[Niccolo]

The issue is that judgement is being passed here and now, by people who do know what the fate of the many people, Germans too remember, who were shipped off to camps of one sort or another throughout the reign of Hitler's gang.

And those who would pass judgement on America know perfectly well - or they ought to know - that the Americans were not "doing the same thing" as the Nazis.

Isn't that so?

If you have any doubts about how morally equivalent America is with the third reich, then I suggest you visit Auschwitz, or the Holocaust Exhibition in the IWM.

The point I tried to make earlier is that if the American policy was so wrong, it should be possible to criticise it without likening it to something else. Just stand it up and look closely at it, and say what's wrong with it. Should be easy enough, if it was all that bad.

And btw what you're saying in your post reminds me more of the Soviets - I had a flashback to the time I spent years ago reading Solzhenitsyn - and that's just as valid a comparison, if you want to make one. Interesting how people tend not to equate evil with the soviet empire nowadays, though anyone who's read The Gulag Archipelago will know how evil and heartless it was. Talk about being rounded up and shipped away to an unknown fate ... the Soviets went as far as any empire has ever gone in that regard. The numbers are simply staggering.

[Caff_Racer]

I do not think the Germans knew their Jewish neighbors were going to be exterminated. They were told that the Jews were being taken to the East for re-settlement.



I disagree entirely. That is one of the arguments that I have heard time and time again in the mouths of Revisionists (by this I don't intend to imply that you yourself are a Revisionist, by the way). It is just possible - just - that, right at the very beginning of the Nazi policy on Jews, some of the denser Germans might have been ignorant of the fate reserved for the Jews, and might have blithely believed whatever crap line the government was feeding them. But past that initial moment, it is naive and, in my view, hypocritical, to believe that the German population was generally unaware of government policy on Jews.

[Prospero]

Cooler heads needed here. The US internment of its Japanese citizens during WW2 was, surely, a shameful event and something that does need to be highlighted from time to time. (and the parallels with Guantanamo are interesting. Special rendition to places like Syria are still more shameful.)

But to draw a parallel with what happened in Nazi Germany - reaching its crescendo with the Final Solution - only diminishes thinking about the experience of Japanese Americans. it was bad. it was wrong. But these two things really do belong in different categories. The distinction between a genocidal project and an aberrant act of a stunned nation at war should be kept distinct.

[fastingforlife]

FDR was heavily influenced by the circumstances surrounding a terroist attack by germans in NYC many years previously. In retrospect, he was most likely wrong. We will never know. Anyone that would compare this with what the nazis did to the jews is just trying to stoke the fires of anti-americanizm.

[lisaparadise]

FDR was heavily influenced by the circumstances surrounding a terroist attack by germans in NYC many years previously. In retrospect, he was most likely wrong. We will never know. Anyone that would compare this with what the nazis did to the jews is just trying to stoke the fires of anti-americanizm.very well said:Bowdown:now i wonder what would happen if www3 came about would we round up all the muslims?i dont think so.the japs levelled pearl harbour and we dropped the most leathal bomb ever created right on there heads should we be ashamed of that not likely we were in an act of war it wasnt pretty but its what needed to be done period.maybe the star trek guys been sucking to much dick and caught a rare brain disorder,if it wasnt for america hed be stuck in a bath house somewhere licking cum off the towells.

[notdrunk]

FDR was heavily influenced by the circumstances surrounding a terroist attack by germans in NYC many years previously. In retrospect, he was most likely wrong. We will never know. Anyone that would compare this with what the nazis did to the jews is just trying to stoke the fires of anti-americanizm.

Niihau Incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_Incident)

Not really talked about like the Germans and Italians being interned. War changes people's attitudes really fast.

[Nowhere]

Well, glad to see he brought it up, so how about those laws recently passed where people can be executed without trial, held up in indefinite detention for life and how guantanomo bay is never going to be closed? Seems like we're WORSE than it was back then...

[miner]

Beardedone, has George Takei expressed any regrets for Pearl Harbor and the treatment of American GI's in Japanese prisoner of war camps?

[Merkurie]

Rounding people up and putting them in internment camps IS fundamentally different than rounding people up and putting them in death camps.

Germany's rounded up a lot of people including Jews, political opponents, homosexuals, Roma, the list goes on. Once you accept that the authorities can round up large numbers of people from your midst for no other crime than who they are, you have to accept whatever happens to them ultimately. Disease could break out in the camps and all the people could die for example.

Whether the German people knew that their government was intending to gas to death the Jewish family from down the hall, they did know that the government was dispossessing them of their homes property and freedom for the crime of being Jewish and carting them off to their fate.

German society did not stop this or raise any serious objection. They quietly went along and some even alerted the authorities to Jews they had missed.

Now, if the authorities round up all of the muslims, or jews, or gays, or natives or blacks,Mexicans, Armenians or Catholics, or mormons etc., to be relocated "somewhere out of sight", is anyone arguing that it is OK, as long as you are sure that they will not be systematically exterminated?

[Paladin]

I suppose you approve of and would prefer to be treated the way the japanese treated people in occupied countries or prisoners of war...

[Merkurie]

Are you asking me?

Because it should be pretty clear my answer is no, I do not condone Japanese conduct of the war.

[Stavros]

The German father of a friend of mine was interned in a camp in Canada; two of the leading violinists in what became the Amadeus String Quartet met in an internment camp on the Isle of Man.

The British rounded up resident of German and Italian origin and interned them in the Uk or in Canada, the internment of known fasicts also took place but separately; and in both world wars Canadian Germans were also badly affected and towns like Berlin, Ontario, re-named to remove the stigma...two short precis here:

http://www.whitepinepictures.com/seeds/i/9/history2.html

http://www.history.org.uk/resources/general_resource_2306_20.html

[thx1138]

http://rt.com/news/america-fascism-ron-paul-705/ Corporatocracy: Ron Paul says US ‘slipping into fascism’

[thx1138]

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/02/elite-think-tanks-neuroscience-and.html in the future techniques like internment camps, summary executions etc. will be made obsolete. The ruling elite plan to control all our brains directly. No more messy stuff.

[thx1138]

http://forums.firingsquad.com/t5/Political-Corner/12-Warning-Signs-of-Fascism/td-p/44553 12 Warning Signs of Fascism

[runningdownthatdream]

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/02/elite-think-tanks-neuroscience-and.html in the future techniques like internment camps, summary executions etc. will be made obsolete. The ruling elite plan to control all our brains directly. No more messy stuff.


no joke......and these guys are seriously trying to make it a reality:

http://singinst.org/

[Niccolo]

There was a POW camp near where I live during WWII. When the war ended the POWs marched across to the local railway station. A lot of them were crying, because they'd been treated so well, & they didn't want to go back home.

Meanwhile, in Germany ... The White Rose.

[flabbybody]

Beardedone, has George Takei expressed any regrets for Pearl Harbor and the treatment of American GI's in Japanese prisoner of war camps?
No doubt. The treatment of American and British POW's by the Japanese was brutally inhumane. Many Japanese military officers and civilian officials were found guilty of war crimes and executed after the war. But this is not a relevant point in a discussion about our government suspending civil rights for American citizens of Japanese descent

[thx1138]

I don't understand why Takei did this now. Bill Clinton formally apologized about this when he was president. The past cannot be changed so Let sleeping dogs lie.

[sunairco]

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.



There was a POW camp near where I live during WWII. When the war ended the POWs marched across to the local railway station. A lot of them were crying, because they'd been treated so well, & they didn't want to go back home.

Meanwhile, in Germany ... The White Rose.

[Merkurie]

Beardedone, has George Takei expressed any regrets for Pearl Harbor and the treatment of American GI's in Japanese prisoner of war camps?

George Takei is not Japanese.

"Takei was born George Hosato Takei in Los Angeles, California, the son of Fumiko Emily (née Nakamura) and Takekuma Norman Takei, who worked in real estate.[1] His parents were Japanese American. His father was an Anglophile, and named him George after George VI of the United Kingdom, whose coronation took place in 1937.[2][3] In 1942, the Takei family was forced to live in the horse stables of Santa Anita Park before being sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center for internment in Arkansas.[4] The family was later transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California. He and his family returned to Los Angeles at the end of World War II. He attended Mount Vernon Junior High School, where he served as student body president, and Los Angeles High School. He was a member of Boy Scout Troop 379 of the Koyasan Buddhist Temple.[5][6]
Upon graduation from high school, Takei enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley where he studied architecture. Later he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor of arts in theater in 1960 and a master of arts in theater in 1964. He attended the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon in England, and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. In Hollywood, he studied acting at the Desilu Workshop.[7] Takei is fluent in English, Japanese, and Spanish."

[BeardedOne]

The point I tried to make earlier is that if the American policy was so wrong, it should be possible to criticise it without likening it to something else. Just stand it up and look closely at it, and say what's wrong with it. Should be easy enough, if it was all that bad.

On this we agree, and I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear earlier. While there are some similarities, there is no true comparison between the actions of the US as regards the Japanese as was the actions of the Nazis as regards to the Jews, gays, political prisoners.


maybe the star trek guys been sucking to much dick and caught a rare brain disorder,if it wasnt for america hed be stuck in a bath house somewhere licking cum off the towells.

LISA! I'm surprised at this statement, especially from you. If it wasn't for America, George, and others, would have lived normal lives as children of a free nation.


Beardedone, has George Takei expressed any regrets for Pearl Harbor and the treatment of American GI's in Japanese prisoner of war camps?

Good question. I believe George was about five years' old at the time. Maybe you should ask him.


Rounding people up and putting them in internment camps IS fundamentally different than rounding people up and putting them in death camps.

Did either the Jews or the Japanese =know= that's where they were headed?

Just imagine the fear of =NOT= knowing.


Whether the German people knew that their government was intending to gas to death the Jewish family from down the hall, they did know that the government was dispossessing them of their homes property and freedom for the crime of being Jewish and carting them off to their fate.

Your Nissei neighbors are hauled away, leaving their home, their business, their belongings...


I don't understand why Takei did this now. Bill Clinton formally apologized about this when he was president. The past cannot be changed so Let sleeping dogs lie.

Yes, there have been apologies and reparations, from Gerald Ford on up, but the point is not so much to atone for the past as to prevent for the future.

In the end, there is no true justice in a war. Each side is as brutal and unforgiving as another to its enemy. But for a nation to treat its own as an enemy, unproven, is beyond reproach.

[Niccolo]

"In the end, there is no true justice in a war. Each side is as brutal and unforgiving as another to its enemy." - Bearded One.

As you may know, Sir Max Hastings' latest book on WWII is entitled "All Hell Let Loose" - a title that makes me think straight away of something Ralph Peters once wrote, which I paraphrase here: The belief that in war, attrition is inherently negative, is wrong. It is a soldier's job to kill the enemy. Everything else, no matter how important it seems, is secondary. All wars are wars of attrition. (From an essay in "Lines of Fire".)

"But for a nation to treat its own as an enemy, unproven, is beyond reproach." - Bearded One.

On the face of it this seems to be a reasonable statement. But note that it is merely an assertion. As one of my old lecturers used to say, there is no argument here. It would be good if you could come up with one, & explain exactly what you think was so wrong about what actually happened.

We have agreed that there is a difference between how people were treated in the American camps and the Nazi camps. This is an obvious point, but it's worth making nonetheless.

Clearly there is also a difference between how an American or British soldier acting on behalf of his country treated their enemies during WWII, and how other representatives of the American state treated Japanese American internees in the different kinds of camp established in WWII.

As Ralph Peters notes the objective of soldiers on the battlefield, however it is dressed up by politicians and writers, is to kill the enemy. So when you use the expression, "treat its own as an enemy" you need to explain what you mean by that, given how the American military actually treated the Japanese forces in the Pacific theatre. No one used flamethrowers on the internees, and no one dropped nukes on them either.

If you want to consider the rights and wrongs of how American and British troops treated the Japanese (aka the enemy) during WWII, I suggest you read some of the literature written by men who served out there. The horrors endured by British and American troops at the hands of the Japanese is almost beyond belief. That must never be forgotten. A good place to start is George McDonald Fraser's war memoirs: an excellent book by a talented writer. I must also recommend The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart. Fraser also wrote the "Flashman" novels btw - they're first rate & I heartily recommend giving them a go - the first novel in the series is a classic.

Btw please don't take this as coming from someone who knows all about the internment camps in America during WWII, who believes that what happened was right (or wrong.) That's not the case at all. I'm not American and although I have spent some time studying WWII from a European perspective, and I'm aware of how some of our troops were treated by the Japanese, what happened within America during WWII is a subject I am unfamiliar with. This is one of the reasons why I would like anyone who actually knows enough about the subject to pass judgement on it, to explain just what went on, and why it was (apparently) so wrong.

In Britain during WWII whole families were split up, and thousands of children were sent miles away from their parents. There were several waves of evacuation; I've actually heard elderly people talk about this still. And I believe there were Germans and Italians who were sent off from the UK mainland 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, & think about what happened & why ... you never know.

[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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_Incident) 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.

.

[onmyknees]

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.


I'm not entirely sure what you're attempting to say here. There are a certain amount of parallels between Mother Teresa and priests who doodled little boys. Both attended church, both ate breakfast, both bended knee to pray. But what's the point of those peripheral parallels? They're meaningless. The significant difference between what the US did to Japanese citizens and what Germans did to Jews was the Nazi's used hate and anti Semitism to fuel German Nationalism and aggression as a justification to invade neighboring countries.

Are you suggesting there's a razor thin line between
Auschwitz and a Japenese internment camp in Missouri in 1943?

[irvin66]

No matter how you look at it, war is hell. Remember what Gandhi said "Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man." :yingyang: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

[trish]

There are a certain amount of parallels between Mother Teresa and priests who doodled little boys. Both attended church, both ate breakfast, both bended knee to pray. But what's the point of those peripheral parallels? They're meaningless.Yes, parallels by themselves are as meaningless as are divergences. It's what you take to be significant about them that makes them significant. You see a significant difference between what the Germans did and what the U.S. (though I'm unclear just how you're drawing that distinction); whereas sunairco sees a significant parallel between their behaviors...sufficient so as to warrant the use of the word "extermination" in both cases. One of the things I'm suggesting is that man is the measure of all things.

I'm not suggesting that we came up the very brink of perpetrating the exact same horrors as perpetrated by Nazi Germany, and then pulled back at the very last minute. But I am suggesting that we walked a far piece down that same road, turned a blind eye to our own Constitution and placed our own citizens in internment camps for no other reason than Japanese-Americans just might be a security risk, even though German-Americans quite definitely were not. If sunairco is right, we did worse.

We are all just people. We have the strengths and weaknesses of all people. If we are capable of committing our own citizens to internment camps, then we are capable of sending them gas chambers too. We are the only ones who can stand in our way. Therefore it's worth remembering what we did, and reflect on it seriously. That's why I thank BeardedOne for bringing to our attention.