Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Japanese internment in WWII

My grandpappy,s cousin,s friend knew a guy that burnt his left pinky putting out a fire from a jap balloon bomb.
Guy said Hiroshima and Nagasaki was payback for it till the day he died.

Did not say it was not wrong. But I do believe the internment was the least evil of the options available at the time. And property losses should have never occured.

And you are right, the 2'nd A should have been all that was needed to keep JA safe in a sane world. But no place in the world was sane in 1942, not even our precious US of A. This was a world in which black men were lynched for LOOKING at a white woman. White women were lynched for teaching black kids to read and write.. And it was a more primitive world than the one in which white college kids were lynched for encouraging black men to vote, and then FBI agents were gunned down for investigating the lynchings.

In 1942, wholesale riots, and murder of many innocent Japanese would have occured Imediately following the first self defense shooting of a white person by a Japanese American.

Yes racism was rampant in 1942 America. It was the politically correct thinking of the day. Racism was ingrained into the very heart and soul of Americans. Hell, it was not just race against race. It was ethnicity against ethnicity.

Anglos hated Wops. Everyone loved to hate the Poles. And everybody still REALLY hated the Irish. We could go on with this list all day.

Point being, the slightest spark would have Ignited a conflagration which would have left very few Japanese Americans alive at the end and would have been very detrimental to the war effort.

Town I live in housed the Italian prisoners and my Grandfather patrolled them, I also have aboriginal ancestry...so no I have not forgotten anyone.

There is an ongoing controversy regarding the way these statements are categorized, that being the question whether they are formal apologies or general statements of remorse, each of which carry a different level of responsibility and recognition.

I'll stand by my no formal apology statement (above taken from your link). As to the strafing of civilians tending to crops, definitively pushing the war crimes envelope, then again so was Dresden, but once again, the US did not start the war on civilians, the Germans and japanese did and NOBODY, but NOBODY (not even the Nazi death camps) committed the level of PERSONAL atrocities the japanese did, from the very start of the war.

There is quite a display about these firebombs at the Museum in Whitehorse, YT. Clever people, those Japanese!

When I was a little boy and as a young man, I worked with lots a Pacific war vets. I can tell you they hated japs and thought the camps were the right thing.

Anyone mentioned unit 731 yet?

In times of war, drastic methods are often required. In other words, you do what you have to do. Those on here who find it so shameful that those Japanese citizens were interned were not around back then to know what the general feeling in the country was. Neither was I, but I've talked to enough people who were to know that the hatred towards the Japanese was very widespread. I knew a lot of old people who would not own anything if they saw the "Made in Japan" sticker on it. Knew some WW2 vets and never heard one really say too much bad about the Germans, and never heard one say anything good about the Japs.

True James, but these were Americans not Japs. It cracks me when a Hispanic born here says they're Mexican. I ask them what part of Mexico were you born. I Remind them they're American.

That's true, but in that time period it did not matter. Public opinion towards the Japanese was not good, and the Japanese-Americans were thrown into the mix, like it or not. Certainly, some of it was race driven, as most races of peoples are leery of someone of another race. But, it was something that the authorities-to-be at the time considered the right thing to do, primarily because of the threat of a Japanese attack on the West Coast. Hindsight is always better than foresight, and it's very easy for us today to say something should have been differently.

My buddy and his pop worked over at TVA-Cumberland Fossil. The old man said this 'shop rocket' fella come in there (1970s) driving a toyota pickup. The union steamfitters went out there at lunch and turned his truck over on its top. Ooops!!! Sh it happens.

We had internment camps for the Japanese here in Canada too, sadly, this is what can happen when the enemy lives among you.

These camps were a 5 star hotel compared to what the Japanese offered my uncle in Hong Kong when he was a royal rifle enjoying his starvation and torture at the hands of the Japanese, as a pow a dead animal was a prize as then they could pick the maggots of the dead animals to put on their own wounds to eat the rotting flesh.

And as I posted previously, the Japanese-Americans were not assimilating at all or hardly. Coupled with the fact most were not US Citizens (albeit legal immigrants), that whole sad affair needs to be evaluated IN THE CONTEXT OF THE TIMES, taking into account the already established record of the Japanese in China.

Nanking........

As I understand it.....the Canadian government intercepted messages from Japanese coming from the west coast of BC ,so justifying the camps, it could just be an excuse for the camps, thats the reasoning, not sure if there is any truth to it or not.

Hey bro; post some pics if that $200 a night fish bait you eat.

In the camp in Idaho, 61% were citizens. I couldn't find how many were native born and how many were naturalized.

Since we are dwelling in the past.....
Lincoln and Davis both suspended habeas corpus during
the civil war at times and held people in confinement with
flimsy reasons.
And many held the veiw on both sides their leaders were tyrants.

I suspect, rather strongly, that kind of stuff has been going on for a very long time. Probably since the beginning of time.

So did FDR..