Discussion » Questions » History » The Tragic WW2 Internment of Japanese-Americans: NOT Justified, But To What Extent Was It Understandable? (A Devil’s Advocate Retrospective)
Benedict Arnold

The Tragic WW2 Internment of Japanese-Americans: NOT Justified, But To What Extent Was It Understandable? (A Devil’s Advocate Retrospective)

I just learned that for ten years before their invasion, Japan mapped and spied on the Philippines through an influx of Japanese soldiers disguised as immigrants. Filipino president Manuel Quezon eventually learned that his gardener was a major in the Japanese Army, his masseur a colonel.

Reference: KILLING THE RISING SUN by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (suggested by Rooster).

Retrospective: How might we have done things differently, to protect the rights of Japanese-American citizens, and still ensure we did not repeat what the Philippines went through?

The photo is from Manzanar, as documented by courageous social photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. I have visited Manzanar, 1998, and even now the sensation of intense tragedy/sorrow is palpable.

Posted - April 8, 2017
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Responses


  • George Tekai, Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek, lived in an interment camp as  child.  He has a very moving and interesting TED Talks lecture on his experience. 
      April 8, 2017 11:52 AM MDT
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  • I was not aware of that, Whistle6...I may look up his Ted Talks.

    Through the late 1960's and early 1970's I worked with a woman who was likewise interred. She suffered from tuberculosis, and remarked how officials let her stay at home as long as possible.
    She was also impressed by how internees organized their community to make it as normal as possible, for everyone's sake but especially the children.
      April 8, 2017 12:00 PM MDT
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  • There may have had to be some racial profiling; there may have had to be extreme "vetting" or a halt on Japanese immigration, and some invasion of privacy. All of that I could understand. It doesn't sound great now, but it was a war and sometimes unfortunate things can be justified when your country is at stake. 

    But rounding up innocent Japanese Americans and putting them in a prison camp? No. Never. Not justified. Not understandable. Wrong back then, wrong now, eternally 100% wrong.

    Yes, this topic is personal to me as a Japanese-American in California. 
      April 8, 2017 12:16 PM MDT
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  • Thank you, Nevan B
      April 8, 2017 4:28 PM MDT
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  • I'm gonna be honest here.  Keeping an eye on the first generation recent Japanese immigrants made sense.   The conditions were inexcusable along with grabbing anyone with any Japanese lineage.
      April 8, 2017 1:43 PM MDT
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  • And thank you, Glis...we can hope that if our government ever tried something like that again, people would stand up to them.
      April 8, 2017 4:30 PM MDT
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  • It was understandable at the time. Human rights were far below present standards and that applied especially to people who looked different from us (or we from them). The world hadn't  completely recovered from the shock of WWI and the Great Depression before WWII was upon us. People wanted to lash out, to blame somebody, and it was natural to hate the people who were killing our sons and husbands. I hope that we would be more enlightened in the future but hate is very easy to ignite.

    It didn't just happen in the US. Other countries had similar concentration camps. That doesn't make it right: it just spreads the blame a little more evenly.
      April 8, 2017 2:17 PM MDT
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  • Dozy, this IS something I asked my parents about, when I had the opportunity...
    ...they were not critical of the internment of Japanese-Americans, not at the time. The atmosphere, you were very young but you recall, I think you even told me, even civilians lived every day with the awareness of daily participation to the full in the war effort.

    And the confidence in FDR was so great that if the government saw this as a necessary step, people did not question.
    * * *
    One reason I am asking this, I am myself looking for a way to be in the USA in these next four years, possibly dealing with similar situations, parallel government policies. How to opt out...
    There were people for example, who bought up the Japanese-American internees' land and held it for them, returning it to them when they were freed after the war ended.
      April 8, 2017 4:50 PM MDT
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  • I was 8 when the war ended. Pretty young. But some things I remember. One of them was the severe rationing. Another was the attitude and the almost total absorption in the war effort of the people I was in contact with. We had one neighbour who was in a protected job who said he hoped the war would never end because he was getting so much overtime. (He might have been an arsehole but he whistled better than any man I have ever heard.) After the war there was an influx of refugees and i remember the hostility and the racism. They were "refos" or "dagos".

    Many years later, after Asian immigration to Australia had become commonplace, one of my older neighbours complained that we shouldn't let them in because if they started another war we wouldn't know who to lock up. So the racism and prejudice was still there. My parents were very racist and that's how we were raised. it took me years to shake it off. My brother is still racist and is happy to be so.
      April 8, 2017 5:06 PM MDT
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  • Your phrase, the 'almost total absorption in the war effort,' that is the impression I got from my parents' generation.
    And your neighbor who wanted the war to never end; well you have prolly encountered the idea that it was indeed the war, and not any policies of FDR, which actually ended the Great Depression.
    In that context I have discussed the idea of a military-industrial complex with The Zee, and he does feel we (the USA) are now fully into that, just what Eisenhower warned against...
      April 8, 2017 5:19 PM MDT
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  • Oh, yeah. War is an enormous industry. Daddy Warbucks may have been a caricature but he lives, Virginia. He lives.
      April 8, 2017 7:16 PM MDT
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  • 16779
    I hear you. Pauline Hitler got elected. Indigenous Australians still get the short end of the stick too.
      April 8, 2017 9:17 PM MDT
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  • She's a worry but what about the people who voted for her? What does it say about them. 

    And, yeah, I gotta agree about the short end. I don't know what the solution is, though. 
      April 8, 2017 9:40 PM MDT
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  • 16779
    "Not justified, but understandable". So was the Holocaust, as a general rule German people aren't monsters. A few Jewish businessmen were profiteering during the dying days af the Weimar Republic, Hitler whipped the natural resentment against these few into a seething hatred for ALL Jewish people by his skilful rhetoric and the population turned a blind eye to the Nazi regime's atrocities.
    So it was with Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Internment probably saved more than a few from being lynched, but that's not the point. FDR actually KNEW the Japanese Fleet was on its way, that's why the carriers weren't at Pearl when the attack came. Then, to get American industry, soldiers and workers fully behind the war effort, it was necessary to feed public anger against "them gooks" - just take a look at some of the cartoons that WB churned out during the war.
      April 8, 2017 7:46 PM MDT
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  • Slartibartfast...I am pretty sure I know what WB is? For cartoons, that would be Warner Bros.?
    I have heard that some think FDR knew, but thought that was now pretty much discounted?
    Would the purpose then have been that war would indeed bring the Depression to an end?
      April 8, 2017 8:30 PM MDT
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  • It wasn't only WB. Disney got into the act too. Don't bother to watch the whole thing -- it runs for 8 minutes -- but you'll get the idea. 

      April 8, 2017 9:45 PM MDT
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  • I did watch it to the end, Dozy...the tomato in the face of Hitler's photo...fascinating.
      April 9, 2017 4:17 AM MDT
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  • 5
    Japan fought once upon a time. Australians, Americans among others fought due to the devastating effect of war. "Lest we forget", no how about we forget these atrocities? No grievances from either guilty parties; accept the past (this is really in the past).

    Sidenote: my grandfather was involved with a POW camp during the Vietnam war. I don't need to remind anyone of what Japanese serviceman were once capable of in their OWN prisoner of war camps but it is important at least to see the contrast between Australian POW camps versus Japanese war culture. Atrocities? Don't be too quick to turn a blind eye to one party.
      April 9, 2017 4:49 AM MDT
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  • Hi Cal 'Bull' Toro,
    In the past, a good point...thank you.
      April 9, 2017 2:51 PM MDT
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