DocBarrister wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 3:54 pm
cradleandshoot wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 3:34 pm
Kismet wrote: ↑Sat May 09, 2020 2:24 pm
Today's tweet of the day from actor, George Takei (Lt. Sulu from Starship Enterprise), American-born Japanese American citizen who makes an appropriate point on liberty and freedom having been interned in a camp during World War II
George Takei
@GeorgeTakei
·
16h
"I didn't spend my childhood in barbed wire enclosed internment camps so I could listen to grown adults today cry oppression because they have to wear a mask at Costco."
He has a point, don't ya think?
I wonder if George Takei understands that were it not for the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor he never would have been interred anywhere. I mean no disrespect to good ole George but outside of it being a good idea for all of us to wear masks, I could not care less about what George thinks about anything.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG.
I think highly of FDR, but his decision to implement the internment of Japanese Americans was based solely on racism.
Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and
we didn’t put German or Italian Americans in prison camps.
DocBarrister
Factually wrong, again, Doc. We did put Germans and Italians in camps. And Many others. And it was not at a limited number or based upon any one "reason" like racism. We also moved them further inland away from coasts.
Read
Invisible Gulag.
https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_628575
The diverse makeup of Justice Department detainees classified by as "Germans" or "Italians" reveals that other factors trumped ethnicity, residency, and citizenship as grounds for internment. On the U.S. mainland, refugees and naturalized citizens from countries annexed or occupied by Nazi Germany also came under suspicion, resulting in the confinement of Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, and Bulgarians. [17] Those apprehended in the Territory of Hawai'i included a handful of Jewish refugees and people of Danish, Finnish, Irish, and Norwegian descent. Several of Hawai'i's Caucasian detainees had even served in the U.S. Armed Forces. [18] The scope of the American confinement program also extended overseas, with FBI agents compiling lists of allegedly dangerous individuals of German, Italian, and Japanese descent residing throughout Latin America. Pressure from the U.S. State Department resulted in the apprehension and deportation of 4,058 ethnic Germans and 288 ethnic Italians (along with 2,264 people of Japanese ancestry) from nineteen different Latin American countries to the United States for the purposes of prisoner exchanges with Axis nations or continued confinement on the U.S. mainland. [19] The ranks of these detainees included large numbers of Jewish refugees from Nazi-controlled Europe, with 250 Jews detained in the U.S.-administered Panama Canal Zone alone. [20]
Federal authorities concentrated this eclectic and multinational mix of enemy aliens in at least twenty-one different Justice Department and Army camps far removed from coastal areas, typically in facilities that also held Japanese detainees. [21] Population totals were extremely fluid as prisoners were transferred between camps or repatriated to their native countries. The Justice Department's Crystal City site, which served as a family camp, reached a peak population of 3,374 prisoners, including 997 ethnic Germans and six ethnic Italians–many coming from Latin America. [22] 2,150 ethnic Germans—both civilian residents and merchant seamen—passed through the Justice Department camp at Fort Lincoln, making this Bismarck, North Dakota, facility one of the chief confinement sites for German detainees. [23] Other camps featuring significant ethnic German or Italian populations included the aforementioned Ft. Stanton and Ft. Missoula sites, as well as Camp Kenedy , Texas, and Camp Forrest , Tennessee.
