Let me toss out some basic info to bolster this rant:
"President Woodrow Wilson
issued two sets of regulations on April 6, 1917, and November 16, 1917,
imposing restrictions on German-born male residents of the United
States over the age of 14. The rules were written to include natives of
Germany who had become citizens of countries other than the U.S.[2]
Some 250,000 people in that category were required to register at their
local post office, to carry their registration card at all times, and
to report any change of address or employment. The same regulations and
registration requirements were imposed on females on April 18, 1918.[3]
Some 6,300 such aliens were arrested. Thousands were interrogated and
investigated. A total of 2,048 were incarcerated for the remainder of
the war in two camps, Fort Douglas, Utah, for those west of the Mississippi and Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, for those east of the Mississippi"
(Just so everyone is straight on this, the Government forced a group to register themselves based of nothing more than the fact than they might be a threat and to carry proof of their "otherness." In some cases, they were actually arrested and sent away to armed camps.)
" Japanese American internment was the World War II internment in "War Relocation Camps" of about 110,000 people of Japanese heritage who lived on the Pacific coast of the United States. The U.S. government ordered the internment in 1942, shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[2][3]
The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally as a
geographic matter: all who lived on the West Coast were interned, while
in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, only 1,200[4] to 1,800 were interned. Sixty-two percent of the internees were American citizens."
(Keep in mind that the majority of these people were Citizens of the US supposedly with all the same rights as everyone else.)
Italian Americans met similar fates, just in smaller numbers. Like with German Americans, 400,00 of them were forced to register as "Enemy Aliens" and carry ID with them at all times marking them as such. Roughly 250 were arrested and interned during the war.
Now before we go any further, let me state this. The vast majority of these people were arrested and interned in Camps had not committed any crime whatsoever. They were arrested simply because of what their race and nationality was. As a matter of record, a commission in 1980 found "little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time" and you can bet the same holds true for the other detainees.
Now with all of that said (Long winded today, sorry) you would think that this rant is about the injustice and cruelty visited upon these groups by the US Government during a time of war. No, sorry I don't have the talent or skill to do justice to such a topic. It is easily one of the most shameful periods in US history and deserves much more respect than my meager skills can give it. No, once again, my rant is aimed at all of the idiots commenting in the end.
The majority of the comments (First 250 anyways) seem to take the path of "Well sure, what we did was bad, but what THEY did was even worse." or "Yeah we put them in camps but at least ours were NICE camps!" and of course many people point out that most don't even know about the German and Italian American Camps. (They'd be right of course. As a sad side note, neither German or Italian Detainees ever received an apology or compensation and the subject of their detainment remains largely ignored.)
Sorry folks, the fact that the Nazis had Death Camps with Gas Chambers or that the Japanese forced marched thousands of American Soldiers till they died is truly a horrible thing, but it does not detract from the injustice that the US visited upon its own people out of fear and many cases racism. We rounded up entire families including women and children and locked them behind barbwire fences without any just cause. The fact that we didn't go as far as other countries doesn't make that any better.
Even now, decades later, people try and justify what this nation did to groups of people simply because of their Race or Nationality. Americans ignore or belittle these horrors to try and forget that we had our own form of concentration camps. We just want to forget it ever happened. I can understand at least the feelings behind it. I mean, it is discomforting to think that America, Home of the Free and the Brave, once acted out in violence against our own people out of fear and distrust.
These events happened and they were horrible acts. As a nation, we got scared and lashed out at obvious targets to make ourselves feel better. We locked up 100s of thousands of people for years and often times took their property and possessions away from them. We should never forget this because it would be to easy to do it all over again. Trying to make it okay by pointing out that others did worse things only makes us look even worse.
"Those who do not remember the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them." That wise saying is still just as true today as it was when it wad first coined. Dachau and Bataan are horrible points in our history, but let us never forget the 27+ camps here in the US.
End of Rant
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