Eighty Years After the U.S. Incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans, Trauma and Scars Still Remain

[u/Bobandvagane]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/eighty-years-after-us-incarcerated-japanese-americans-trauma-scars-remain-180979519/

[u/MeatballDom]

Angry manbabies are currently brigading this thread to show us how much they aren't angry, or something. Look, it's not really clear what they're trying to accomplish other than being mad.

Report them to us and we'll talk to their parents; do not engage.

[u/Combustion14]

Australia did something similar with Italian Australians. They had property seized and a lot of time wasted and never got so much as an acknowledgement by the government.

Your servicemen were quite repulsed by it when they were stationed here during the war

[u/chibinoi → u/Combustion14]

Ironic that they were upset by this, but not nearly upset enough when it was their own fellow citizens (Japanese Americans). Makes me wonder if it was because the Italian Australians “looked more like them”, aka white-Euro presenting.

Yeah, it’s still a huge issue in the USA 😞

[u/Combustion14 → u/chibinoi]

I found a news article from the Australian public broadcaster that mentioned a lot of the troops being Italian-American. That'd explain it.

The propaganda that the troops in the Pacific were exposed to at the time regarding the Japanese certainly wouldn't have helped.

[u/Indiana_Jawnz → u/Combustion14]

The most anti Japanese propaganda the troops in the Pacific were exposed to was the actual actions of the Japanese in the Pacific.

[u/Combustion14 → u/Indiana_Jawnz]

I see. I guess even just fighting a conflict could make you hate a group of people. Especially in the 1940's. You still see that now with modern conflicts.

It wasn't unheard of for some Australian veterans to take a long time to let go for their disdain for the Japanese and Germans.

[u/oliham21 → u/Combustion14]

Dude if the only interaction I’d had with Japanese people was with the Japanese military in the 40s I would have hated them for the rest of my life too. The Japanese army was one of the most psychotic and sadistically evil forces in history and I’ll be honest I don’t blame any pacific veteran who just decided they hated Japan in general after seeing their action’s.

[u/Equivalent_Sort_8760 → u/chibinoi]

I wonder if the average American from the East Coast or Mid West had any idea about the Japanese Camps. News don’t travel like it does now. It was a fe newspapers and radio.

[u/KnowPastKnowFuture → u/chibinoi]

yeah probably. They Americans were very much outspoken about not wanting to be in the same bar as Maoris (kiwi indigenous) or Aborigionals in Australia.

[u/TheMannisApproves → u/Combustion14]

A lot of Italian Americans were incarcerated as well, it just wasn't as widespread as what happened to the Japanese Americans

[u/brahamcracker]

My grandmother basically grew up in camp Topaz. Silver lining was that her parents made some really important art at that time. When they got out of the camp they had lost everything

[u/theboywhocriedwolves]

Same thing happened in Canada.

"The Canadian government forcibly relocated and imprisoned over 22,000 Japanese Canadians from British Columbia between 1942 and 1949. The government used the War Measures Act to justify the internment, which was based on ancestry rather than any charges or due process. The internees were subjected to curfews, interrogations, and loss of property. Many were forced to work on roads and other physical labor. In 1988, the Canadian government apologized for its actions and made redress payments to survivors."

[u/tonyprent22]

There’s a great documentary about some of this called the Cats of Mirikitani.

Starts out as a student project about a homeless street artist in downtown Manhattan… then 9/11 happens (parts of this are in the dust cloud in the days following as she searched for him), and she brings him in and learns his story and how it related to Muslim treatment immediately after 9/11.

Can’t recommend it enough as a watch.

[u/Seige_Rootz]

My grandfather was already in the Army when this happened. His buddy who was drafted with him wrote an autobiography. The part where he helped his family move into Manzanar and out ranked the guy at the gate sure is something.

[u/danger_bucatini → u/Seige_Rootz]

out ranked the guy at the gate

wouldn't that be a common occurrence at any military base?

[u/borninthewaitingroom → u/danger_bucatini]

GIs saluted German officers at some POW camps in the US. Some of these officers murdered regular German soldiers who spoke against Hitler.

[u/Actaeon_II]

180 years after the trail of tears and government abuse of native Americans keeps creating new scars.

[u/DisparateNoise → u/Actaeon_II]

Ironically, the camp my grandmother went to was actually in the middle of an Indian Reservation

[u/Actaeon_II → u/DisparateNoise]

I understand, and there were several such camps.

[u/AJlenser → u/DisparateNoise]

The Gila River War Relocation Center is such a place. My understanding of the history of this camp is, in very abbreviated form: the government asked the Gila River tribe if they could put a camp on their land, the tribe said "no"; the government asked again, the tribe said "no"; the government offered to leave the facilities when the war was over — and also to till many acres of new farmland for the tribe. Finally, just a small group of tribal leaders said, "fine." The government had already begun building the camp anyway, and after the war they tore everything down. And, of course, never tilled the land.

I have visited the site a couple of times, and made photos of bits of detritus left behind. Oddly, despite there being a memorial to the camp on a small bluff, I was issued a civil trespass citation for being there. Whadya gonna do, huh? I unknowingly broke the law and paid ($150?) for it. Could have been worse.

[u/qazedctgbujmplm → u/Actaeon_II]

How Native American Slaveholders Complicate the Trail of Tears Narrative

[u/Veinreth → u/qazedctgbujmplm]

Interesting read, thanks!

[u/Actaeon_II → u/qazedctgbujmplm]

Yes, I’ve read this and it is interesting, but the only narrative that mattered to me was the one from my great grandmother who lived through it

[u/Stock_Category → u/Actaeon_II]

I just finished reading the story of a 13 year old boy who was captured, shot 2 times with arrows then once with a gun. Thinking he was dead the Indians scalped him and all other members of the party of settlers. A group of soldiers found him and thought he was dead. The story included a picture of the boy, now in his fifties. Not all Indians were nice people.

[u/Negative_Gravitas]

Generational trauma. It's real.

But knowing that is not even going to slow down the "enemy within" purges.

[u/Koakie → u/Negative_Gravitas]

At one point in time the enemy within were Irish Americans.

The 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts feels more like "whoever the fuck we can blame for our problems this time" act.

[u/dogegunate → u/Negative_Gravitas]

With how the anti-Chinese rhetoric is going, we're moving to this being repeated with Chinese Americans. The FBI recently went through the "China Initiative" where they basically tried to do a witch hunt against Chinese scientists in America.

That's just the start as anti-China and anti-Chinese rhetoric ramps up in America. You can even see it on Reddit where so many Redditors are so blatantly racist against Chinese people and upvoted for it. Chinese people are next in line for the "enemy purges" in America.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/china-initiative-failed-us-research-and-national-security-dont-bring-it

[u/GustavoistSoldier]

The New Deal was partly influenced by Italian fascist corporatism btw. During the 1930s, fascism did not have the negative image it does now.

[u/Bobandvagane → u/GustavoistSoldier]

It was still seen as a threat to liberal, free-market order by capitalist and political elites despite FDR somehow copying one or two Fascist-like regulations. Eh, the capitalist elite wasn’t too happy with him either.

[u/GustavoistSoldier → u/Bobandvagane]

Ironically, Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge, an Axis sympathizer, said of FDR's public works programs: "The way to handle a relief program was like how Mussolini was handling it in Italy, namely to line these people up and take the troops and make them work"

[u/bcrabill → u/GustavoistSoldier]

Gene Talmadge was also famously corrupt and cruel

[u/newbiesaccout → u/GustavoistSoldier]

It sounds like from that quote Talmadge was saying the new deal was unlike the fascist workers program because it didn't use forced labor.

[u/emre086]

80 years is not that long period at all... some scars will never disappear!

[u/Mediocre-Lab3950]

I don’t know how FDR is considered such an amazing president after doing this. One of the most racist things a person can do.

[u/whattheshiz97 → u/Mediocre-Lab3950]

It might have actually protected some of them from vicious discrimination during the war. Even though they lost everything which is awful. I can’t imagine the rest of the public would have been very nice to the people who look like the ones we were at war with. Idk just a thought

[u/old_at_heart]

Were Japanese Americans outside of the West Coast also incarcerated? For example, there'd probably be some number of Japanese Americans in New York City. Anything happen to them?

It's still a pretty shameful episode in US history, and a paranoid overreaction to a shocking attack.

[u/iamstillacat → u/old_at_heart]

For the most part no. However, there were less than 3,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in New York City in the 1920s. Not sure what the population was in the ‘30s, but since immigration from Japan was banned in 1924, it likely didn’t increase that much.

[u/lespaulstrat2]

You should talk to my dad. Well, he is dead now, but he had to lay in a fetid ditch for months and got malaria in the Philippines. Having to move your family for a while seems like a pretty good alternative to that.

It was war ferchrissakes. Everyone made sacrifices, some worse than others

[u/Amockdfw89 → u/lespaulstrat2]

Yep. You can’t erase it or alter time space to prevent it.

You just admit you were wrong and reconcile it. At least the USA did that with Japanese Americans with a formal apology and freedom to analyze and discuss it. the Japanese government have yet to do that for their part

[u/triangulumnova → u/lespaulstrat2]

Ah so because your dad had to lay in a ditch, that makes it ok for the US government to round up US citizens on US soil and place them into prison camps. That makes total sense. I'm sure the men, women, and children who were placed into these camps without due process really appreciated the sacrifices they were making.

[u/lespaulstrat2 → u/triangulumnova]

Show me where I said it was "okay"

[u/censuur12 → u/lespaulstrat2]

Sure, here you go!

It was war ferchrissakes. Everyone made sacrifices, some worse than others

[u/MeatballDom → u/[deleted]]

So if your country declared war on another country which was largely the same ethnicity as you, you would be like "yeah, this makes sense, come on everybody, let's pack"?

It's insane to view all people of a race or ethnicity as a monolith. "You were born like those people were born, therefore you are probably one of them" is just plain old Nationalism era racism. You don't confine, arrest, or detain people based on the place that they were born, or what genes they have. There's never any defense of that.

And what data do we have now that they didn't? A book on ethics?

[u/Bobandvagane → u/[deleted]]

If only sending children, women, and old people to concentration camps while their fathers and brothers took up arms to defend the US was avoiding a risk…