\doc\web\99\17\intern.txt THINKING ABOUT LOCKING UP CHINESE AND CHINESE AMERICANS? here's his home page http://olimu.com/Journalism/Journalism.htm January 2000 Chronicles A Thinking About Internment What should the U.S. do with Chinese nationals in the event of war with China? e-Colleagues with a taste for weapons-grade political incorrectness might like to try my article "Thinking About Internment" in the current (January 2000) issue of CHRONICLES magazine. The text is on my web site under "Journalism". The article deals with a topic I have never seen discussed anywhere and which is probably unmentionable in polite society: Suppose the USA gets into a war with the homeland of one of its major ethnic groups? What can be said about the loyalty of members of that group? If any large number of them can reasonably be supposed to be disloyal, what does a wartime govt do about it? What effect will these decades of "multicultural" and "diversity" indoctrination in schools and colleges have on these issues if-- God forbid-- they arise? "If you seek peace, prepare for war." But how do we prepare for a war with, say, China, when millions of our people-- including a disproportionate number of our technical elites-- have, or might fairly be thought to have, some degree of allegiance to China? Not a very nice question: but better it should be asked now, before it is suddenly on our front pages. Article by John Derbyshire Navigate up Journalism Chronicles January 2000 Thinking About Internment I am going to ask what Churchill would have called some naughty questions and offer some impertinent answers. I apologize in advance for the extreme political incorrectness of what follows. In the hope of persuading the reader that I raise these issues with no pleasure at all, I shall preface them with some personal notes. I am a British citizen, lawfully resident in the United States. I became eligible to apply for naturalization six months ago, but have not yet done so-- partly from sloth, partly from a dislike of dealing with government agencies, partly from a lingering sentimental attachment to my own country. My wife-- who has applied for naturalization-- is a citizen of mainland China; her father is a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Our two children are, as they are already tired of being told, half English coal miner, half Chinese peasant, 100 percent American. Most of our friends (along with my current boss and three of the people who report to me) are mainland Chinese or Taiwanese. Now let us proceed. The questions I want to address are: in the increasingly thinkable event of a war between China and the United States, what can be said about the loyalties of (a) Chinese nationals in the United States, (b) Taiwanese nationals in the U.S. and (c) people of the Chinese race (I am translating here precisely from the commonplace Chinese term han-zu) born and raised in the United States? Supposing it can fairly be said that some of those loyalties are doubtful, how should a responsible wartime government act? Which is of course equivalent to asking: How should a responsible peacetime government plan to act? In the first place, I do not think it at all improper to pose questions of this sort, though I have no doubt many people do so think and that I shall meet heavy criticism for having posed them. War is a fierce and desperate business. At the least it is a matter of national prestige; at most, it is a matter of national survival. War between two nations with nuclear arsenals must always, I think, be regarded as in the "at most" category. In such a situation you do what you have to do, while trying to hold on to as much decency and legality as you can spare. The reason why these questions are particularly acute in respect of the Chinese are, I think, fairly widely known. Modern war is very technological. You need good soldiers, of course; but you also need good engineers, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists and-- horrible to say, but surely true-- biologists. In the United States today, Chinese nationals, Taiwanese nationals and ABCs (that is, American-born Chinese) are massively over-represented in these disciplines. In many fields, they dominate. An acquaintance who studied advanced physics at Florida Atlantic University tells me that the other two graduate students in her department were both mainland Chinese (and, incidentally, that both of them were funded by the U.S. taxpayer, via grants mainly from the Departments of Energy and Defense). In the event of a Sino-American war-- and assuming that war lasted longer than the flight times of two ICBM barrages-- these researchers would pose an acute problem for the authorities. I myself live just four miles from Cold Spring Harbor lab, a major center of research in microbiology and genetics. My wife is an outgoing sort and makes friends with other Chinese people when she can-- people she meets at mothers' groups, playgroups, the library and the supermarket. Most of them turn out to be, or to be married to, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor. Last summer we were invited to a picnic there (the lab has extensive grounds and is beautifully located on Long Island's north shore). Practically the only language much in evidence at the picnic was Mandarin. I would estimate that at least 60 percent of the participants-- researchers and their families-- were Chinese. The situation is the same at other labs-- even those doing defense work. Where do the loyalties of these researchers lie? So far as mainland nationals are concerned-- including the tens of thousands working in government labs, or pursuing graduate studies on government grants-- I think it can be said with fair certainty that practically all would favor a Chinese victory. Why should anyone think otherwise? Who would expect foreign nationals to support their host country over their homeland? Probing among Chinese colleagues and friends, I find zero spiritual attachment to America. As one of them put it: "America is not really a country. It's just a place people come to from all over to have a good life." Probably many of the Chinese would try to return to China-- though a U.S. government at war would be foolish to allow them to do so, or to remain in their posts. Internment would be the only option. Chinese nationals who have taken out U.S. citizenship should also be regarded as security risks. This sounds very shocking, of course. As citizens, do they not have the same rights as all other citizens, with the single exception specified in the Constitution? Well, yes; but what is one to think of a Chinese national like John Huang, President Clinton's favorite fundraiser, who, after becoming naturalized, maintains close business and personal links with front companies for the Chinese military and intelligence communities? And what is one to do with such a person in the event of a war with China? To put the issue somewhat differently: Suppose you were running Chinese Intelligence and wished to plant a network of "sleepers" around the U.S.A. For really effective cover, would it not be smart to have them apply for citizenship as soon as they were eligible? Does anyone believe the Chinese Communist Party incapable of such a thing? If you start asking these kinds of questions, someone soon raises the issue of the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II. This is generally regarded as a very disgraceful episode-- the U.S. government interning U.S. citizens for reasons suspiciously racist (German-Americans and Italian-Americans were not interned in anything like such numbers, although many were interned). I must say, I have never thought it was a very deplorable thing to do. All those interned, including those with U.S. citizenship, were Japanese citizens (at that time, Japanese automatically inherited citizenship from their fathers). Only Japanese-Americans in likely infiltration areas were interned: those in New York, Nebraska and Hawaii (!) were not. Japan had attacked U.S. territory; Germany and Italy had not. The camps were rather comfortable-- they contained beauty parlors, for example, and in at least one case a Kabuki theater-- and were visited by all the major news organizations of the time. Some Japanese-Americans were given the choice of returning to Japan, and did so. The Japanese authorities regarded them with deep suspicion and put them to forced labor in concentration camps. The interned Japanese-Americans argue that they were not security threats. I am sure that most of them were not; I am equally sure that some of them were. A friend currently teaching at a Japanese university tells me that the phrase Nihon ga kateba ii-- "I hope Japan wins"-- was commonly heard among older Japanese-Americans at the time. I have spoken only of mainland Chinese people living in this country. The Taiwanese are a special case, the more so because the most probable cause of a war between China and the United States would be a Chinese attack on, or blockade of, Taiwan. My impression is that under this or any other casus belli most Taiwanese would support America. Many native Taiwanese dislike mainlanders in general. (I know one who objects to being called Chinese: "I am not Chinese, I am Taiwanese.") Descendants of those mainlanders who came to the island in Chiang Kai-shek's baggage train still fear and hate the Communists. It is, after all, Chiang's wife who owns the distinction of being the first person of importance in any nation to call for the use of nuclear weapons against her own countrymen. What of those who call themselves "Chinese-Americans"-- members of the Chinese race who were born here and passed through the American educational system? All those classes on "multiculturalism" and "diversity" they must have sat through: what lesson did they take from them? That their first loyalty is to their ethnic group? What, then, is their second loyalty? To their country of citizenship? Or to the homeland of their ethnic group? The situation is not improved by the fact of ABCs being over-represented in colleges and universities (a state of affairs that becomes even more pronounced as affirmative action in college admissions is outlawed). Our institutes of higher education are the engine-rooms of the multicultural enterprise. Four years at the average university is, as a survey by National Review has found, a most effective way to turn young Americans against their country, its history and traditions. Is it unreasonable to suppose that for some proportion of these people-- five per cent? twenty?-- racial loyalty will trump national allegiance? (Once you start thinking about this stuff, even stranger and more daunting dilemmas present themselves. Suppose, for example, that a great power were to come up in black Africa. There is nothing very improbable about such a development. That continent has the highest rates of population growth in the world, by far the lowest labor costs, and more than its share of natural resources. All that is missing is an organizing principle; but organizing principles have often appeared suddenly out of nowhere, turning the most unlikely places into centers of historical dynamism-- think of the rise of Islam. A militant and vigorous African power is not more unlikely now than the rise of Japan was in 1850, or that of China in 1950. Suppose, then, that such a power came into being; and suppose its interests clashed violently with those of the United States. Where would black Americans stand in such a conflict? The doctrines of-- to borrow a useful phrase from Peter Salins' Assimilation, American Style-- "ethnic federalism" that are now universal among our policy elites may seem like an interesting experiment in peacetime. In time of war, they may prove fatal.) However shocking the things I am saying here may seem in this long tranquil time, I guarantee that when the first U.S. carrier is sunk by Chinese action, or the first American city is erased by a Chinese ICBM, Chinese nationals, including those who are U.S. Citizens, will be hustled into camps faster than you can say "executive order" and will stay there for the duration, whatever the ACLU-- or even the Supreme Court-- thinks about it. I hope the camps will not be very uncomfortable, for I shall be there too-- the Derbyshires travel as a family. I also hope that I shall be able to maintain sufficient detachment to understand that a responsible U.S. government really has no choice in the matter. From: "John Derbyshire" To: "Carol Iannone" , Date sent: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 11:33:43 -0800 Subject: [h-bd] Asymmetry > I didn't see that, but it is entirely believable. I have read somewhere > that the CIA has been unable to penetrate China to anything like the degree > they did the USSR, because of the difficulty of getting Chinese people to > work for them. Contrariwise, the Chinese communists have no trouble > penetrating the U.S. When Johnny Huang went back to Peking, Chinese MilInt > and ForInt threw banquets for him; on return to the U.S. he was received as > an honored guest and counsellor at the Clinton White House. > > Same asymmetry with the issue raised in my CHRONICLES article (i.e. wartime > internment). I hope Americans-- might just as well say "white people"-- > living in China have no illusions about what will happen to THEM si bellum > indicatur. > > My last day job involved supervising a team of computer programmers for a > Wall Street firm. These are the people who keep Wall Street-- i.e. the U.S. > economy-- going. Approx one third of them were mainland Chinese. What a > generous country this is! > > Incidentally, for those following this thread, Steve Tripp reminds me that > the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW2 was VOLUNTARY. No J-A was > forced into a camp-- they were only forced out of possible invasion areas. > Those with no place to go were offered a place in a camp. > Steve Sailer here: I'd like to thank Ron Unz for his first direct contribution to H-Bd. Ron is California's leading public citizen, the author of the Proposition that outlawed extended bilingual education in California. A few comments: 1. The loyalty of Japanese-Americans to America during WWII was extraordinary. I've only heard of a single disloyal act -- a Japanese immigrant in Hawaii sheltered a Japanese pilot shot down on 12/7/41. Clearly, that's the exception that proves the rule. A military unit made up of young Japanese-Americans recruited from the internment camps ["The Fighting 448th"?] was sent to Italy to fight the Germans and returned with more medals per capita than any other unit in the entire war. 2. I've never heard much explanation of this loyalty. Possibly it had to do with immigration having been shut way down many years before [1924?], and combined with the slowness and expense of trans-Pacific travel, this cut Japanese-Americans off culturally from Japan. Combined with the fervent assimilationist techniques of American institutions at the time, this might explain the almost complete lack of disloyalty. It's not clear how similar the situation is today. 3. Racial animus may have played some role in the internment, but keep in mind the situation. In the three months the Japanese empire had conquered 1/8th of the Earth's surface. They had shown the capability to project airpower many thousands of miles across the North Pacific to Hawaii. If their 4 aircraft carriers had sunk our 3 aircraft carriers at Midway [June 4, 1942], instead of vice-versa, there would have been little to halt raids on the West Coast. In fact, a Japanese sub did shell the oil refinery next to what is now the lovely Sandpiper golf course in Santa Barbara in early 1942. The Japanese high command had drawn up plans for invading mainland America. These plans were absurd, but so was the entire Japanese long-term strategy, and that didn't stop the Japanese from doing all sorts of mischief before their inevitable defeat. This all explains to some extent why famous liberals like FDR and California Governor, later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren were the main backers of the internment plan. [On the other hand, J. Edgar Hoover argued it was unnecessary.] 4. So, what we see with 20-20 hindsight is that the internment turned out to be unneeded, but that was not completely clear to elected decision makers during the post-Pearl Harbor nightmare. Internment turned out to be a fairly honest mistake. What the government should have done in the late Forties was what Reagan did decades later: apologize and offer some modest compensation. Considering that millions of Americans were in effect "interned" in the military for the duration and sent to even worse places than Manzanar [e.g., Guadalcanal], it wouldn't have been fair to other Americans to have offered Japanese-Americans the massive settlements that are fashionable today. Probably, what would have been fair is to have given the internees back-pay equivalent to what a draftee would have gotten for non-combat duty in some dusty corner of the U.S. during WWII. Also, a lot of Japanese lost a lot of property -- this should have been returned or eventually paid for. 5. Ron writes, "I don't recall reading accounts of America's huge German-American or Italian-American populations being temporarily "relocated" away from the East Coast." Interestingly, I learned only recently that during the war the U.S. placed fairly severe restrictions on Italians, especially resident aliens, in potentially treacherous industries like fishing. Dom Dimaggio, brother of baseball great Joe Dimaggio and an all-star in his own right, has started a campaign to publicize the injustices done to Italians like his father, a San Francisco fisherman. Many were driven out of the fishing business, the only careers they knew. Some were placed under nightly curfew for the duration. Similarly, during WWI a frenzy of anti-German discrimination took place, e.g., removing Beethoven music from concerts. See H.L. Mencken's many diatribes on the subject. However, after the war it was realized that German-Americans had stayed extremely loyal, so there was less discrimination against them during WWII. In any case, neither Germany nor, especially, Italy posed any threat of invading the US during WWII. [In fact, Italian soldiers who were sent to the beaches of Sicily to repel Patton's invasion, threw down their guns and helped the American's unload.] 6. That so many prominent American Jews have repeatedly called for the release of the traitor Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who gave important national security secrets to Israel, is a disgrace. If that many members of any other white group in America had showed so much preference for ethnic loyalty over national loyalty, they would have been raked over the coals. [Try imagining the response if German-Americans had pressed a decade long campaign for freeing a German-American who had given American secrets to Germany.] 7. The Wen Ho Lee case remains murky, and one should not assume he was only guilty of carelessness. Here is an editorial in today's Washington Post: The Indictment of Wen Ho Lee Thursday, December 16, 1999; Page A38 THE SERIOUSNESS of the charges filed against Wen Ho Lee last week adds an additional layer of confusion to the already murky Chinese nuclear espionage scandal. Mr. Lee, the scientist fired from the Los Alamos National .... (copyrighted material deleted) Mr. Lee is, of course, innocent until proven guilty--a presumption that he has been largely denied in the public arena throughout much of the .. investigation. © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company > Steve Sailer wrote: > > ... Similarly, during WWI a frenzy of anti-German > discrimination took place, e.g., removing Beethoven music from > concerts. See > H.L. Mencken's many diatribes on the subject. However, after the > war it was > realized that German-Americans had stayed extremely loyal, so > there was less > discrimination against them during WWII. In any case, neither > Germany nor, > especially, Italy posed any threat of invading the US during > WWII... The large question I tried to address in my CHRONICLES piece was: What happens if the U.S. gets into a war with the homeland of one of its major ethnic groups? Steve reminds me that this has actually happened: the Germans were one of the largest, and most recent, immigrant groups in 1917. Their response to the situation seems to have been exemplary. However, there are some differences worth pointing out: (1) That was then, this is now. Specifically: that was at the height of the "assimilationist" approach to ethnic minorities (at any rate white ones like the Germans). Our current approach is the one I named in my article: "ethnic federalism". Large numbers of Americans have been taught that their racial identity trumps everything else, and that the U.S.A. is a wicked nation anyway, guilty of numberless historical sins like... um... oh, the internment of Japanese-Americans. These things were not taught in the years prior to 1917. (2) Germans are racially indistinguishable from the British-descended majority that dominated U.S. society in 1914. Chinese and blacks (the two cases I discuss in my article) are _visible_ minorities. (3) Germany in 1917 did not have a long tradition of anti-American rhetoric and indoctrination. The Brandenburg Gate did not carry a portrait of a revered national leader who believed America's socioeconomic system was oppressive, imperialist and destined for the trash-can of history. The German press did not routinely carry articles exposing the "darkness and oppression" of U.S. society. (4) U.S. graduate schools and research institutes-- including those doing defense-related research-- were not top-heavy with German nationals (and war in 1917 was anyway not as technically demanding as it is now). (5) There was no real conflict of interest between the Kaiser's Germany and the U.S.A. There was nothing in Wilhelmite Germany comparable to the resentment China feels at the U.S. presence in Asia, or to China's plain-- and plainly-stated-- determination to purge Asia of U.S. control and influence so far as she can. Mr Unz notwithstanding, I believe the issue is a real one that needs airing (though perhaps not at this length on an h-bd e-group-- I will accept correction on this point). Mr Unz's impression that the internment of J-As was an egregious wrong is, as Steve pointed out, the product of hindsight. At the time it was a much-debated issue, with all sorts of unexpected people on both sides. It was also an issue that owed something to post-Pearl Harbor public hysteria. Here's a question for Mr Unz (or anyone else): Does he honestly think that 1999 America is less susceptible to displays of public hysteria than 1942 America? Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go fill some sandbags. Francis Fukuyama here: On point #2 below, first generation Japanese immigrants were much more accepting of internment than their children or particularly their grandchildren, because of the Japanese cultural habit of deference to authority. Their assimilated children who accepted American values were the ones who got angry, led the redress movement, and got into radical anti-American politics in the 1960s. The 1924 act had nothing to do with it. On point #4, I was never very enthusiastic about the redress movmement, but I don't know what is meant by "the massive settlements that are fashionable today." My grandfather had to sell his business within 7 days of the evacuation notice, and thereby lost a generation's savings and work. That business would today be worth a bit more than 4 year's back pay, or the $20,000 in 1990s dollars his children eventually received. At 02:41 PM 12/17/99 EST, SteveSlr@aol.com wrote: >Steve Sailer here: > max chan hello folks, i want to know who steve tripp is and why is he saying this things about the japanese american.i can't believe someone had the gall to say that the internment of the japanese american was voluntary. if the japanese american did not go to the concentration camps they went to jail. they had no choice!!! the hirabayashi case went to the supreme court because he challenged the curfews that japanese americans were placed under during the war. nothing was voluntary. the fbi showed up at japanese american leaders home and they were the first to be removed and placed in the camps. no one was allowed to resist. do you really think people would voluntary move within 3-7days with items that you can carry in two hands.settling in a horse barn in puyallup race track with no privacy, mattress made of straw, etc. this is like saying that the jews had a choice and they didn't have to be in the pograms or ghettos or go to the concentration camp. get real!!! this just burns me up. max chan Jerry pournelle: Regarding espionage and the Chinese: one of the engineers I worked with at Boeing in about 1960 was approached with a small box containing a human finger; it was said to be that of his father who had remained on the Mainland as a major in the nationalist army. My friend was told that more parts would be forthcoming if he didn't cooperate. Since he worked on the B-52 program (we were in the bomber weapons group which was electronic countermeasures among other things) this wasn't a good idea. He reported this to Boeing Security and was immediately transferred to the Transport Division which didn't have any classified work. I have some experience in intelligence and counter-intelligence and it is certainly the case that the Red Chinese have employed not dissimilar methods in other cases, always with people of Chinese ancestry to the best of my knowledge which of course is not exhaustive. But I completely agree with Ron Unz that this was one of the more shameful chapters in US history. Note that it wasn't even attempted in Hawaii where there were a LOT of Japanese Americans. From: "jerryp" I was too young to understand the Japanese internment and from the wrong part of the country anyway - we were still in Memphis during WW II - but when I went to the University of Washington years later many of my classmates had been interned. One of them was Ben Fujita whose family had owned farms where the University's married student housing was then located. All that land was taken, and if there was anything voluntary about his internment no one explained that to him or his family. They were herded onto trucks and taken away, their land was taken over by Seattle businessmen, and they were later "paid" for it at about 5 cents on the dollar. It probably makes us all feel better to talk about the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry as "voluntary" but it wasn't voluntary, and the conditions were such that rickets and other diseases of malnutrition were fairly common, at least in Ben's camp. They had been members of St. Stephen's Episcopal parish, and while his grandfather was not a citizen (naturalization for Asians not being encouraged in his time) both of Ben's parents were born in the USA. Voluntary? Not so he would notice it. I don't myself have other data, but I knew a lot of Japanese Americans in Seattle and I never met one who thought their internment was voluntary. Perhaps the anti-Japanese feeling was stronger in Seattle than other places? Certainly the Japanese owned valuable property worth stealing, which seemed to have been as much to the point as anything else. From: "John Derbyshire" > Arthur Hu wrote: > > What the heck is this? One day there was a notice posted up > and the next day you had to pack and go. No choice in the > matter, you didn't even have enough time to sell your stuff. > This absolutely destroyed the older generation. On the other > hand, this was a swift kick in the butt for the younger generation, > and whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger as they say. > What was so unreasonable? I don't see it. Look. Your nation's territory has just suffered a devastating attack by the fleet of a foreign power. You have no idea where that fleet is-- this is the days before satellite imaging. It could be just below the horizon, for all you know. You are utterly unprepared for war. A long, thinly-populated coast is the most likely place for enemy landings and infiltration. A lot of people live along, or near, that coast who are of the same nation as the enemy, or are descended from such. Whaddya do? Leave them there? Or tell them to move out? The decision to move them out was not outrageous or unreasonable. You may think it the right decision-- as FDR did. You may think it unnecessary-- as J. Edgar Hoover did. But to present the move-out option as some egregious atrocity is absurd. Actually, to be quite blunt, it's the option I would have voted for, under the circumstances. I don't think J. Edgar Hoover's judgment was spectacularly good. War is war. It's a lapse into barbarism. You win wars by killing masses of the enemy's people-- including, in most modern wars-- helpless infants and the sick and old. (I am the father of two small children, by the way.) If you are a civilized nation, you hold on to as much of civilized values as you can... but you can't hold on to them all, not if you want to win. You do what you have to do. Telling several thousand people to move out of their homes pronto is a horrible thing to do-- I certainly wouldn't care to have it done to ME-- but it was a very minor misdemeanor in the context of Pearl Harbor, if it was a misdemeanor at all. We know, from the experience of occupied countries through history, how most ordinary people react to invasion and occupation. They try to keep their heads down while the fighting is going on; then, when the dust has settled, they make what accommodation they can with the conqueror. If the conqueror happens to be of the same nationality as me or my parents-- hey. Do you want to tell me, Arthur, that the Japanese-Americans of California would have fought to the last ditch against a Japanese invasion force? Well, you can tell me-- but I won't believe you. And do you want to tell me that the probability of a surprise Chinese attack against the U.S. or its interests is currently zero? Same answer! And where, after all, should we place ultimate blame for the expulsion of J-As from the Pacific coast? At the peace conference following WW1, a German diplomat said up to a French diplomat: "I wonder what people will say about all this a hundred years from now." Replied the Frenchman: "Well, they will NOT say that Belgium invaded Germany!" The source of the terrible events of 1941-45 was the Japanese attack on Hawaii. If that had not happened we would not be discussing the internment, because there wouldn't have been any. So today with China. What is the source of all these issues? Why are we even discussing them? Why are we discussing them in the context of China rather than, say, India, or Turkey, or Britain? Because China is hostile to the U.S.-- that's why. Because China-- by their own admission-- have nuclear missiles targeted on our cities. Let them un-target those missiles. let them stop telling their own people (as they do) that America is their enemy. Let them stop recruiting spies in the U.S. (which they are). Let them stop their imperialist bluster about Taiwan, and let the people of Taiwan decide their own future. Let them stop selling missiles to hate-America nations like Iran. Let them withdraw their armies of occupation from the slave colonies of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Eastern Turkestan-- and apologies to the people of those regions for the horrors they have endured under Chinese rule. Let them get themselves a form of government in which the Chinese people have some say about who rules them. Let China, in short, start acting like a civilized nation. Then all these issues will disappear like dew in the morn. Until that day comes: "If you want peace, prepare for war." arthur Hu responds: From: "John Derbyshire" Subject: RE: Voluntary Japanese internment? Date sent: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 18:11:44 -0800 > Look. Your nation's territory has just suffered a devastating attack by the > fleet of a foreign power. You have no idea where that fleet is-- this is > the days before satellite imaging. It could be just below the horizon, for > all you know. You are utterly unprepared for war. A long, thinly-populated > coast is the most likely place for enemy landings and infiltration. A lot > of people live along, or near, that coast who are of the same nation as the > enemy, or are descended from such. Whaddya do? Leave them there? Or tell > them to move out? Yeah, yeah, it's understandable, it still makes them racist misinformed paranoid and wrong. Of all the ridiculous leftist crap I've been fed by the Asian American movement, this stuff is genuine bad stuff inflicted by bad guys. > > The decision to move them out was not outrageous or unreasonable. You may > think it the right decision-- as FDR did. You may think it unnecessary-- as > J. Edgar Hoover did. But to present the move-out option as some egregious > atrocity is absurd. Actually, to be quite blunt, it's the option I would > have voted for, under the circumstances. I don't think J. Edgar Hoover's > judgment was spectacularly good. I'd hope you judment would be better than that, suspending basic rights of American citizens over hysteria. > > War is war. It's a lapse into barbarism. You win wars by killing masses of > the enemy's people-- including, in most modern wars-- helpless infants and > the sick and old. (I am the father of two small children, by the way.) If > you are a civilized nation, you hold on to as much of civilized values as > you can... but you can't hold on to them all, not if you want to win. You > do what you have to do. Telling several thousand people to move out of > their homes pronto is a horrible thing to do-- I certainly wouldn't care to > have it done to ME-- but it was a very minor misdemeanor in the context of > Pearl Harbor, if it was a misdemeanor at all. Yeah, but it _was_ a stupid idea that didn't accomplish a thing except ruin the lives of an entire ethnic minority. It didn't do a thing for security. The only guy they nailed was a guy that was so disgusted, he plowed over his strawberrys rather than have his neighbors harvest them for free at his expense. > > We know, from the experience of occupied countries through history, how most > ordinary people react to invasion and occupation. They try to keep their > heads down while the fighting is going on; then, when the dust has settled, > they make what accommodation they can with the conqueror. If the conqueror > happens to be of the same nationality as me or my parents-- hey. Do you > want to tell me, Arthur, that the Japanese-Americans of California would > have fought to the last ditch against a Japanese invasion force? Most, (yes not all) Japanese Americans were very dedicated to their new nation. The guys in the 442nd had no problems killing nazis allied with their homeland. Asian Americans sent to Vietnam had no problems shooting at people that looked like them. Since when did the DOD have a policy of routinely excluding people from combat on the basis of ethnicity? (I guess they did exclude Japanese American from pacific combat, but they certainly did not exclude arabs from Desert Storm or Yugoslavians from that crisis) Well, you > can tell me-- but I won't believe you. And do you want to tell me that the > probability of a surprise Chinese attack against the U.S. or its interests > is currently zero? Same answer! What in the hell what the Chinese do a stupid thing like that for when we can nuke those guys 100 times over for any fire cracker they want to send this way? If we had a @#$!@#@$% abm system, they wouldn't even be able to get away with one cheap shot even if they didn't worry about retaliation. BTW, did you know that the father of the Chinese ICBM force was American trained, he was FORCED back home because they didn't want any disloyal Chinese working over here? If he were at NASA, the Chinese might still be playing with Scuds today. > > And where, after all, should we place ultimate blame for the expulsion of > J-As from the Pacific coast? At the peace conference following WW1, a > German diplomat said up to a French diplomat: "I wonder what people will > say about all this a hundred years from now." Replied the Frenchman: "Well, > they will NOT say that Belgium invaded Germany!" The source of the terrible > events of 1941-45 was the Japanese attack on Hawaii. If that had not > happened we would not be discussing the internment, because there wouldn't > have been any. So what do the actions of a sovereign nation have to do with people who happen to have been born there? I don't expect to have to pay for the sins of my relatives just because I'm related to them. If the WWII policy were repeated for Chinese, my family would be locked up, I'd lose all my house, belongings, and savings for 7 years. Would you support such a policy, or is this what you are advocating? Sure people used to do this all the time back in 1941, but in 2000? > > So today with China. What is the source of all these issues? Why are we > even discussing them? Why are we discussing them in the context of China > rather than, say, India, or Turkey, or Britain? Because China is hostile to > the U.S.-- that's why. Because China-- by their own admission-- have > nuclear missiles targeted on our cities. That's hardly a declaration of war. Do really think we don't have targeting coordinates ready to go to wipe out the entire middle kingdom at the stroke of a pen? Let them un-target those missiles. > let them stop telling their own people (as they do) that America is their > enemy. Well, if we're not, who is?? The US is more powerful now than Japan, Germany and USSR put together at the peak of their imperial power. Let them stop recruiting spies in the U.S. (which they are). Let > them stop their imperialist bluster about Taiwan, and let the people of > Taiwan decide their own future. Let them stop selling missiles to > hate-America nations like Iran. Let them withdraw their armies of > occupation from the slave colonies of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Eastern > Turkestan-- and apologies to the people of those regions for the horrors > they have endured under Chinese rule. Let them get themselves a form of > government in which the Chinese people have some say about who rules them. > Let China, in short, start acting like a civilized nation. Then all these > issues will disappear like dew in the morn. Until that day comes: "If you > want peace, prepare for war." You can hate China all you want, you might even be right, but don't lock me and my family and your wife over such concerns. > Do you know Norman Matloff? see my website http://www.leconsulting.com/arthurhu/index/matloff.htm He is another white fellow who is married to a Chinese wife who is simply appalled at the Chinese as a race and ethnic group, and spends all his time trying to protect America from the Chinese and their "welfare scam" and plot to take jobs away from "real Americans". Is this what you are doing? Chinese are good as wives, but not as fellow citizens? olimu@li.net Re: Voluntary Japanese internment? the point is that racial policy that was ok in 1941 has no place today. You can't or at least should not lock up an entire ethnic group. Under the 1941 standard, I would be considered jast as chinese as anyone else you would want to lock up. Please take back any notion of either justifying the old policy (heck, by 1800 standards, slavery was justifiable then too, but its certainly out of the question now) or extending the notion of doing anything similar today. You can put individuals with cause, but not an entire ethnicity under suspicion. That is precisely my definition of racism and prejudice. I want to nip this one in the bud before we have more writers advocating such sinophobic ideas. Kids called me a jap in the early 60s because of racist fears against all asians, to advocate planning to intern all chinese would be far more harmful than any verbal slight. >> Yeah, yeah, it's understandable, it still makes them racist >> misinformed paranoid and wrong. Of all the ridiculous leftist crap >> I've been fed by the Asian American movement, this stuff is >>genuine bad stuff inflicted by bad guys. >Racist? Your nation had just been attacked by JAPAN. Who, if >anyone, should have been removed from the invasion zone? >Armenians? You may, of course, say: nobody should. But given >that some people were, the issue of racism hinges on whether they >were the appropriate people to be thus victimized. Of course they >were! >Misinformed? Speaking as an ex-officer of H.M. Armed Forces, let >me tell you: information is mighty hard to come by in time of war. >Wartime command is a succession of spur-of-the-moment decisions, >some of them based on false information (a major task of any >country's intelligence services is making sure a steady stream of >false information is fed to the enemy), many of them wrong. That's >war. >Paranoid? In war a nation is fighting for its life. It is >constantly confronted by decisions like: Is XYZ a military threat? >Maybe, maybe not. Wanna take a chance? >> I'd hope your judment would be better than that, suspending basic >> rights of American citizens over hysteria. >I would suspend any rights at all, if I thought it militarily >necessary; and I would vigorously oppose any wartime administration >that took any other line. >A peacetime U.S. executive, before contemplating any action, has to >ponder the question: Is this constitutional? In wartime, things >are different. The first question is: Is this militarily >necessary? Or, to phrase it differently: If I fail to do this, >will I increase the chances of my nation-- along with its >Constitution-- being extinguished? Constitutionality comes second-- >since, if you get the answer to the first question wrong, you have >no more country and no more Constitution! >If I were running the U.S. in time of war I would make decisions >based on military criteria first and leave the Constitutional >issues to be sorted out later. That was the approach FDR took. >God bless him. If he had acted otherwise I-- an Englishman-- would >now be working in the fields under some Gauleiter for Eastern >Britain, while my wife-- a Chinese-- would be doing slave labor in >Manchuria. >As a footnote, though, I do think it is very disgraceful that the >Japanese-Americans who lost property in the evacuations had to wait >so long for decent compensation. That should all have been sorted >out a couple of years after the war. Some of them waited FORTY >YEARS for justice. That IS a disgrace and a scandal-- and you can >quote me on that. But that's an issue of peacetime justice, not >war. Arthur Hu "Fairness in Diversity" Kirkland WA http://www.leconsulting.com/arthurhu/ From: Steven Tripp List-Archive: At 1:36 PM -0800 12/17/99, jerryp wrote: > >It probably makes us all feel better to talk about the internment of >American citizens of Japanese ancestry as "voluntary" but it wasn't >voluntary, ... >Voluntary? Not so he would notice it. I don't myself have other data, but I >knew a lot of Japanese Americans in Seattle and I never met one who thought >their internment was voluntary. It doesn't make me feel better. The notion that the internment was voluntary came from me. [I hope] I said that my information came from a Japanese TV program I saw a few weeks ago. I really don't know if it was voluntary or not, but that program said Fred Wada and his family chose to move to Utah for the duration. Maybe the Japanese TV program was wrong. Maybe I misunderstood. But why was Fred Wada living in Utah and not in a camp? Any historians on the line? If I passed on false information, I'm sorry. Steven Tripp University of Aizu jerrypournelle.com Comfort is a relative thing, of course. In the detention camps for Americans of Japanese Ancestry (note that; these were CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES neither charged with nor convicted of a crime) there was no scurvy. There was rickets and some other nutritional disease, and poor medical attention. In Japanese camps for American POW's there was scurvy and malnutrition, sometimes because neither guards nor inmates had enough to eat, sometimes due to deliberate mistreatment. No one contends that the US guards - armed, with weapons, and ordered to shoot escapees - were anything like the Japanese prison guards, or that the camps for Americans of Japanese Ancestry were comparable to Bergen Belsen or Dachau, much less Auschwitz. But is that the point? Somehow they muddled through in Hawaii without detention of Japanese Americans, yet Hawaii was much closer to Japan, much more likely to be invaded, and had a much larger Japanese American population. The necessity for internment in the Western States (but not Hawaii) wasn't anything like clear, and the drastic effect on the Constitution was. Internment was a simple GRAB FOR POWER by the Federal Government, and those of the conservative persuasion should have been able to see that. It wasn't in fact the American Right who demanded internment, it was Earl Warren, and FDR implemented it. The American conservatives of the time were concerned with whether or not Roosevelt had suckered us into a war with Japan as the back door to war with Germany. As a one-time colleague of Admiral Chambliss who was Kimmel's defense advocate in Kimmel's court martial, I can say there are a number of unexplained things about US vulnerability at Pearl Harbor. The case that Roosevelt and Cordell Hull knew the attack was coming and didn't want any war warning to frighten the Japanese away is "not proven" but it can't be dismissed entirely either. Probably they thought the attack would be on the Philippines rather than Pearl, and probably they believed the Navy's bombast that battleships couldn't be sunk by aircraft (Bernie Brodie's navy book that came out just before WW II had 3 pages about carriers in it; the next edition was all carriers; and Brodie was pretty well the official theoretician for the Navy at the time). Leave that. Probably shouldn't bring it up. But to put the internment of the American Japanese on the conservatives is plain wrong. American conservatism has always resisted expansion of federal power. The conservative position might well have been that the State of Califonia had the right to intern people it considered dangerous, and might not have been; that's an interesting state power.