X-Message-Number: 16765 Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 22:33:20 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Concentration Camps and Future Judgments The question came up of whether future generations would consider us barbaric, and it led to Lee Corbin's posting #16665 with the following: (IGGY Dybal, #16647:) > >Don't forget that Japanese Americans were put in the concentration > >camps in the USA during WWII, while their sons were fighting > >Japan and Hitler. Isn't this a paradox? > >It was absolutely necessary! Military authorities estimated >that perhaps as much as five percent of the Japanese-American >population would have welcomed a Japanese invasion of the >west coast. Ever heard of the "Black Dragon"? Uh, these are >extremely politically incorrect subjects, but the Black Dragon >was a group of Japanese-Americans ready to commit sabotage if >a Japanese invasion materialized. I hadn't heard of the Black Dragon, but I have studied the Japanese-American incarceration, and I strongly disagree with the conclusion that it was "absolutely necessary." Innocent people lost their property, not to be recovered, in addition to undergoing a long detention without trial or due process. Hawaii had a much larger fraction of Japanese-Americans than did California at the time, yet it was unmolested while Californians were subjected to the infamous "relocation." Yet did a massive uprising start in Hawaii? True, the oppression was far overshadowed by other monstrous events of the time, but it still was, in my view, a disgusting and unnecessary act that allowed certain greedy individuals to gain at the expense of other, innocent people. (And I'll allow that a mitigating circumstance was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent fear of a Japanese invasion of the mainland.) When, in 1988, the victims still living were finally awarded $20,000 each, the relocation was characterized as "one of America's worst mistakes." I agree. The remark made about German-Americans not being similarly harassed (and not misbehaving as a consequence of being left alone; one could include Italian-Americans too) is also relevant. To put this in perspective, we are all imperfect and might well be judged barbaric by future standards. No person or group is exempt, yet we do live in tough times relative to what we hope about that future, and this must count as a mitigating circumstance. It is interesting to compare the $20,000 compensation figure, covering about 2 years' detention and other losses, with the approximately $9,000 the "Alcor six" each received in compensation for a few hours' detention under false arrest on Jan. 7, 1988, in connection with the Dora Kent suspension. (I was one of the six.) Mike Perry Alcor Member Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16765