X-Message-Number: 16923
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 10:56:50 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Re: Japanese Internment

Robin Helweg-Larsen explained the amazing drop in market value that
perplexed me:

>the very fertile Fraser Valley had been.  When all these people were
>interned simultaneously, and their thousands of farms and homes flooded onto
>the market simultaneously, the bottom dropped out of farmland prices, and
>their 'fair market sale' was at a tenth what it had been a few months
>before.  Farmland prices never dipped low enough again for any but a very
>few Japanese Canadians to repurchase their homes.

He then talks about

>Legislators often profit financially simply by being in power and
>influencing development proposals, and this has been as true in BC
>as anywhere (it's often more true of provincial or state politicians
>than it is of federal ones).

It's hardly different from outright corruption.  I'm not sure
what liberals propose in order to solve this fundamental problem
in democracies---we libertarians suppose that if government had
markedly less power, people would have much less incentive to
bribe politicians.

>Politicians often 'play the race card' (or any other us-vs-them
>card) to simplify issues and divide society, if they believe
>that they will be seen as key representatives of the larger part
>of the division, and thereby enhance their chances of reelection.
>Reference Hitler vs the Jews, Thatcher vs the coal miners, Indira
>Gandhi vs the Sikh community, Reagan vs the air traffic controllers.

Not to mention attacking corporations to win favor from "the people"
and attacking the less numerous rich to get votes from the more
numerous poor.  It behooves us all to balance our examples :-)


>In 1988 the Canadian Government formally acknowledged that it
>perpetrated wrongs against Japanese Canadians, apologized, and
>implemented a restitution package.

Kinda late.  I recall our teacher talking about the injustices
done in 1965, when I was in high school.  I imagine that it would
have been very, very hard to find anyone who did not think even
at that time that the Japanese were at least owed compensation
for certifiable losses.  So I wonder what took the governments
so long (almost to the extent of it being pointless).

Thanks for the info!

Lee

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