Remembering Utah's WWII internment camps

[danlo]

These camps need to be preserved to remind us of the time when Americans allowed fear and racism to override the principle that all are created equal. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that took 120,000 people of Japanese descent -- roughly one-third of whom were not citizens -- out of their homes on the West Coast and into holding camps solely because of their race. Many in America believed that they presented a risk of espionage or sabotage on behalf of their ancestral homeland, or that they might join with any Japanese invaders who could come ashore. An invasion was thought to be a real possibility, given the country's unpreparedness for war.

Ironically, Roosevelt had no problem with German-Americans or Italian-Americans running around free during the war. He even appointed a man of German descent, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as supreme commander of the Allied forces attacking Hitler's Germany.

Adding to that irony, Japanese-American soldiers, many recruited from the camps, served with distinction under Eisenhower. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team -- known as the "Go For Broke" -- became the most decorated unit of World War II after vicious combat in Italy and France.

Those who were forced to leave homes and businesses behind took only what they could carry to the camps. Conditions at Topaz and the other facilities have been described as harsh; some internees were even shot by camp guards for getting too close to the fence.

[Cail]

Truly a dark time in US history.

[Brasidas]

It's interesting to speculate that the reason Japanese-americans were targeted, and German and Italian-americans left alone, was because of the physical difference; racism is afraid of the'other' in whatever form (here in Australia, as in many other 'western' countries, there is a great debate about the muslim community being 'different'); it would have been easy to physically target Japanese-americans for their physical/cultural 'otherness'.

[Damelon]

In the case of German Americans they would have had to intern 1/4 of the population.

[taraswizard]

Of course, let's not forget an important difference between Japanese American immigrants and other immigrants. Japanese American immigrants if born in Japan were, for much of the time prior to 1942 (when internment began), statutorily excluded from applying for naturalization (AKA the 'Japnese exclusion laws'). AFAIK, this exclusion applied regardless of how long the immigrant had lived in the U.S., and childern born to such immigrant's were automatically citizens. Another point regarding the internment policies is Japanese Americans in Hawaii were not interned, and the historical record shows that Imperial Japanese intellience agents were active in the Hawaiian Japanese immigrant communities (BTW, there's much less evidence of Imperial agent's activity in mainland communities), and collaborators with the Imperial agents were detained and in some cases jailed; however, the immigrant community as a group was not interned.

Of course, I might be full of crap.