I just learned about the Japanese Internment!! WHAT!?!?!?

Question

I am 27 years old and have never heard about this before. My husband told me about this yesterday and showed me the artical on Wikepedia. How come they don't teach this in school? After learning this I wonder how you can feel safe in a so called free country it happened once who's to say it won't happen again?

Answer 1

It isn't often mentioned because it is a very dark part of recent history, both in the U.S. and Canada. It also was still a time before mass communication, and at the time many people did not know what exactly was happening. Countries do a lot of dark things in the face of fear. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, many in the government feared a sneak attack at home and turn this into Internment camps. There was a lot of shame after the war, especially with all the information about Nazi extermination camps, that many school tend to focus on other aspects of WWII.

While internment does still happen in territories, though to a much smaller scale, it probably could not happen again because the public resistance would be too great.

Answer 2

Well, let's get an understanding first:

In the time that Japanese Internment camps were present, there was no political correctness, mainstream civil rights movement, or ACLU. The federal government did what they felt was "necessary and proper" in order to protect the US from an internal Japanese terrorists.
During the Clinton administration, Japanese-Americans who endured the internment camps were given reparations. This is what I learned in High School by the way.

To answer your next question, you can't truly say that the federal government (or any form of government for the matter) will refrain from the extremities of discriminating against a race of people in order to protect the US. For example, notice how security guards at the airport focus more on Arab-American citizens than the average Caucasian male. Or notice how police officers will suspect a Black male if he is wearing ghetto (or to be politically correct "urban") attire for a crime before they would suspect a Caucasian woman wearing Gucci. It is all (for the most part) to protect the interests American civilians and lifestyle.

It may be wrong, but it works.

Answer 3

Whenever a government can say in total that a group of people cannot be trusted even if they are citizens of the United States. It will happen again. Why don't they teach it? It's a black eye in our history. Just the African American slavery and putting Native Americans on reservations. It is all about money and peoples ignorance of the situation and the government not telling the truth. As far as the reparations, that was money, what about being put in a camp with armed guards. How would you deal with this when not given a choice?

Answer 4

Not sure if you are American or Japanese......but for sure there are lots of Japanese History never taught to the kids in Japanese schools...and Japanese were also interned here in Canada......don't forget, there were real fears of an Attack from the Japanese along the Pacific Coast, and oil supply depots on the Northern coast of British Columbia, Canada were found after the war ended...it's not much difference than our present day fear of all Arab looking people. If an Arab country officially declared war and attacked the western countries like Canada and/or the US, we might intern the Muslim looking people again.....it's called the lesser of 2 evils and all is fair in love and war!

Brock
Vancouver, Canada

Answer 5

We are living in a different world now. It is doubtful that we would repeat such a thing. Like with any country we were no born perfect. It was and is a process of growing and learning. We have done both. It was taught in my high school. The Hsitory channle will occassionally air segments about this period. You can also catch a program on PBS that highlights differnt ethnic groups on the US. They aired this one last year sometime. They re-air or check thier website to see if the video is available for purchase.

I doubt it is taught now because schools are teaching youth only to pass a yearly exam. They are no longer teaching about our world. You can thank GWB and No Child Left Behind for that.

Answer 6

First of all... Calm down. The entire incident has been blown out of proportions in the years since WWII ended. Yes there was internment but it was for the safety of our nation. We were at war with the Japanese and there were a large number of immigrants who were known to be spying for the Japanese government inside our borders.

Here's the truth of the matter... If you wanna get all worked over something that happened during WWII why don't you get all worked up over the MILLIONS of Jews that Hitler and the SS killed? Or why don't you consider the grand plans of the Imperialistic Japanese? They killed lord knows how many native islanders in the South Pacific in there ill-conceived attempt to conquer all of southeastern Asia.

Answer 7

I know how you feel. There was one brief paragraph about it in my U.S History class - and that was an honors class with a college textbook! I saw it mentioned a few times in books and movies, but they were brief side notes. The extent of the suffering and injustice wasn't made clear to me until I got to college, majored in Japanese studies, and became active in the Japanese-American community.

It should be taught more in schools - it is important for a country, like an individual, to examine its failings carefully to see what went wrong and prevent such things from happening again. Share what you've learned with friends and family, and encourage them to spread awareness of it. Discuss the topic with them, and figure out what causes a good nation to betray its own principles... and what happens when average well-meaning citizens stand by and do nothing. Become proactively involved in the civil liberties movement. There's much we can do to make sure this never happens again!

Answer 8

In the 1940's we knew almost nothing about Japan, had very few people who could speak the language.
The Americans of Japanese descent living here were subject to extorsion by Japan, and widely distrusted by the rest of us after Pearl Harbor.
It could happen again here, I think, unless American Islamics take action publicly against Islamic terrorism.
In the 1940's most of the soldiers who went to fight Germany and Italy were of European extraction; many still spoke to language of the "old country" their parents came from, but they had to problem going there to fight.
Americans of Japanese extraction were the most decorated battalion in the European Theater of Operations, I believe. Close, if not the most.
Yeah, it was unfair to lock them up, but we had no other choice then.
Read books - fiction and non - that were written at the time, and you'll see how little we knew, and how limited our options were.

Answer 9

I'm only a few years younger than you and I was taught, although briefly, about this. So, I guess you'll be glad to know that some people are teaching about it. Plenty of things get left out of curriculum. You've probably never heard of the Philippine-American War, for example. Education still isn't anywhere near what it should be.

Answer 10

Thank God for your husband. Did your schools really fail you that badly? I thought everyone knew - and there have been TV shows and movies about it, too.

You're asking the right follow-up. Whenever I hear people defend the NSA wiretaps by saying they don't have anything to hide, I reply, "How do YOU know, and who is to say?"

Welcome to the discussion. Keep reading and learning, if you can stand the disappointment.