World War II Japanese Internment Camps

FastTrax

FastTrax

Well-known Member
 
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I don't disagree with what we did on this subject. There was a great divide then racially and it was accepted in every day life. Don't lose sight of how the members of Congress reacted after 911 voting to go to war with Iraq. What Japan did not only to America but the atrocities committee by them to peoples of other countries, The Rape Of Nanking is one of many examples of their brutality. There will always be racism in this world.
 
Japanese-Canadians were also interned. Fortunately, my family wasn't, as my father was a soldier in the Canadian Army. I have friends who have related their stories of internment to me. The men were separated from family and sent to work camps. Many never returned to their families after the war, suffering from serious mental issues.

As a third generation Canadian of Japanese descent, I can tell you where my loyalties lie, and that is with Canada. Those JC's who were interned, were no less loyal than I am.
 
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fmdog44 said:
I don't disagree with what we did on this subject. There was a great divide then racially and it was accepted in every day life. Don't lose sight of how the members of Congress reacted after 911 voting to go to war with Iraq. What Japan did not only to America but the atrocities committee by them to peoples of other countries, The Rape Of Nanking is one of many examples of their brutality. There will always be racism in this world.
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I'm sorry but not only were people of Japanese descent interned, their property, possessions and businesses were taken from them and given to non-Japanese people.

The Japanese people here had nothing to do with the Rape of Nanking. In many cases they were US citizens who had been here for decades.

By your logic the brutality exhibited by any group should have repercussions for any member of that group whether they were involved or not.
 
Manatee said:
I was only a kid at that time, but I remember that there was a great deal of fear. If we lost would the US be divided between Germany and Japan?
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To this day the United States was the first and only nation to unleash nuclear HELL on another country in anger, retaliation or preemptive defense but I dare say that with the exception of the Soviet Union which at the time was capable of initiating a counterforce or countervalue strike not one other nation would risk answering that call. Just MHO.
 
Broome on the northern coast of Western Australia and to a lesser extent Darwin had Japanese communities because of the pearling industry. They were not well integrated into the local Australian society. They were all interned, just as large numbers of Italians who were employed as sugar cane cutters in Queensland. Sad to say, quite a few were denounced by fellow Italians with whom they were feuding.

There were also some Jewish men of German or Austrian nationality who had moved to UK prewar. Fearing that they might become a fifth column should Germany invade England, they were rounded up and sent to Australia as POWs although none of them were military. Their story is written down as the Duneera Boys, Duneera being the ship that transported them to Australia. Their imprisonment was quite lenient and after the war quite a few of them chose to settle here.

Dunera Boys | National Museum of Australia (nma.gov.au)

Another group of POWs imprisoned in Australia were Japanese military captured as POWs. They were held in the NSW country town of Cowra. The officers were quite fanatical and when the camp authorities separated the officers from the men there was a riot and a breakout. Many committed suicide on the wire rather than suffer the disgrace of surrender and imprisonment. The story of the Cowra breakout can be read here. It was the largest prison escape of World War II, as well as one of the bloodiest.

Cowra breakout - Wikipedia

I have visited both sites. The camp at Hay is no longer standing but at Cowra there is a lovely Japanese garden and a museum. There is also a was cemetery where the Cowra prisoners who died are buried along with some of the civilians who died while interred at Broome.

The garden Cowra Japanese Garden (cowragarden.com.au)
 
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It was a close shave Warrigal

Imperial Japanese Navy Midget Submarine Attack on Sydney Harbour, 31 May-1 June 1942

On 29 May 1942 five large Japanese I Class submarines rendezvoused some 35 nautical miles northeast of the entrance to Sydney Harbour. Before daylight the next morning an E14Y Glen float plane launched from one of the submarines, I-21, and crewed by Warrant Flying officer Susumo Ito and Ordinary Seaman Iwasaki, flew a daring reconnaissance mission over the harbour, twice circling the cruiser USS Chicago before flying off to the east.

The aerial intrusion was observed and reported but it did not initiate any special harbour defensive measures being implemented. Many mistakenly believed it an American floatplane conducting a routine training flight. For the Japanese raiders, it was the latest of a number of reconnaissance flights conducted over Sydney providing valuable intelligence for an impending surprise attack on the numerous Allied warships anchored peacefully in the harbour. Prime targets included the cruisers HMAS Canberra and USS Chicago……….

https://www.navy.gov.au/history/feature-histories/japanese-midget-submarine-attack-sydney-harbour
 
They have recently located the third mini submarine on the sea bottom north of Sydney.

The fascinating story of the M24 Japanese Midget Submarine
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For more than 60 years the whereabouts of the M24, a Japanese midget submarine, was one of the greatest Australian wartime and maritime mysteries. Three midget submarines invaded Sydney Harbour on the evening of 31 May 1942. That night, the harbour was full of Allied naval vessels and the midget submarines were on a mission to inflict maximum damage.

Two of the midget submarines (M22 and M27) were destroyed almost immediately and recovered from Sydney Harbour within a week, but the third (M24) could not be found.

The M24 was the only submarine of the three able to launch its torpedoes, and with terrible effect. It sank a naval vessel, HMAS Kuttabul, which before the war had operated as a ferry. Twenty-one men on board were killed and another 10 injured.

There were many theories about what might have happened to the missing submarine and many so-called 'discoveries'. It was not until November 2006 that a group of weekend divers called 'No Frills Divers' located the still-intact Japanese midget submarine M24 off Bungan Head, Newport (Sydney, Australia). The submarine was on the seabed and entangled in nets 54 metres below the surface.

Like all shipwrecks, the M24 has a fascinating story to tell. It played a major part in the events in Sydney Harbour on the night of 31 May and the early morning of 1 June 1942 and its discovery recalls the role of Japanese midget submarines and the Japanese submarine campaign along Australia’s eastern seaboard during World War II.

Feature Wreck: M24 Midget Submarine | Heritage NSW
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Approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans were interned in the U.S. 80,000 were American-born Nisei and Sansei generation (Isseis, the first generation immigrants, had been ruled ineligible for US citizenship). Almost all lived along the West Coast, Seattle and Los Angeles being the two main ports of entry for Japanese immigrants.

Interestingly, reporting for the camps was voluntary - the infamous Executive Order 9066. Almost all Japanese Americans did report, as a great many of them felt afraid in what had been their home communities. Some 5,000 moved outside the designated "military zones" which defined the borders of areas defined as "persons excluded from"; those who moved away did not have to report for internment.

Some were fortunate, finding trustworthy friends they could leave their property and eventually return to reclaim it. But most had to sell: businesses, homes, personal effects.

Slightly over 10,000 Italians and Germans were also interned, with the vast majority being Italian-Americans. The camps were set up so hastily, that some ended up with small groups of Italian-Americans sharing space with the Japanese-Americans. Southern CA had a large Italian immigrant population before WWII, and experienced considerable discrimination as a result of Italy being an Axis nation.

One of the unexpected consequences of the Japanese internment experience was the interracial marriage rate. It is much higher for Japanese than for other ethnic Asians. For the first generation, Issei, it's less than 15%. For the Nisei, 2nd generation born in the US, the interracial marriage rate bumped up to roughly 25-30%.

But for the Sansei, 3rd gen (Boomers), the interracial marriage rate jumped to 60+%. For the Yonsei, 4th generation (equivalent to Gen X/Millennials), the interracial marriage percentage is a staggering 80+%. This is notable as the interracial marriage percentage for all Gen X/Millennial Asians is only 46% overall.
 
asp3 said:
I'm sorry but not only were people of Japanese descent interned, their property, possessions and businesses were taken from them and given to non-Japanese people.

The Japanese people here had nothing to do with the Rape of Nanking. In many cases they were US citizens who had been here for decades.

By your logic the brutality exhibited by any group should have repercussions for any member of that group whether they were involved or not.
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You fail to understand back in 1941 they were "Japs" as even the highest level politicians called them. The word "Jap" was on the cover of every newspaper and magazine. This was before people had television with 500 different channels/opinions. We were "ATTACKED" an on a Sunday by a non-Christian nation and that was reason enough for a strong reaction as exemplified by the words of FDR. How does anyone know for certain how many Japanese American would have sided with Japan? Maybe bleeding hearts should weep for the people that got nuclear bombs or the infamous fire bombings dropped on them. Those that were interned could easily read about those held prisoner in Russia and Germany. We are a nation founded on racism with slavery and the genocidal slaughter of the American Indians.
 
fmdog44 said:
We were "ATTACKED" an on a Sunday by a non-Christian nation and that was reason enough for a strong reaction as exemplified by the words of FDR.
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In all fairness to FDR he had received rather hostile communications from California Governor Republican Earl Warren re attacks on Japanese Americans in his state (let me clarify ~ supposedly, Warren supposedly threatened to refrain from protecting the Nisei). According to some revisionist historical thinkers, part of FDR's motivation in interring the Nisei was his desire to protect them from vigilante attack. Despite the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was no such peril in Hawaii and he did not order a mass internment of Japanese-Hawaiians. Whatever the case, it was all a very sad chapter in American history.
 
Fmdog is referring to the fear of a fifth column of enemy aliens assembling from within. It was a fear that was widely held at that time, and before. During WW I there were a lot of people of German descent in South Australia who were eyed very suspiciously by Anglo Australians. Many of them anglicised their names and towns with German sounding names like Handorf were renamed. Handorf became Ambleside. It reverted back to its original name in 1935.

Even the British royal family changed their name from Battenberg to Windsor to avoid being accused of loyalty to Germany during WW I.

Germans were interned in US during both world wars. under the Enemy Aliens Act


Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens
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occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I & World War II. During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act.[1]

With the US entry into World War I after Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, German nationals were automatically classified as "enemy aliens." Two of the four main World War I-era internment camps were located in Hot Springs, N.C. and Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.[2] Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer wrote that "All aliens interned by the government are regarded as enemies, and their property is treated accordingly."

By the time of WWII, the United States had a large population of ethnic Germans. Among residents of the United States in 1940, more than 1.2 million persons had been born in Germany, 5 million had two native-German parents, and 6 million had one native-German parent. Many more had distant German ancestry. During WWII, the United States detained at least 11,000 ethnic Germans, overwhelmingly German nationals.[3] The government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few in internment camps run by the Department of Justice, as related to its responsibilities under the Alien Enemies Act. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained. Similarly, a small proportion of Italian nationals and Italian Americans were interned in relation to their total population in the US. The United States had allowed immigrants from both Germany and Italy to become naturalized citizens, which many had done by then.

In the early 21st century, Congress considered legislation to study treatment of European Americans during WWII, but it did not pass the House of Representatives. Activists and historians have identified certain injustices against these groups. Unlike Italian Americans and Japanese Americans, German Americans have not received an official apology for these events.

Internment of German Americans - Wikipedia
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Actually Warrigal the British royal family changed their name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor. The Battenbergs were related to the British royal family but changed their name to Mountbatten for the same reason. Mountbatten is simply Battenberg translated into English.
 
Sir Mark Oliphant Governor of South Australia 1971
While at Adelaide University in 1927, Sir Marcus Oliphant was accepted by Cambridge University, where he became part of a team whose task was to split the atom. Following the onset of World War 2, Oliphant’s research focus changed to support the war effort. Initially, he was in charge of a team that successfully developed microwave radar. Then, in November 1943, Oliphant moved to the USA to work on the Manhattan Project — the development of the first atomic bomb. Nazi Germany was at the point of developing its own atom bomb and so the race was on. Initially, the bomb was developed for use against Nazi Germany; but after their surrender before the bomb was ready, it was used to force the Japanese to surrender. Two bombs were dropped in August 1945 with devastating results — one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. They remain the only two atomic bombs ever used in warfare.
After the war he returned to Australia, where he publicly opposed the development of atomic weapons as a misuse of atomic power.
'I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use’.
On his return to Australia Oliphant became the first Director of the Australian National University’s Research School of Physical Sciences. After retiring from the ANU in 1967, Oliphant became the State Governor of South Australia in 1971.
Sir Marcus Oliphant retired to Canberra in 1976 and died in 2000.
After the untimely death of his wife Sir Mark became an advocate for voluntary euthanasia.
 
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