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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (31027)	10/6/2001 1:42:42 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

E, I don't recall saying that I now believe what we did was wrong. I don't know whether it was or not. St. Bill said this: You're arguing that in retrospect what we did to Japanese Americans was wrong but at the time, understandable. and to it, you replied, Hi Bill, you have a gift for succinctness! Yes, that's just what I'm saying.... And in this post you again take umbrage at the idea that the media and politicians might have manipulated people. To that, I already replied, "You attempted to rationalize the shame of those camps by saying they represented "the will of the people." I pointed out that the media, and politicians, sometimes (i hope you're sitting down, this will be a shock!) manipulate public opinion...Inflammatory lies and images were promulgated and widely disseminated." It would appear that such possibility is unthinkable to you. The Director of the FBI and the Attorney General and those who had in 1941 just completed the ten year study that showed that Japanese-Americans were exceptionally loyal citizens are not the ONLY Americans who knew at the time that the internments were shameful. I hope I would have joined those individuals in their dissent. Moreover, not a one of us will ever be able to prove that no acts of espionage or sabotage, or other dastardly deeds, would have occurred had the internment never been done. History it what it is, and we cannot re-invent it to prove a point. Great news! We don't HAVE to!!! We have a control group! Because... IN HAWAII JAPANESE- AMERICANS WEREN'T INTERNED BECAUSE THE LOCAL ECONOMY DEPENDED ON THEM! (Does this ring a bell? I keep reminding you...) and guess what?.... No sabotage! No dastardly deeds! In spite of the fact that there were 3800% more of them there than in LA, LA where these Americans were torn from their lives, incarcerated, often malnourished, and robbed blind. Even the aged and infirm. Even orphan toddlers with one drop of Japanese blood. "Vipers" they were called in the newspapers. All of them. ""[a] viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched." the LA Times editorialized. And not only that, nobody was ever charged! Couldn't they have found just ONE spy, ONE saboteur, among the thousands and thousands arrested for being vipers, I mean Japanese Americans? JC, you can't change history. But you can say to the descendents of those Japanese Americans and to your fellow Americans, "As an American citizen, I am ashamed of what our country did then, and deeply sorry for the protracted injustice and suffering our country, and politicians, and parts of the media, visited upon you and your American family." You can stop making excuses. Every time you do that, you update that historical outrage and the shame of it, imo.