Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (660325)	11/15/2004 7:48:22 AM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

"Such an obfuscation," you exclaim? The typical pseudo-intellectual remark... Anyway, as you say, being evasive tends to cause questions to be repeated. But if you're finding it difficult, allow me to offer the question here once again... Besides, what's with the endless diatribes and ancient outcries and protests? It's Monday, don't you have laundry to do? So, again, haven't these issues been hashed and rehashed for 65 years already? Whatever... you surely do whine a lot... jokeawhenever.com GZ

To: E who wrote (660325)	11/15/2004 9:18:43 AM
From: J. C. Dithers	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

Well, I'm not so cranky with a fresh morning. I'll take on another of your "questions." The one about the study that "had demonstrated a high degree of loyalty among Japanese-Americans." Demonstrated, mind you. And the results so explosive as to be hidden from sight. Have you asked yourself how such a study was possible? Have you looked into the methodology? How would you conduct such a study? I mean you, E. Don't even constrain yourself to a wartime emergency situation or the primitive technology of the 1940's. How would you do it today? Say 100,000 people of Iraqi descent are living in the USA. Your mission is to demonstrate whether, in the event of a conflict with Iraq, they would be loyal to the U.S. or to their land of heritage. How would you go about conducting this study? Don't bother with the details, just give us a general idea of what your methodology would be to achieve a valid result.

To: E who wrote (660325)	11/18/2004 10:37:01 AM
From: J. C. Dithers	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The California West Coast in the days after Pearl Harbor.... E, I happen to be reading a book on the Doolittle raid of April 1942 ("The First Heroes"), and in laying out the background the author describes what the West Coast was like in those days. I have hand-typed a bit of this and thought you may wish to read it. The entire country was in fact already in a state of panic. As early as the night of December 7th three air-raid alerts had screamed through the streets of San Francisco, and the following morning the commander of defenses for the West Coast told reporters that enemy planes had been spotted overhead, "that they were tracked out to sea ... Why bombs were not dropped, I do not know ... Death and destruction are likely to come to this city at any moment." Hollywood Hills residents insisted on installing their own battery of anti-aircraft guns, while pitchfork-armed farmers walked the beaches of Puget Sound, looking for would-be invaders. Eventually the postattack trauma bloomed into mass hysteria. A Hawaiian dog was reported "barking in Morse code to Japanese subs offshore," and a Honolulu newspaper announced that enemy farmers on the islands were planting tomatoes in a secret method that would direct Axis planes to nearby military installations. It was only the beginning of the dark days. On December 8 Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish shipped his institution's Declaration of Independence, Constitutional Bill of Rights, Gutenberg Bible, and Magna Carta to Fort Knox for safekeeping, while the Secret Service arranged for the president to use Al Capone's bulletproof limousine. Marine-manned machine-gun emplacements popped up overnight across the Federal District, and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau urged FDR to have tanks standing by on Pennsylvania Avenue (Roosevelt declined). There were so many accounts of mob violence (both in physical attacks and in ransacking homes and businesses) against anyone who looked Asian that eventually the first lady felt compelled to point out in her nationally syndicated newspaper column that not every person of Japanese descent living in the United Sates was a traitor or spy. The Los Angeles Times replied: "When she starts bemoaning the plight of treacherous snakes we call Japanese, with apologies to all snakes, she has reached the point where she should be forced to retire from public life." Later that same newspaper's headlines would scream: L.A AREA RAIDED! JAP PLANES IMPERIL SANTA MONICA, SEAL BEACH, EL SEGUNDO, REDONDO, LONG BEACH, HERMOSA, SIGNAL HILL. Honestly I have no wish to continue our debate of the internment. However, I think the debate 60 years after the event became much too sterile as we bantered back and forth from the comfort and security of our present lives. I was just a child then but old enough to remember vividly the fear and uncertainty that I saw in my parents and in my school and town, even on the East Coast. Probably not having experienced anything like this in your own lifetime--the very real possibility that your way of life has suddenly ended and your country is in danger of imminent invasion by powerful enemies--it may be difficult for you to fully empathize with the feelings of citizens then or the plight faced by our leaders charged with saving the nation. If history has proven the fears to be overblown, that is really not relevant--what matters is what people saw and rationally believed then. Perhaps with imagination you can cast yourself into those times, the Empire of Japan having attacked without warning and destroyed most of your Pacific navy, not knowing what aggressive move by Japan would come next, knowing of the barbarity of Japanese troops in China, facing a world war on two fronts for which your military is ill-prepared, bearing responsibility for the fate of your nation--all while being forced to decide what to do about 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry living and moving about freely on your undefended West Coast, the site of much defense industry. I do not expect to change your mind on this subject. We all differ as to the standards upon which we base our judgments of past events and those responsible for them. I just happen to be reading a book that brings to life some of the context within which those long-ago decisions were made and thought I would share them. JC