On Wednesday, from 6-7.30pm, The Japanese Cultural Association will present a lecture and Q&A session with Glenn Kumekawa ‘56, Professor Emeritus at the University of Rhode Island. The event will take place in Salomon 001, and will address ‘The WWII Japanese American Internment Experience’.
I highly recommend that the readers of the blog attend this event, as it is certain to be informative and intellectually invigorating.
I feel that the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII is especially important for students, and the general public, to encounter and understand. Many people are quick to ascribe blame to America for her supposed guilt in this matter, when in reality the tragedy was the direct consequence of an executive order (9066) issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (or, FDR the Tyrant), on February 19, 1942.
It should be noted that FDR the Tyrant, a Democrat, is still praised by modern Democrats because of his refusal to apply any principled limits on the use of the power of the State. Whatever FDR thought was good, he had no qualms about using the State — often, when the rubber met the road, in the form of the barrel of a gun — to achieve.
And with the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, Senator Joseph Biden, openly praising FDR the Tyrant’s actions during the Great Depression and his overall political philosophy, all lovers of liberty should be visibly worried. What would a President Obama do, or a Vice President Biden advocate, when finally able to exercise the power emanating from the office of the President?
My thoughts here have been quick and mostly observational, but it truly is worth wondering, ‘Would Japanese-Americans have been put into internment campus if a limited-government, conservative Republican were President, instead of FDR?’ Remember, the conservative standard-bearer of the day, Senator Robert Taft, opposed both the Nuremberg Trials (labeling them ‘victor’s justice’) and America’s involvement in the warmongering NATO. Do you honestly think that he would have ordered the forceful removal of residents and/or citizens from their homes, and then dumped them into quasi-concentration camps?
No!
Eric Foner writes in The Story of American Freedom: ‘One searches the wartime record in vain for public protests among non-Japanese. In Congress, only Senator Robert Taft spoke out against the greatest violation of civil liberties since the end of slavery. Groups publicly committed to fighting discrimination, from the Communist Party to the NAACP and the American Jewish Committee, either defended the internment or remained silent’. (P. 241)
Therefore, vote wisely today. You just may get the forceful, violent government that Obama and Biden both advocate.
SBQ
So are you saying you never want the state to violate civil rights? Surely there must be times when we need the government to keep an eye on our enemies so that they don’t destroy us.
I’m not saying that the internment of Japanese-Americans was right (I don’t). But how can you justify saying that the state shouldn’t have the power to keep us safe?
I’m not saying that I think*
I need to proof-read.
Too true on the NATO matter.
Fyi, German Americans were also interned. I find nothing wrong with internment if it is conducted humanely. In most cases in the US, they were. This is standard war-time proceedings.
P.s. Your use of “FDR the Tyrant” is distracting and unnecessary. He is certainly less tyrannical than modern day neo-cons. Gitmo, anybody?