Japanese relocations
2003-02-11 19:01:24+00 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Interesting exchanges going on between Eric of IsThatLegal? and CPO Sparkey at Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing about the history of the World War 2 Japanese Relocation Camps as they relate to Howard Coble's defense of the camps. CPO Sparkey talks about the evacuation order and encrypted messages which started it and has a little bit about the Japanese response. Eric talks about the DeWitt memorandum, responds, pointing out that those who implemented knew nothing of the messages, and has a few words about Coble's dancing around an apology.
A few things that might help put all this in context. The Museum of the City of San Francisco has a section on the Evacuation and Internment of San Francisco Japanese. Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku actually helps CPO Sparkey's case, the bit on the Tule Lake Segregation Center says that:
As it turned out, the "loyalty" or "disloyalty" of the Japanese-American internees depended principally on their answers to Questions 27 and 28. Question 27 asked the internees if they were willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States. Number 28 asked whether they would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States, and foreswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor and to any other foreign government.
Given that the draft had been in place for a while, I have trouble seeing this as singling out anyone. I didn't know, when I wrote a message on one of these boards, that by the time the Manzanar camp was built LA was already sucking water out of the Owens Valley.