Text 28156, 52 rader
Skriven 2007-04-10 07:12:31 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Alan Hess
Ärende: Marines
===============
Alan Hess -> John Hull wrote:
 AH> Whilst masticating on <Apr 07 07>, John Hull (1:123/789)
 AH> wrote to Alan Hess:

 VH>>>> This, of course, was in support of putting the Niesi in camps
 VH>>>> -- and the sheer racism was breath-taking.

 AH>>> Why should anti-Japanese racism, and support for it, come as a
 AH>>> surprise from a society that was already racist against blacks,
 AH>>> as well as anti-Jewish and anti-almost everyone not white and
 AH>>> Christian, and even some who were (like the Irish?)  At least
 AH>>> there was a war against Japan that was the rationale for that
 AH>>> racism, wrong as it was to paint all Japanese-Americans as
 AH>>> enemies of the nation.  What was the rationale for people like
 AH>>> Father Coughlin and those that listened to and supported him to
 AH>>> hate Jews?  What was the rationale that made the citizenry
 AH>>> (voters) absolutely against raising annual immigration quotas to
 AH>>> allow more people fleeing Hitler, many of whom would have been
 AH>>> Jewish, to enter this country (I don't remember the exact number,
 AH>>> but less than 150,000 Jews entered the U.S. between 1933 and
 AH>>> 1945, despite the fact that his plans for Jews was no secret?
 AH>>> FDR would have committed suicide had he tried to allow more Jews
 AH>>> to immigrate here - as I well know, he couldn't even allow the
 AH>>> less than 1,000 Jews on the St. Louis in.)  What was the reason
 AH>>> to hate blacks, and do such things as bar blacks and Jews from
 AH>>> certain neighborhoods?  *adh*

 JH>> Why don't you quit crying.  There isn't a place in the world that
 JH>> isn't racist.  We're hardly unique in that respect.

 AH> I'm not crying - just stating reality.  Vern shouldn't have been
 AH> surprised by the racism in Geisel's cartoons, considering the society he
 AH> lived in.

 JH>> The gov't overreacted with the Nicei, but there was a lot of
 JH>> circumstantial evidence that caused that reaction.  Most of those
 JH>> people belonged to various Japanese patriotic organizations that
 JH>> supported the Japanese government.  Most of them did so out of
 JH>> respect to their ancestors and to tradition, but we didn't
 JH>> understand that at the time. But given that they were as
 JH>> integrated into our society as they were, it wouldn't have been
 JH>> prudent to NOT pay close attention to them at least initially.

 AH> There's a difference between prudence and locking them all up.

You're judging their actions by today's standards.  That won't fly.  At that
point in time, we didn't have the resources to leave them in place and watch
everybody.  Given Pearl Harbor, and the sentiments of most people at the time,
they're probably lucky they didn't get lynched.

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