World War Two Continued

Monday April 23, 2012

     Today was our last Monday discussion.  It still amazes me how fast this semester went by!  I have never blogged before, but I really think that doing this after every class discussion has actually helped me understand the materials better.  We ended our discussion about World War Two today, but there were several interesting discussion questions throughout the class.
     First, we talked about a quote from Elmer Davis.  Davis said, "that a democracy fighting a total war will fight it more enthusiastically and effectively if it knows what is going on, and if it feels that it's leaders trust it with as much information as it can possibly be given without aid and comfort to the enemy."  I agree with this statement because the government should tell the people what is going on and not try to hide information.  Hiding information makes the American people not trust its government.  However, I also think that there is a certain amount of information that should be kept within military limits because it could be hazardous to troops if the enemies discover it.  Throughout the years, the government has struggled with figuring out exactly how much information that the American people should be let in on.  For instance, during the Vietnam War, the government reported the total numbers of Viet Cong that were being killed, but they lied about the numbers of American soldiers that were killed.  The government and news medias also embellished the numbers for both sides.  I give a lot of "props" to President Kennedy because after the horrendous events during the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy admitted to the American people that he was wrong and the event was a disaster.  People respected him, not because he made a huge mistake, but because he came out and told people that he was wrong and was sorry.  This proves that honesty is the best policy.
     After the attacks on Pearl Harbor, over 120,000 people of Japanese heritage along the Pacific coast were forced to enter detention camps.  The majority of these people were legal U.S. citizens and their rights were set aside when they were forced to leave their homes.  I believe that this action was an impulse decision based on paranoia.  People at this time were afraid of invasion and collaboration and since the Japanese were the ones who led the attack, it was only logical that the government would blacklist them and send them away.  This act, however, went against laws that were established in the early 1900s that said Japanese had the right to become naturalized American citizens, own land, and to marry outside of their race.  Putting Japanese Americans in internment camps made America look bad because the government had given them rights (and they were technically citizens) then took them all away just because of what the country of Japan was in control of.  Many of these people had completely broken ties to their homeland, did not affiliate with the traditions, and considered themselves regular Americans.  At the time America was defending freedom abroad, but declining it at home.  There is some evidence to support that there was an economic motivation to collecting the Japanese people.  During this time a lot of big American companies wanted to get their hands on the lands that Japanese Americans owned in order to grow their own establishment.  The idea of putting Japanese Americans in internment camps is difficult for people to think about today because Japanese Americans are considered the "model minority."  Many Japanese Americans have high educations, have good jobs, and make lots of money.  After the September 11 attacks, I actually thought that the government would relive their mistakes, only with Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent.  Fortunately, the government learned from its mistakes and this did not happen in 2001.
     On the same topic, Attorney General Biddle opposed Japanese internment.  He said it was unnecessarily cruel and the government should not arrest people based on assumptions.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans helped to rebuild the warships and many went to fight in Europe for America.  Biddle said that Japanese internment was a HUGE undertaking and the government left many questions unanswered before they started rounding up Japanese Americans.  The government did not know where to put the people, how to pay for it, what the people would do, or who would be in charge of them.  This argument suggests that the internment of Japanese Americans was, in fact, and impulse decision based on paranoia.  Biddle also said that it was funny how no Japanese Americans were rounded up on Hawaii.  The Japanese American population on Hawaii was phenomenal and the task would have proved impossible.
     What is also interesting during this time is the level of racial talk and slanders.  Even people that were in favor of civil rights supported Japanese internments!  These people often went along with it because there was a strong sense of patriotism and fear.  It was easier to go along with it and support the government's decision than to speak out against the internment.  This shows the hypocrisy of advocators of civil rights:  everyone is equal, unless something bad happens to the country then its okay if those people are targeted and their rights taken away.
     After the events unfolded, President Roosevelt waited to release the internees.  There are a few good reasons as to why he waited.  First, 1944 was an election year and he wanted to make sure he had the majority support of the people; Roosevelt did not want to appear weak.  Now, I believe that he would have won the election anyway, but I understand that he did not want to take any risks.  I also think that Roosevelt waited because he was taking the economic status into account.  When the Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps they basically lost everything.  Upon release these people had to find houses, jobs, food, and basically start their entire lives over again.  These people also probably did not want to go back to their old neighborhoods because many times it was their neighbors who turned them in to the government.  So with all this, Roosevelt might have wanted to make sure that the economy could handle such an event without being flipped upside-down.
     In the end, America has always portrayed itself to be a nation of equality, but during the 1940s America sent mixed messages around the world.  This time was the early beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, but yet the government put basic rights aside when collecting the Japanese Americans.  More and more people began to oppose of the internment camps when they began being compared to the concentration camps for Jews in Europe.  Supreme Court judges (and other governmental officials) from this time have written in their memoirs that they regretted their decisions and support of Japanese internments.  Many people agree that it was the biggest mistakes of not only their careers, but their lives. The Civil Rights Movements would later used the internment of Japanese Americans, along with several other events, as their base against the government in their fight for equality and rights.