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The Truth about Japanese Internment The Rape of NankingIf you were not around or aware in 1942; if you sometimes wonder how Americans could be so . . . well . . . un-American as to haul Japanese and Japanese-Americans off to internment camps; if you are embarrassed that your parents and grandparents could do something so unfair--Read this book. It tells of the systematic torture and murder of more than 300,000 Chinese residents of Nanking – more killed than by both atomic bombs combined. After reading it, be aware that Americans living then knew little of Nazi atrocities but lots about those of the Japanese — they were well documented. Discover by reading this and other books that these Japanese atrocities were not individual aberrations as in MyLai but organized efforts by the Japanese command. Also know that Americans had every reason to believe those same atrocities could and would happen in American cities if they were occupied. Americans saw the Japanese juggernaut crush resistance in the Philippines resulting in the infamous Bataan death march. Americans saw the "invincible" British navy and land forces in the "Unconquerable fortress Singapore" fall swiftly to the Japanese. Americans also suffered the shelling of a west coast city by a Japanese submarine and balloon bombs dropping in the U.S. and Canada. America was, not only fighting for it's very existence, but to prevent these horrors from happening in Honolulu! Add to this, actual reports in San Francisco newspapers of a few resident Japanese celebrating the attack on Pearl Harbor and proudly and openly pledging loyalty to Japan — a disconcerting thought to those afraid of saboteurs. Consider all of this when judging your grandparents. It was a sad chapter in American history.
In hindsight it was unfortunate because many loyal Japanese-Americans
were swept up. But, look at it through the eyes of the Americans who
were there and had reason to be afraid and you might be more tolerant.
"Reparations" have been paid and apologies given to those
unfortunate Japanese - Americans who were interned, both to the loyal
ones and to the ones who might not have been. Japan and Japanese companies
that used American prisoners for slave labor have never even acknowledged
their guilt - much less pay reparations. GIs of all ethnic groups, however,
were also uprooted from their homes and sent to fight a vicious life
or death battle in foreign lands. While we are loudly wringing our hands
over a few that were unfairly but benignly and comfortably interned,
wounded GIs, including Japanese-American ones, rotted, forgotten in
dirty VA hospitals. Neither they nor their dead buddies got reparations.
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