Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps • Hacker News Board

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#281

Post by brilliantcode » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

adewinter wrote: post #129

brilliantcode wrote: post #117

The Japanese pre-Cold War were treated unfairly but this pales in comparison to the many hell the Asian region have suffered under Japanese Imperialism. At least they didn't get gassed like the Jews did. At least they didn't get bayonetted like the Chinese in Nanjing en masse in graves or a military unit performing live surgery on them or forcing hundreds of thousands of young Korean women to sexual slavery. It didn'…

"However, it still is nowhere near the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan & Nazi Germany." The only question I have is: So? Why do you feel the need to compare what the US did to other atrocities? You can always find something worse to compare a bad act to. Nothing you said changes the fact that what the US did here was just plain wrong, it definitely shouldn't have happened, and we should do everything in our po…

I'm not trying to minimize or say what the US did was less wrong but I'm arguing against people that use this as a crutch to support their what aboutism that attempts to paint the US in the same light as Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Clearly is night and day difference.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#282

Post by wehadfun » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #200

wehadfun wrote: post #156

It seems uncomfortable, but how does it compare to how the Japanese treated the Chinese during the war? Its easy to look back now and think America was terrible but lets not forget that World War Freaking 2 was happening at the time. If your beloved son just got killed at Perl Harbor you probably would have no issue with this at all. Hell you probably feel like it is not bad enough. Its just like all these self right…

As a Chinese person, I recognize the Japanese did a lot of shitty things in the war and haven't acknowledge much of it, but comparing what they did to what the U.S. did to what the German's did to what the Russian's did is a meaningless exercise in relative privation. I'd hope that a country's conviction is not solely based on what others do and instead based on the principles that they stand for. Secondly, by your j…

Comparing what the Gernams did to what the Russians did sure relative privation:

Comparing what the Japanese did to China to what the Japanese could to the U.S. I do not think is relative privation but I could be wrong

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#283

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:13 PM UTC

chrishacken wrote: post #277

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the cases of Germany and Japan, we won very thoroughly, and then re-did their government and society very thoroughly. In the case of Iraq, we won very thoroughly, and then decided that we should not re-do their government and society. There may not have been the political will to do anything else, but that turned out to be less than effective at transforming Iraq.

"To date, the U.S. has spent more than $60 billion in reconstruction grants to help Iraq get back on its feet after the country was broken by more than two decades of war, sanctions and dictatorship. That works out to about $15 million a day. And yet Iraq's government is rife with corruption and infighting." http://www.cbsnews.com/news/much-of-60b-from-us-to-rebuild-i...

I didn't say we didn't spend money. But if you look at what we did to Germany and Japan, the extent of the control of our occupation, rebuilding their government from the ground up for most of a decade, there's no comparison with Iraq. We wanted to have few people there, and not for long. And it didn't work.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#284

Post by wehadfun » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:27 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #193

wehadfun wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why does that matter? Does one atrocity excuse another? Absolutely if they are related. If you witness a guy setting your neighbors house on fire, then he sets the house across the street on fire. Then you committing the "atrocity" of running him over with your car it is excused. And if a couple of his buddies that were with him die in the process its excused as well.

I think a better analogy in this case is: You witness a guy setting your neighbor's house on fire, then he sets the house across the street on fire. So you find everyone whose eyes are the same color as your neighbor and run over them with your car.

No I think its more like finding everyone with the same gang symbols and running them over.

I know we should say that Japanese Americans and Regular Americans are the same that is true for most circumstances but I think that Japanese Americans have a stronger tie to Japan than a non Japanese American has to the 4 or 5 European countries that their ancestors are from.

I'm not saying the rational for locking up Japanese Americans was good or correct but given the circumstances I understand why it happened and the reasons, in my opinion, were not evil or selfish.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#285

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

wehadfun wrote: post #284

munificent wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better analogy in this case is: You witness a guy setting your neighbor's house on fire, then he sets the house across the street on fire. So you find everyone whose eyes are the same color as your neighbor and run over them with your car.

No I think its more like finding everyone with the same gang symbols and running them over. I know we should say that Japanese Americans and Regular Americans are the same that is true for most circumstances but I think that Japanese Americans have a stronger tie to Japan than a non Japanese American has to the 4 or 5 European countries that their ancestors are from. I'm not saying the rational for locking up Japanes…

Xenophobic racist ranting is pretty much the definition of evil. We can try to explain it away by circumstances, but pretty much one guy spearheaded it all and he was definitely racist and evil.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#286

Post by munificent » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

wehadfun wrote: post #284

munificent wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better analogy in this case is: You witness a guy setting your neighbor's house on fire, then he sets the house across the street on fire. So you find everyone whose eyes are the same color as your neighbor and run over them with your car.

No I think its more like finding everyone with the same gang symbols and running them over. I know we should say that Japanese Americans and Regular Americans are the same that is true for most circumstances but I think that Japanese Americans have a stronger tie to Japan than a non Japanese American has to the 4 or 5 European countries that their ancestors are from. I'm not saying the rational for locking up Japanes…

Are you honestly trying to equate deliberately choosing to wear a gang sign with the nationality of your ancestors which you have no control over?

Of the Japanese interned by these camps, the majority were United States citizens born in the United States.

> I understand why it happened and the reasons, in my opinion, were not evil or selfish.

The official stance of the US government itself after investigating the camps later was that they were a product of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#287

Post by lambertsimnel » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

LyndsySimon wrote: post #271

Koshkin wrote: post #154

It is somewhat interesting that the term 'internment camps' is never used in the original quotes, it is rather 'concentration camps'. (It is possible that the latter term may have been used specifically in reference to the places of internment of the Japanese.)

I think that's because the term "concentration camp" is so heavily associated with the Nazi extermination programs. Likewise, there were Nazi concentration camps that were not designed to kill their occupants, and they're sometimes referred to as "labor camps".

My understanding is that the extermination camps were typically not part of the concentration camp system. Auschwitz was a notable exception.

From http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/thomas-laqueur/devoted-to-terro...

"Auschwitz seems to overshadow all the other camps. It also captures our attention because we know a great deal about it. ...It was the only death camp (Auschwitz II) that was also a large slave labour camp (Auschwitz I), with the result that tens of thousands of slave labourers, having endured selections, random violence and the death marches, survived to bear witness to genocide."

"Most of those killed in the Holocaust were not inmates in concentration camps."

"Much of what we have come to see as the particular moral debasement of the concentration camps was absent in the death camps."

"[Extermination] camps were grotesquely efficient: Sobibor murdered about a quarter of a million people, a quarter as many as Auschwitz-Birkenau in one three-hundredth of the space and half the time. Precisely because of this efficiency, we know relatively little about the dead. There are only three survivors’ accounts from Belzec, where, between 17 March and late December 1942, 434,500 Jews were murdered. As Primo Levi said, we know little of those who were truly at the bottom."

"Conversely, much of the story of the concentration camps does not overlap with that of the Holocaust. The camp system was a latecomer to the project of genocide. There was no representative of the KL [concentration camps] at the Wannsee Conference [which organised the Final Solution]. It was only after the conference that Himmler decided the camps could play a big role, not primarily as sites of immediate extermination but as reservoirs of Jewish slave labour. Only towards the end of the war, as Wachsmann points out, did the majority of Jews find themselves in camps and only for a few weeks in 1938 were they the majority of registered inmates."

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#288

Post by gaius » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:53 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #166

Domenic_S wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised by the same thing. We have a legal process for crossing those borders, and if you circumvent that process you are a criminal. How is that controversial? Separately, if you believe the process is bad, or borders should be open, or whatever -- by all means, fight for that using the frameworks we have.

“If you [break the law] you are a criminal. How is that controversial?” What is legal is not necessarily moral or ethical.

Sure, but a situation in which every individual picks and chooses the laws they agree with doesn't scale.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#289

Post by sushid » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

kmeade wrote: post #265

sushid wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, FDR's Japanese Internment (aka Concentration) camps. Yes, really, FDR's. If you give FDR credit for things like the New Deal (which were of course advocated by him but passed by the Congress), give him a bit of credit for his executive orders. > [The internment of Japanese Americans] were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[0] > Executive Order 9066 w…

Saying "FDR's ... Camps" is like saying "Harry Truman's Victory over Hitler" or "Ronald Reagan's Space Shuttle." Again, it is an extreme simplification and an attempt to manipulate the reader into associating the act with the individual. I'm amazed that many (presumably young) people want to wallow in this crap, apparently feeling superior to people who have been dead for decades. You have no reason to feel superior…

That's interesting because we learn to associate positive policies and refer to them as FDR's New Deal (bills passed by Congress/signed by FDR), JFK's Peace Corp, Nixon's EPA, etc.

It's true that these policies are not made by one individual. But when we're crediting the presidents who merely signed bills passed by the Congress, should we not at least be give the same weight when they sign an executive order?

And I'm amazing that you're here generalizing what "presumably young people" do/think. It's not a matter of trying to feel superior.

Presidents are not good or bad, but rather, commit an array of decisions that lie in the spectrum. The decision to intern innocent US citizens (further regrettably by abusing data handed over by the US Census), unfortunately, lies in the spectrum of bad.

To only revere his positive actions and downplay the bad decisions made during his presidency (the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 is another one) would be doing disservice to those interested in learning about US history (or history for that matter).

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#290

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC

DarkKomunalec wrote: post #57

evan_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of already is happening in the US right now in the form of "Family detention centers" intended to detain non-citizens slated for deportation. If Trump's administration seriously plans on "rounding up" millions of people for deportation, they'll have to be lodged somewhere while they are tried (assuming they're granted trials, who knows anymore) and travel arrangements are made. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/…

Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial. The explanation that makes the most sense to me is, some people see free movement across borders as a human right, while others view a country as their home, and so should have the right to decide who to let in.

> Strange how enforcing borders began to be seen as controversial

It would be strange, but that never really happened in substantial way. Most of what gets framed that way by one side of the debate is not controversy over the idea of "enforcing borders", but rather:

1. Controversy over whether the particular preferences, limitations, and exclusions of current immigration policy are desirable, and

2. Controversy over whether current and proposed mechanisms for enforcing the current preferences, limitations, and exclusions in immigration policy (which, in the case of proposed mechanisms, often involve creating additional limitations and exclusions, and more rarely additional preferences) are desirable.

This gets generalized into claims that "enforcing borders" has become controversial as a means of avoiding debate over the specific details that are actually controversial.