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

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#351

Post by adrienne » Sun, Dec 11, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #305

godson_drafty wrote: post #248

Whenever looking at these pictures, it's worthwhile to consider how white (or any other color) Americans living in Japan were treated after war was declared. Oh, that's right. There weren't any! The American government had some unique challenges in maximizing their chances of winning the war against a zealous and absolutely ruthless enemy (Japan). It would have been extremely irresponsible not to at least attempt to…

It is in fact not worthwhile to consider how "white Americans living in Japan" were treated, because Japanese-Americans are American citizens, simultaneously not answerable to the crimes of Imperial Japan and owed a basic obligation of the defense of their liberty by their fellow American citizens. The internment of Japanese-Americans is a national disgrace because it harmed the fabric of the entire country, and ever…

If only that latter thing were true. It's not. It's especially not after years of the Republicans gutting public education and pushing expurgated, jingoistic, pro-American-exceptionalism textbooks through school boards everywhere.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#352

Post by laumars » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #338

laumars wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the point you're making but you are quoting numbers of suffering due to war which defeats the purpose of arguing the suffering saved by going to war. Plus the American involvement wasn't out of humanitarian reasons either. They only joined the war after getting attacked by Japan themselves. Which, which since I support retaliatory action if another party has already initiated war, would mean the US follo…

How does quoting the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese defeat the purpose of arguing the suffering saved by the Americans going to war with the Japanese? Yes, war causes suffering. It can also prevent suffering. This would only be contradictory if I were for some reason arguing that all war is good, which I most certainly am not. I would argue that the US did join the war partly out of humanitaria…

> How does quoting the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese defeat the purpose of arguing the suffering saved by the Americans going to war with the Japanese?

Because you are using the sorrow of war to justify the means of war. It's a cyclic argument with each new participant upping the stakes; each time bringing about more suffering.

In the case of the America vs Japan conflict during WW2, America's "humanitarianism" lead to two nuclear bomb being dropped causing around two hundred thousands casualties - many of who suffered long deaths from radiation exposure. Yes it shortened the war, but at what cost? We'll never know which hypothetical scenario would have saved the most lives but it's fair to say that America's involvement did contribute to large scale suffering too.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#353

Post by laumars » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #343

laumars wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the point you're making but you are quoting numbers of suffering due to war which defeats the purpose of arguing the suffering saved by going to war. Plus the American involvement wasn't out of humanitarian reasons either. They only joined the war after getting attacked by Japan themselves. Which, which since I support retaliatory action if another party has already initiated war, would mean the US follo…

It was attitudes like that, that the US couldn't engage first, which forced the hand of the US leadership. They needed Japan to attack first, so they did everything they could to bring that about. After Pearl Harbor everything fell into place. Germany and Japan could be tackled not from a diplomatic perspective, or via proxies, but directly.

I'm not actually against sending troops to support allies when war has been thrust upon them. In that kind of situation I'd argue that America wouldn't have started the war even if they did intervene before Perl Harbour as the Germans and Japanese were already at war with most of the rest of the world. It's more the instigation of war I was arguing against rather than retaliation.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#354

Post by jlillyreed » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 3:47 PM UTC

sctb wrote: post #205

jlillyreed wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like to think that the "West" has progressed since then. You might like to think so, but you'd be VERY VERY wrong. This year Trump surrogates began justifying their proposal to create a muslim registry by saying that the Japanese Internment gave precedence for their desired actions.

Yes, the no-politics experiment has ended ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 ), but this comment is not great for HN in any case. When discussing controversial topics, the bar is actually higher for civility and substantiveness, and we need to especially avoid introducing flamewar topics without anything new to say as the guidelines ask of us. We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombina…

> assuming the factual part of your comment is true, it isn't really off topic in an already-highly-politicized thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/japanese-inter...

Is that a good enough source?

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#355

Post by 0xfeba » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #82

0xfeba wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It's a facade. Especially during the Carter, Nixon, HW Bush, etc. eras, culminating in Bush Jr's "They hate us for our Freedoms" speech after 9/11. No, they hate us for our overly zealous anti-communism that drove us to forcefully prop up dictatorships/extremist groups (Panama, Cuba, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda, etc.), and then vacate when things went sour. Time and time, and time again we did this in the past…

Communists of various stripes murdered somewhere around 100 million people in the last century. What, exactly, counts as "overly zealous" in that context?

Sure. But the US doesn't care until it thinks it can use the opportunity to threaten the USSR/Russia. And "overzealous" (not sure how I managed to type overly zealous instead) means staging myopic, sometimes protracted wars or military action of dubious to no (or negative) benefit for the American people: Panama (because a corrupt dictator wasn't following orders anymore), Cambodia, Vietnam, and now Afghanistan, Iraq.

That is, it's all under guise of "fighting communism", or more specifically, the Russians, which could be believed if they were actually deterred by it and didn't just think the US was a war-hungry power bent on global domination. Well, in the few cases the military action was actually successful instead of turning out to be a national disgrace.

This all seems to trace back to Eisenhower's stiffing aid post-war to Russia and further by the Truman Doctrine. I say that Russia has never had an interest in invading the US, but our ballistic foreign policy has only emboldened them to replace us as the foremost world power.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#356

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:44 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…

It's more like finding their family and running them over. That'll show them to be born as the wrong person!

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#357

Post by mikeash » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 12:31 AM UTC

laumars wrote: post #352

mikeash wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does quoting the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese defeat the purpose of arguing the suffering saved by the Americans going to war with the Japanese? Yes, war causes suffering. It can also prevent suffering. This would only be contradictory if I were for some reason arguing that all war is good, which I most certainly am not. I would argue that the US did join the war partly out of humanitaria…

> How does quoting the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese defeat the purpose of arguing the suffering saved by the Americans going to war with the Japanese? Because you are using the sorrow of war to justify the means of war. It's a cyclic argument with each new participant upping the stakes; each time bringing about more suffering. In the case of the America vs Japan conflict during WW2, America's…

What is wrong with using the sorrow of war to justify the means of war? A thing can be both good and bad. Sometimes war is justified and is a good thing, relative to not going to war. Sometimes war is good because it puts a stop to a bad war. There is nothing contradictory about this.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#358

Post by laumars » Wed, Dec 14, 2016, 9:05 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #357

laumars wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does quoting the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese defeat the purpose of arguing the suffering saved by the Americans going to war with the Japanese? Because you are using the sorrow of war to justify the means of war. It's a cyclic argument with each new participant upping the stakes; each time bringing about more suffering. In the case of the America vs Japan conflict during WW2, America's…

What is wrong with using the sorrow of war to justify the means of war? A thing can be both good and bad. Sometimes war is justified and is a good thing, relative to not going to war. Sometimes war is good because it puts a stop to a bad war. There is nothing contradictory about this.

I get the point you're trying to make but that very statement is contradictory. Something cannot be both good and bad. It can have good and bad effects but overall it cannot coexist in both states simultaneously. And as for why I think it's wrong to use sorrow to justify war; I had already addressed that point about the constant upping of the stakes.

I have a feeling we might have to agree to disagree on those points though because like most philosophical debates, it's really a question of opinion and perspective rather than something that can be empirically proven. That's not to say I haven't appreciated reading your views on this topic though :)