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American racism during WWII?

Kevin_Lowe said:
Probably more significant was the Australian and American habit of murdering captured or surrendered Japanese soldiers and taking trophies from Japanese dead.

Wikipedia link.

If this sort of thing is news to you, it might explain why I think I recall you expressing pro-war views in the past. Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to support its repetition.
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It's not news. Just recently the HBO mini-series Pacific dealt with this very subject. Perhaps it developed from the Japanese treatment of American prisoners from the start of the war e.g. Bataan Death March. Or the Japanese habit of feigning surrender. The Pacific Theater was brutal warfare. Neither side played by the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Does that justify it? No, but in the context of times it makes it comprehensible.

Those who don't understand the context of history are doomed to misunderstand it.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Probably more significant was the Australian and American habit of murdering captured or surrendered Japanese soldiers and taking trophies from Japanese dead.
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There's a "lovely" image from Life magazine of a pretty young thing sending a "thank you" note to her boyfriend for the present he sent her. The present, sitting on her desk, is a Japanese skull.
 
lionking said:
Nazi and facist sympathisers were never rounded up, but all 110,000 Japanese-Americans were interned, often under terrible conditions.
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Based on that quote, I'm not sure that book is reliable unless there is some qualifying statment that was omitted.

Not all Japanese-Americans were interred. In Hawaii they interred about 10% of the Japanese-Americans. The internments were most in the Western states. On the east coast, they didn't round up all the Japanese.

Nazi and fascist sympathizers were rounded up. Just not every German and Italian on the East Coast.
 
Spindrift said:
Based on that quote, I'm not sure that book is reliable unless there is some qualifying statment that was omitted.

Not all Japanese-Americans were interred. In Hawaii they interred about 10% of the Japanese-Americans. The internments were most in the Western states. On the east coast, they didn't round up all the Japanese.

Nazi and fascist sympathizers were rounded up. Just not every German and Italian on the East Coast.
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The fear was that while Germany's ability to invade the US was limited Japan was considered a threat - if not for actual invasion than for making a hash of things. That Niihau incident where a downed Japanese pilot from Pearl Harbor convinced some Japanese Americans to go on a killing spree was probably worse than Pearl Harbor itself.

On the East Coast, the biggest threat was the American Bund. That was being watched like a hawk but was already reduced to a pale shadow.
 
Spindrift said:
It's not news.
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To Lionking it is. Are you Lionking?

Just recently the HBO mini-series Pacific dealt with this very subject. Perhaps it developed from the Japanese treatment of American prisoners from the start of the war e.g. Bataan Death March. Or the Japanese habit of feigning surrender. The Pacific Theater was brutal warfare. Neither side played by the Marquess of Queensberry rules. Does that justify it? No, but in the context of times it makes it comprehensible.

Those who don't understand the context of history are doomed to misunderstand it.
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Ah yes. Look what those dastardly Japanese made us do! :rolleyes:

The idea that if you don't condone war crimes, it's just because you don't understand how it was back then is malignant nonsense. I do not accept special pleading when it comes to war crimes. If it's a crime for them to do it, it's a crime for us to do it. If they don't get to excuse themselves by pointing the finger at someone else, we don't get to either.

You don't have the moral right to condemn Nazi and Japanese atrocities unless you condemn "your" side's atrocities as well. So will I see you in the "holohoax" threads defending the Nazis? Or are you going to grow up and accept the idea that we have our own share of atrocities to acknowledge, and that downplaying them the way the holocaust deniers downplay Nazi atrocities makes you very similar to them?
 
kookbreaker said:
That Niihau incident where a downed Japanese pilot from Pearl Harbor convinced some Japanese Americans to go on a killing spree was probably worse than Pearl Harbor itself.
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How many? One, IIRC. Maybe two. And they were born in Japan, yes?

And the pilot's fate is certainly a good reminder of the old rule, "Don't shoot him, you'll only piss him off."
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
To Lionking it is. Are you Lionking?



Ah yes. Look what those dastardly Japanese made us do! :rolleyes:

The idea that if you don't condone war crimes, it's just because you don't understand how it was back then is malignant nonsense. I do not accept special pleading when it comes to war crimes. If it's a crime for them to do it, it's a crime for us to do it. If they don't get to excuse themselves by pointing the finger at someone else, we don't get to either.

You don't have the moral right to condemn Nazi and Japanese atrocities unless you condemn "your" side's atrocities as well. So will I see you in the "holohoax" threads defending the Nazis? Or are you going to grow up and accept the idea that we have our own share of atrocities to acknowledge, and that downplaying them the way the holocaust deniers downplay Nazi atrocities makes you very similar to them?
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Where did I say I condoned the atrocities? I said I understood them. Not the same thing.

I can understand the twisted logic the Nazi's used to justify the extermination of the Jews and others. Doesn't mean I agree with it or even think it rational, but I do understand it.

Americans did commit atrocities, no doubt about it. When are you going to grow up and learn the world is not a simple case of black and white? It's a complex world out there and not everything is a simple dichotomy. During a full scale war for survival it gets even more complex. So while I loathe the fact that the Allies committed atrocities during WWII, I'm glad the Allies won. Now whether or now they could have won without doing that is for revisionists to second guess ad nauseum.
 
Gawdzilla said:
How many? One, IIRC. Maybe two. And they were born in Japan, yes?
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Two - a man and his wife (the wife later claimed to be innocent but it is doubtful). But it surprised folks as they had shown no signs of being anti-American suddenly did this.
 
lionking said:
So were there strategic military reasons for internment and calling for extermination of Japanese, or was it purely racist?
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I don't think anybody can look at the propaganda cartoons and posters (including those by Dr. Seuss) and conclude that racism wasn't deeply ingrained in the American psyche.

Including this one.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
To Lionking it is. Are you Lionking?



Ah yes. Look what those dastardly Japanese made us do! :rolleyes:

The idea that if you don't condone war crimes, it's just because you don't understand how it was back then is malignant nonsense. I do not accept special pleading when it comes to war crimes. If it's a crime for them to do it, it's a crime for us to do it. If they don't get to excuse themselves by pointing the finger at someone else, we don't get to either.

You don't have the moral right to condemn Nazi and Japanese atrocities unless you condemn "your" side's atrocities as well. So will I see you in the "holohoax" threads defending the Nazis? Or are you going to grow up and accept the idea that we have our own share of atrocities to acknowledge, and that downplaying them the way the holocaust deniers downplay Nazi atrocities makes you very similar to them?
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Moral Equivilency much?
 
lionking said:
Firstly, anyone who knows my posting history understands I'm not a US basher, quite the opposite in fact. This thread has no hidden agenda.

I was reading the review of a new book called "Moral Combat: A History of World War II" by Michael Burleigh, which I think I will purchase. While the book rightly covers the atrocities of the Nazis and Japanese, it doesn't spare the allies, particularly the US. A couple of passages in the review:

Interning Americans of japanese descent was very wrong. The japanese Americans who did serve in the US military did an exemplary job.

And:



So were there strategic military reasons for internment and calling for extermination of Japanese, or was it purely racist?
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The wipe out all of the japs is misunderstood. japanese soldiers usually didn't surrender whereas germans and italian soldiers often did. It was necessary to kill all of the japanese except the few who actually did give up because if they weren't they would try to kill you.

Towards the end of the war japanese soldiers did start surrendering and these prisoners weren't killed.
 
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