OfTheCross
Veteran
The same way we did Japanese Americans ? 
A fair question asked on C-Span during this segment.
A fair question asked on C-Span during this segment.
Why didn't we put Italians and Germans in concentration camps during WWII
- Thread starter OfTheCross
- Start date
get these nets
Veteran
Some Italian Americans were rounded up and put in camps.
German Americans just Anglicized their names and passed.
German Americans just Anglicized their names and passed.
OfTheCross
Veteran
Proclamation 2527 and the Internment of Italian Americans | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans
The surveillance and detention of Italian Americans after Pearl Harbor is a little-known piece of WWII history.
Not nearly to the same extent, though, because racism.
...and the fact that Japan declared war and directly attacked America on American soil. Germany and Italy had much different war aims.
get these nets
Veteran
Interested in how the author answered the questioned on the show.
EDIT:found the segment
Host asks him a two part question, the second is about internment camps.
roughly three minutes
Last edited:
get these nets
Veteran
He is talking about in Etats- Unis
During WW2, the treatment of Italian immigrants and their children HERE.
Not civilians in Italy.
the cac mamba
Veteran
this is actually an interesting question. we all know the obvious reason, but at the end of the day, it wasnt germany and italy that pearl harbored us; it was japan. the anti-japanese sentiment in 1942 must have been 
but i wonder if it was germany who had bombed us
but i wonder if it was germany who had bombed us
Pearl Harbor is the obvious choice, but German Americans felt so comfortable in their whiteness that they used to have matches and rallies in support of Hitler. They even had paramilitary Nazi groups.
Anyone thinking racism didn't make a difference is fooling themselves. Even to this day, the narratives around the people are different. When people criticize Germany, they don't talk about the Germans in general, they just talk about what terrible things the Nazis in particular did and Germans in general are absolved at best and lightly condemned as "complicit" at worse. Whereas when people talk about Japan, they're always trying to build up the Japanese people in general as some sort of bloodthirsty war robots down to the last woman and child and completely dehumanize them. To the American public it's not a few fascists that led the Japanese into war, it was the deep heartfelt desire of every single person with Japanese blood and they deserved all the slaughter that befell them.
But Pearl Harbor is a factor too. And in fact the direct spurring of the internment was a coastal shelling followed by a ridiculous "fog of war" blunder that elevated fears on the west coast. I talked about this in my Historical Beefs series.
But Pearl Harbor is a factor too. And in fact the direct spurring of the internment was a coastal shelling followed by a ridiculous "fog of war" blunder that elevated fears on the west coast. I talked about this in my Historical Beefs series.
On the night of February 23, 1942, Nishino’s submarine surfaced just off the shore of Ellwood Oil Field. Nishino lined up the oil facility in the submarine's sights and shelled dem fools for the next half hour, dropping 25 six-inch shells on their heads. Luckily, he did not manage to hit the fuel tanks, though he did destroy several buildings. There were no casualties. But he had struck fear into his target.
As the submarine left, a man living on the coastline mistakenly reported seeing the submarine head south, to Los Angeles. The confused witness thought he saw the sub flashing signal lights to someone on shore. Terror overcame America.
Why had the Japanese attacked such a meaningless facility? It didn’t make sense. It must be a diversion! They must be readying a bigger attack somewhere else!
The entire military structure of the West Coast went on high alert.
The following night, radar scanners picked up something off the Los Angeles coast. It disappeared before they could ID it. The commander ordered a blackout. A few minutes later somebody was tripping and (falsely) reported seeing enemy planes. They set off the air raid sirens. At 3:06am some oblivious fool in Santa Monica launched a weather balloon of all things. Soldiers saw the weather balloon moving across the sky and mistook it for a Japanese plane. All hell broke loose.
At 3:15am the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade let loose from over 250 anti-aircraft guns. Other gunners began firing 50-cal machine guns randomly into the air. Soon gunners were mistaking the explosions and smoke from anti-aircraft shells for enemy aircraft in the sky, and began aiming at each other’s exploding shells. The shelling continued for 59 minutes, now known as “The Battle of Los Angeles.”
By next morning there had been 1400 anti-aircraft shells fired and 5 civilian deaths due to auto accidents and heart attacks in the midst of the melee. No persons or aircraft were hit by the shells, but a lot of property was damaged.
And there was no Japanese attack the whole time.
In the confused morning after, some Angelenos dragged a 51-year-old Japanese woman to the cops. They claimed she had been turning her lights on and off and closing her drapes in a suspicious manner, signaling to the (nonexistent) Japanese planes.
President Roosevelt had already signed the declaration announcing the Japanese internment a month earlier, but there had been opposition to the idea and nothing was set yet. Now California was terrified, and it was a done deal.
Over 110,000 Japanese persons on the West Coast would be pulled out of their homes, forced inland, and keep in internment camps in the deserts until 1945.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Internment of German Americans - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
they did during WWI as well
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The Great Paper Chaser
Because they were white and the allied forces were white.