Why didn't we put Italians and Germans in concentration camps during WWII

[get these nets]

@Rhakim
The author answers the host's question directly in the vid in post 6.
He pointed out that the Japanese American enclaves were largely on the West Coast. He didn't mention the man's name, but he was talking about John DeWitt, and the propaganda campaign he waged to get public consent/support for the internment.
Despite Pearl Harbor being attacked, general American public seemed to be level headed enough to not blame Americans of Japanese descent for it. Enter the fear mongering + propaganda campaign.
Story you mentioned seemed to be part of that overall campaign.

 

[Studious one]

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.

Damn, didn’t know this. Wow.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

@Rhakim
The author answers the host's question directly in the vid in post 6.
He pointed out that the Japanese American enclaves were largely on the West Coast. He didn't mention the man's name, but he was talking about John DeWitt, and the propaganda campaign he waged to get public consent/support for the internment.
Despite Pearl Harbor being attacked, general American public seemed to be level headed enough to not blame Americans of Japanese descent for it. Enter the fear mongering + propaganda campaign.
Story you mentioned seemed to be part of that overall campaign.

I remember that and am actually surprised that I haven't written it about it before here. It must have been something I read up on while I was researching the narrative but ended up not including.

 

[Studious one]

“We”? I’m pretty sure you mean “they”. Black peoples were worried about their own rights, rightfully so.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

@Passionate1!'s comment reminded me that Malcolm X died with a Japanese internment survivor cradling his head, trying to encourage him to hold on in his last moments. Her name was Yuri Kochiyama, she had become an activist due to her family's internment experience and met Malcolm X when she was arrested during a primarily Black CORE campaign in Brooklyn to end discriminatory hiring. They ended up corresponding for a couple years. She held weekly meetings with Black activists out of her apartment, had Malcolm X meet with a group of atomic bomb survivors, and attended his Organization of Afro-American Unity school in Harlem. She was attending his talk at the Audubon Ballroom when he was shot and rushed the stage to try to help him rather than running away.

FBI documents call her a "ring leader" of Brooklyn black nationalists and suspected she was a communist agent for China (cause all Asians are the same....).

 

[JetFueledThoughts]

Some Italian Americans were rounded up and put in camps.
German Americans just Anglicized their names and passed.

Glad somebody fact checked this dumb shyt.

Also like somebody else said, Japanese attacked the US on US soil. Meanwhile a lot of European immigrants (Italians, Irish) found upward mobility in their new home country by ENLISTING IN THE US ARMY.

People being intentionally dense to find a narrative that isn’t there.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Glad somebody fact checked this dumb shyt.

Also like somebody else said, Japanese attacked the US on US soil. Meanwhile a lot of European immigrants (Italians, Irish) found upward mobility in their new home country by ENLISTING IN THE US ARMY.

People being intentionally dense to find a narrative that isn’t there.

Pretty sure you misinterpreted his comment, he wasn't debunking anything.

Plenty of Japanese-Americans enlisted in the military during WW2 as well - 33,000 to be exact. The 442nd Infantry Regiment, the most decorated unit in US military history, was almost entirely composed of Japanese-origin soldiers. That didn't do jack shyt to keep 120,000 of their fellows from being thrown into prison camps.

And the fact that German-Americans can pass, while Japanese-Americans can't - isn't that one of the eternal truths of racism? But obviously those huge pro-Nazi rallies on US soil show you that passing wasn't necessary for a lot of them.

 

[JetFueledThoughts]

Pretty sure you misinterpreted his comment, he wasn't debunking anything.

Plenty of Japanese-Americans enlisted in the military during WW2 as well - 33,000 to be exact. The 442nd Infantry Regiment, the most decorated unit in US military history, was almost entirely composed of Japanese-origin soldiers. That didn't do jack shyt to keep 120,000 of their fellows from being thrown into prison camps.

And the fact that German-Americans can pass, while Japanese-Americans can't - isn't that one of the eternal truths of racism? But obviously those huge pro-Nazi rallies on US soil show you that passing wasn't necessary for a lot of them.

Attacked. The US. On. US. Soil. Did I miss the part where Italian bombers came into US air space and took out a military harbor?

Much of the ‘race’ concept has historically just been combining ethnicity with classism and American evil. Whiteness in the US has always been a sliding scale. one of the largest (if not largest) lynchings in US history was a group of Italians in New Orleans in the late 1800s. They weren’t considered white then, showing how the entire concept is largely bullshyt.

 

[88m3]

Pretty sure you misinterpreted his comment, he wasn't debunking anything.

Plenty of Japanese-Americans enlisted in the military during WW2 as well - 33,000 to be exact. The 442nd Infantry Regiment, the most decorated unit in US military history, was almost entirely composed of Japanese-origin soldiers. That didn't do jack shyt to keep 120,000 of their fellows from being thrown into prison camps.

And the fact that German-Americans can pass, while Japanese-Americans can't - isn't that one of the eternal truths of racism? But obviously those huge pro-Nazi rallies on US soil show you that passing wasn't necessary for a lot of them.

Trump's dad was at one of those Nazi rallies a lot of people have said so

I think it's important to remember the German Bund was going on before Pearl Harbor happened and was pushed back against and ultimately destroyed

 

[Baka's Weird Case]

i think the Niihau Incident also might have contributed to more anti-Japanese-American xenophobia

Niihau incident - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

one of my professors in high school said there were a lot more incidents of german-american cooperation with nazis than japanese-american cooperation with imperial japan.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Attacked. The US. On. US. Soil. Did I miss the part where Italian bombers came into US air space and took out a military harbor?

No, and we all already acknowledged that aspect of it. Doesn't somehow make the racist aspect go away. Great Britain was bombed mercilessly by Germany and yet they only interned male German nationals (and a very limited # of women and children), not just any old person with German ancestry. Whereas in the USA they interned everyone on the west coast with any Japanese blood at all, even if they were US citizens, even if they were born here, even if they were only part Japanese.

That's the difference racism makes.

Much of the ‘race’ concept has historically just been combining ethnicity with classism and American evil. Whiteness in the US has always been a sliding scale. one of the largest (if not largest) lynchings in US history was a group of Italians in New Orleans in the late 1800s. They weren’t considered white then, showing how the entire concept is largely bullshyt.

Racism being arbitrary, socially derived, and subject to change doesn't somehow mean it doesn't exist.

I agree with everything you said there, yet it doesn't change that the USA was intensely racist towards people of Japanese ancestry in the 1940s.

 

[85 East]

My family got really lucky (japanese) my great aunt had a potatoe farm east of the Rocky Mountain's in Manitoba. They made my family sign a paper stating they would never return west of the Rockies. Thats how they avoided camp. My grandfather was 1 year old. My families old house in BC is a museum now. Crazy shyt. Italians did get fukked with though.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

i think the Niihau Incident also might have contributed to more anti-Japanese-American xenophobia

Niihau incident - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

one of my professors in high school said there were a lot more incidents of german-american cooperation with nazis than japanese-american cooperation with imperial japan.

Accurate on both counts.

Actual incidents can cause action to be taken on pre-existing racism. It's the same way that 9/11 increased racism towards Muslims (or people who looked vaguely like Muslims), an illegal-immigrant murder increases racism towards Latinos, and stories of violent crime in the inner city increase racism towards Black people. And then the holders or defenders of the racism beliefs use those incidents to justify the racist sentiment and actions being taken.

Yet at the same time, an Oklahoma City bombing, rashes of school and mass shooters, Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia's attempts to violently control large parts of the world or Leopold's insanely sadistic destruction of Congo don't move the needle on how White people are viewed at all. Because the Western world doesn't have an anti-white controlling framework into which to interpret those incidents.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

My family got really lucky (japanese) my great aunt had a potatoe farm east of the Rocky Mountain's in Manitoba. They made my family sign a paper stating they would never return west of the Rockies. Thats how they avoided camp. My grandfather was 1 year old. My families old house in BC is a museum now. Crazy shyt. Italians did get fukked with though.

Did they lose the BC home outright or were they able to sell it for a real price or hold onto it somehow?

 

[85 East]

Did they lose the BC home outright or were they able to sell it for a real price or hold onto it somehow?

Lost the house, boat house and boats too. Everything basically. Packed up a few suite cases and dipped.