Posted on 02/06/2003 11:19:44 AM PST by Barney Gumble
N.C. Congressman OK With Internment Camps
HIGH POINT, N.C. - A congressman who heads a homeland security subcommittee said on a radio call-in program that he agreed with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Rep. Howard Coble (news, bio, voting record), R-N.C., made the remark Tuesday on WKZL-FM when a caller suggested Arabs in the United States should be confined. Another congressman who was interned as a child criticized Coble for the comment, as did advocacy groups.
Coble, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he didn't agree with the caller but did agree with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who established the internment camps.
"We were at war. They (Japanese-Americans) were an endangered species," Coble said. "For many of these Japanese-Americans, it wasn't safe for them to be on the street."
Like most Arab-Americans today, Coble said, most Japanese-Americans during World War II were not America's enemies. Still, Coble said, Roosevelt had to consider the nation's security. "Some probably were intent on doing harm to us," he said, "just as some of these Arab-Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us."
Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., a Japanese-American who spent his early childhood with his family in an internment camp during World War II, said he spoke with Coble on Wednesday to learn more about his views.
"I'm disappointed that he really doesn't understand the impact of what he said," Honda said. "With his leadership position in Congress, that kind of lack of understanding can lead people down the wrong path."
The Japanese American Citizens League asked Coble to apologize and said he should be removed from his committee chairmanship.
"We are flabbergasted that a man who supports racial profiling and ethnic scapegoating" chairs the subcommittee, the group's national executive director, John Tateishi, said in a statement Wednesday.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that Coble explain his remarks. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said the comments were "particularly disturbing."
In 1988, President Reagan signed a bill authorizing reparations of $20,000 for each surviving camp veteran.
Now people forget some history regarding this. Some Japanese were spies and out to get us. There were several spies in Hawaii in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. What he said was the most Japanese-Americans were good, but some were out to get us. True? Why should he be apologizing.
However, debating the internment camps isn't why I posted this. It's because it's being blasted to the spotlight of the media because the congressman is a Republican, yet Patty Murray's praise of Osama went generally unreported. The same thing with Trent Lott versus Robert Byrd! The double standard continues!!!!
Not For Long!
There are/were/ and will be plenty of white people who are spies in the US (then, now and in the future). I don't see any calls for interning white people. Plus, I would like to know all the WWII spies who were actually convicted of something.
But on the subject of a double standard. I don't care that republicans are held to a high standard, we should be. The dems should be held to a high standard too but if they are not, then let them wallow in defeat at the ballot box. If they refuse to clean house, we will do it for them.
PS. The Japanese internment was as much about taking their property in California as anything else. It's not like any trustees were appointed to oversee their stuff until the war was over, it was basically "you have 1 week to sell all your stuff for whatever you get".
After the news of Batan ....The Death March...the rape of the nurses and missionaries... The Japanese Americans that were interned probably had their lives saved... To confiscate their property however, was evil imo
We interned our Japanese American citizens. I'll take a neutral stance on that for now. What disturbs me more than anything is that we confiscated their assetts. Their homes, businesses and vehicles were liquidated. As far as I know, they never got them back or adequate financial restitution. That makes me mad. $20k would have likely taken care of the assetts in the age when they were taken. By 1985 standards, it was a drop in the bucket. Still it was something.
It's one thing to do something unpleasant for national security. It's another to do it without taking care not to do mental, physical or financial harm to the subjects. Why didn't we liquidate assetts, but them in bonds and hold them in escrow for the interned families?
Some families were split up. Dad was sent to one camp, children and mothers to another. I'm not convinced that was necessary.
My main beefs are the inhumane ways some of this was carried out, not so much that it wasn't called for, or should be outside the bounds of reasonable reactions to a war-time setting.
The left will always be yapping around like a bunch of terriors. Big deal.
However, in the objective media, they should hold both parties to the same standards. Why should Democrats dumb or inappropriate comments get swept under the rug by national media while Republicans are constantly villified across most major news outlets. It's the media that hypes the story with repeated story and headline. If it had been a Democrat, you never would have heard about Trent Lott's comment. Guaranteed. Barely FR and the opinionjournal carried anything about Patty Murray. We know about it, but Joe Six Pack and Soccer Mom don't.
The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act, passed by Congress in 1948 provided $38 million for property losses. How much did the Japanese government compensate American citizens for forcing them into slave labor camps?
As for your distress over the "inhumane" way the relocation was handled; Somebody had to do something quickly. If the Emporer had told us in 1940 that he was going to attack Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, there would have been adequate time to come up with a "humane" plan.
The only families split up, that I'm aware of, were the ones that had members sent to Tule Lake, California. That camp consisted of people who asked to be repatriated to Japan, or answered "no" to a loyalty questionaire, or who the FBI had evidence of disloyalty against.
19,000 Japanese or Japanese-American citizens asked for repatriation and 8,000 actually went back. 3,500 renounced their American citizenship. 1942 was not the time to be politically correct.
Makes sense to me.
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