Posted on 03/08/2011 3:08:04 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
Even better are the links posted on that bio.
Outside of some accounts from prisoners who claimed she seemed sympathetic to them I've never seen anything confirming what she claimed at her trial, and nothing confirming coded messages, etc.
IMO the worst that can be said about her is she basically made the best of the conditions she found herself in.
I'd look at a citizenship award given 60 years after the fact, and especially in these PC times, as more a sentimental gesture to an ailing old woman who's name is linked to the Pacific war than a recognition of her contributions to the war effort.
OTOH, veteran's groups are far less susceptible to the PC nonsense than the public at large.
The fact of the matter is that the government got nowhere with their case against Tokyo Rose even in immediate postwar years when they had public opinion on their side. That fact alone weighs heavily toward her version of events being closer to the truth.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
In Hawaii, the two largest groups are JA and Chinese American, and they compete ~ with most JAs being Democrats and most CAs (CBA, and ABC) being Republican.
The JAs are a smaller percentage of the larger population in Southern California and simply have more difficulty climbing the chairs in party politics as a consequence.
BTW, I've met every single JA in Congress over the last 50 years EXCEPT Senator Hayakawa ~ but then again I worked directly with the guy who had been his chief staff assistant at San Fran State when he was beating back the barbarians.
It's one of your smaller ethnic groups, so in JA personal politics and relationships it's a short distance from the top to bottom.
BTW compare the treatment of D Aquino to that of Mildred Gillars.
At the same time it had been the custom among Japanese American families to send their daughters to Japan for what amounted to "finishing school" about the time they came of marriageable age. I don't know if it was a thousand, but it was certainly hundreds.
After asking hundreds of folks who lived through it about such prospects, there's common agreement that it just isn't possible. You have 100 thousand on one side, mostly women and children, and 150 million on the other side, including the US Army, Marine Corps, Air Corps, Navy ~ all the cops and national guard ~ the situation was simply too one sided for any responsible person to have opted for a fight.
But still, everybody knows he or she would have fought ~ no matter how desperate ~ right?
The Germans used several Axis Sallies, as well.
You might be interested in knowing that "finishing schools" are still operating in Japan, though certainly are not flourishing to the extent the were back in the 1940's. There was a young female co-worker in Japan (fairly normal, not bad looking, but a little on the shy side) who left the company to go to one of these places. This was in the early 1990's. I was shocked because I didn't know such places even operated still.
I didn't want to be nosy, but I was curious about the culture, so talked to a couple of her closest friends in the company. They told me that many Japanese, particularly in the rural areas, still felt this was an important "rite of passage" for their daughters.
Few people seem to know there were nearly as many german and italians interned as were JA (I'm not certain any were citizens). And that the US government gave all a chance to be repatriated.
The relocation aspect was unique, though. My understanding is that any JA who had accomodations available east of a certain pt (The Rockys, the Mississippi, I forgot) was free to go, those who didn't necessarily became wartime guests of the US government.
There is no doubt that many lost everything, and that some opportunists made out like bandits at their expense.
There were about 120,000 Japanese-Americans in CONUS, and all but 10,000 or so who lived East of the Mississippi River, were locked up. During the progress of the war many people were released if they could relocate elsewhere than the Exclusion Zones. For example, one group were released to New Jersey to work for Birds Eye (the frozen food folks). After the war they stayed in the area and developed their own competing frozen food business.
Other Japanese-Americans managed to work at Fort Snelling and formed the intelligence operation that worked with US military forces in the Pacific.
150,000 Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii were UNTOUCHED ~ maybe 1200 to 1800 were locked up due to some claim of involvement in japanese politics.
Regarding other use of the Enemy Aliens Act, it's been pretty minimal ~ just the usual locking up of the embassy staff and business people here and there.
In fact, it's been more the case that it's NOT enforced than that it is enforced in error. When Afghanistan attacked the USA on 9/11 (yup, it happened AFTER Mullah Omar married off a daughter to Osama Bin Laden to seal the bargain that made AlQaida into Afghanistan's national army), the 25,000 Afghanis who lived in Northern Virginia were NOT rounded up. I doubt anyone even thought to do that, although there was talk of rounding up all the Saudis because so many of the hijackers in the planes were Saudi.
When we had to go into Kuwait to liberate that country from Saddam Hussein, we didn't round up the Palestinians ~ about half a million of them worked in that country at the time. They didn't even round up Jordanian embassy personnel and their families ~ I watched day after day to see if that was going to happen and all that went on was the Fairfax Police posted a patrol car outside one house 24/7 to protect the family living there from stray Kuwaities who came down from New York.
They were born here. Or, a smaller number of them were born in British owned Hawaii ~ they burned into citizens as if by magic the day we annexed the Islands.
I do know Joe Dimaggio's dad had his fishing boat seized fm Fisherman's Wharf.
BTW I had no idea there was still such a thing as an Enemy Aliens Act still in effect.
Everybody else had the fear of God put into them by the WWII deal so they didn't even bother to arrange to teach their kids Japanese language.
Was at an event once and there were noodles left over. Taught a bunch of JA's with doctorates in everything on earth how to fry up fried noodles in a wok. Their mother's didn't allow them in the kitchen to see how food was cooked ~ didn't want them backsliding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American_internment gives you the numbers of Italians in various categories. The trick is they came up with a number of Enemy Aliens but they didn’t put them into camps. The Roosevelt regime made a deal with these citizens of a fascist dictatorship that allowed them to be put OUTSIDE that category. The numbers you have refer to the number of folks in a category; not to the number put into camps.
Back when I researched this subject in depth I was surprised to learn that only Japanese aliens were interned during WWII. It was they who were offered the option of repatriation. Thousands opted for it.
American citizens of Japanese ethnicity were "asked" to move away from the West Coast, and if they could not find a place to go they were housed in "relocation camps" from which they could come and go at will.
I also know many on-line sources do not acknowledge the distinctions between internment and repatriation.
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