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Maveric149 writes: 19:50 . . Maveric149 (Talk) (Moving back to Japanese internment in the United States; Anon YOU did not write this article and that is where the history is; There were also Japanese nationals who were interned)
I'm a wiki newbie, and I thought that nobody writes the articles. I changed the listing to <Japanese American Internment>. IMHO, while there were Japanese nationals interned, the largest majority (2/3) were U.S. citizens. Plus, while, strictly speaking, the remainder were Japanese nationals, it was not legal for them to naturalize, and more than a few desired (and attempted) to do so prior to WWII. In this sense, it is fair and reasonable to call them Japanese Americans, whether or not they were citizens.
I just believe it is a misnomer to say "Japanese internment" since it implies that most were Japanese nationals. It's not like the "Taliban internment," in which the Taliban/al Qaeda partisans --regardless of whether they were "combatants"--were apprehended/captured elsewhere and then detained. <Legally> the Japanese nationals were "Japanese" and not "American" but--to repeat-it is fair and reasonable to call them <Japanese Americans>.
It's not clear from your comment, but it seems that you favor listing "in the United States" as part of the entry. If so, then something like "Japanese American Internment in the United States" sounds redundant. I agree.
One could debate this ad nauseum, which neither of us would like to do. I'd like to get a sense of your take on this issue, though.
And yes, I registered so that we can facilitate a discussion here. --Ishu
I agree that citizenship is the most unambiguous definition. I do not agree that we _must_ use the most unambiguous definition. Implicitly, the definition I'd use is that the unmodified term <Japanese>, in its common usage, implies Japanese _nationals_.
I believe that if we were to ask someone to define <Japanese>, most people would say it means "people _from_ Japan" which is what _I_ am saying regardless. The Nisei, by definition, are certainly Americans by any criteria, and most--2/3--of those interned were Nisei--American Americans to be un-PC about it. My point is that the most _inclusive_ term is <Japanese American>, especially since we seem to agree that defining <American> is not as unambiguous as we might like it to be, and <Japanese> is at least as ambiguous, and in my view, misleading.
Given that most of the Japanese immigrants (a) had come for economic reasons--many had no land or inheritance in Japan due to primogeniture, (b) had established themselves in the U.S. with farms, businesses, etc., and (c) had U.S.-citizen children, it is reasonable to believe that at least a sizeable minority of the 40,000 Japanese nationals would have chosen to be citizens if they had been given the choice--just as immigrants of other ethnicities have since the dawn of the union. It is highly unlikely that any sizeable minority was composed of students or any other indifferent group.
That many Japanese immigrants stayed after the war and naturalized after the 1955 McCarran-Walter Act may be neither here nor there (Japan was a mess), but may also be an indication of the immigrants' prior preference, having established their lives in the U.S.
To Mav's last point, the "exclusion zones" applied to "all" persons of Japanese ancestry. Mav looks at it from the point that they didn't distinguish between who was a Japanese national and who was an U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry. From a historical perspective, the key point is that the exclusion order applied to "Americans" (citizens, by Mav's definition) as well as "aliens."
While people of German and Italian ancestry also were interned, there is no historical event of "German Internment in the United States" because the judicial error--massive violation of the Bill of Rights--did not occur with German Americans--however we define them.
The Japanese American Internment is a unique (we hope) event in history and American Justice. I belive it is proper to describe it as a _Japanese American_ event because the American-ness of the detainees (regardless of citizenship status) is the core of the issue and is indisputable, both for the immigrants and the native-born. ishu 23:40 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Just saw Mav's message to ANON re: moving pages w/o attribution. I am really sorry! Now that I have an account, I can move pages the right way with all the attributions. However, I'm not in a hurry to move this page, at least until we continue this dialogue and see where it goes.
ishu 00:03 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I went ahead and moved it according to Ishu's proposal. Googling "japanese american internment" turned up many sites with the "i" capitalized. -- Jiang
I read or heard a few days ago -- from where I couldn't remember -- that a high percentage of the interned were Nisei. Any stat on that? -- Menchi 06:27, Jul 31, 2003 (UTC)
I moved this page back from Japanese American relocation. You should confer on this page before making any drastic move like that and change all the double redirects after you move. -- Jiang 00:14, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
What's wrong with the current title? On google: "Japanese American relocation" - 3490 sites; "Japanese American Internment" - 16200 sites. The US government's various websites use "Japanese American Internment". -- Jiang 06:06, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
"Internment" is not limited to prisons. These people were confined and forbidden to venture back to the coast. How is this not internment?
Encarta, Britannica, and Columbia Enclyclopedias all use "internment". Of course the US government would want to tone down the severity of its own actions. Why trust the government in 1941 rather than the government of today? That doesnt make sense. -- Jiang 22:03, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
VV - history uses the them "internment", thus that is what we use. Anything else would be revisionism. -- mav
I've chosen to start a new section distinct from renaming this page.
Several dictionary definitions refer to confinement during wartime, but vary as to the nature of the confinement. The dictionary definitions share an emphasis on wartime confinement, and one specifically refers to foreign troops. Since Japanese Americans had already been classified as 4-C "Enemy Aliens" and since this was the basis for EO9066 and everything that derived from it, from the standpoint of the U.S. government and military, internment is not an unreasonable term.
But the key question of internment, from the perspective of these definitions, hinges on whether the Japanese Americans were confined, i.e. whether they were required to report to the camps.
While in a literal sense it was true that they were "free to settle anywhere outside the exclusion area," as a practical matter, that was a severe hardship. Travel on short notice to another area was uncommon and difficult in those years. EO9066 was signed on Feb 19, 1942; on March 2, Public Proclamation No. 1 was issued, defining the Military Areas that would form the exclusion zone. The first exclusion order was written three weeks later, on March 24; the last exclusion order was written June 6.[See this collection of exclusion orders.] Less than four months elapsed between the authorization for exclusion and the last order, which is not a lot of time for people to uproot, make arrangements for their businesses and belongings, and find another place to go if they were to do so "voluntarily."
Although the Japanese Americans were not required to report to the camps, the term relocation doesn't fit well either because it implies a voluntary sense that I don't think is appropriate. Relocation' implies that there were many options for the Japanese Americans, that they simply had to "relocate" from where they were.
I am not aware of any WCCA/WRA-sponsored trains to New York, Chicago, etc. to assist the Japanese Americans in leaving the exclusion zone. I haven't heard of any WRA programs to find alternate locations outside the exclusion area--at least not at the beginning. Of course, the WRA did transport them thousands of miles to Wyoming and Arkansas. Wouldn't it have been less expensive to pay for a train without the necessity of providing housing,etc.? Unless security was more important, and then it's less of a "choice."
Since the WCCA was responsible for the exclusion, how it accommodated the removal should guide what we call this action. If there were real options for the Japanese Americans that were facilitated by the WCCA, then relocation is a fair term. However, the more compulsory and controlled it was, the more appropriate is internment as a name.
The exclusion orders started out fairly vague, such as No. 7 of April 20, though later orders, such as No. 92 of May 23 were more specific. All of them are clearly compulsory, and specify a short time frame from the issuance to execution of the orders. We could split hairs and argue that those affected by the later orders could have read the writing on the wall, and "voluntarily" "evacuated" after seeing what was happening to Japanese Americans in other parts of the exclusion zone. But even so, I'd argue that we'd have two groups, the "early" internees and the "later" relocatees.
FWIW, the official government term of the time, 'evacuation' is clearly inappropriate, as it implies that evacuation is for the benefit of the evacuees. -- ishu 23:40, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This
1943 WRA document states:
That sounds like internment to me. No choice involved, and no time to make a "voluntary" "evacuation." Changing references to internment. -- ishu 03:04, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Maveric149 writes: 19:50 . . Maveric149 (Talk) (Moving back to Japanese internment in the United States; Anon YOU did not write this article and that is where the history is; There were also Japanese nationals who were interned)
I'm a wiki newbie, and I thought that nobody writes the articles. I changed the listing to <Japanese American Internment>. IMHO, while there were Japanese nationals interned, the largest majority (2/3) were U.S. citizens. Plus, while, strictly speaking, the remainder were Japanese nationals, it was not legal for them to naturalize, and more than a few desired (and attempted) to do so prior to WWII. In this sense, it is fair and reasonable to call them Japanese Americans, whether or not they were citizens.
I just believe it is a misnomer to say "Japanese internment" since it implies that most were Japanese nationals. It's not like the "Taliban internment," in which the Taliban/al Qaeda partisans --regardless of whether they were "combatants"--were apprehended/captured elsewhere and then detained. <Legally> the Japanese nationals were "Japanese" and not "American" but--to repeat-it is fair and reasonable to call them <Japanese Americans>.
It's not clear from your comment, but it seems that you favor listing "in the United States" as part of the entry. If so, then something like "Japanese American Internment in the United States" sounds redundant. I agree.
One could debate this ad nauseum, which neither of us would like to do. I'd like to get a sense of your take on this issue, though.
And yes, I registered so that we can facilitate a discussion here. --Ishu
I agree that citizenship is the most unambiguous definition. I do not agree that we _must_ use the most unambiguous definition. Implicitly, the definition I'd use is that the unmodified term <Japanese>, in its common usage, implies Japanese _nationals_.
I believe that if we were to ask someone to define <Japanese>, most people would say it means "people _from_ Japan" which is what _I_ am saying regardless. The Nisei, by definition, are certainly Americans by any criteria, and most--2/3--of those interned were Nisei--American Americans to be un-PC about it. My point is that the most _inclusive_ term is <Japanese American>, especially since we seem to agree that defining <American> is not as unambiguous as we might like it to be, and <Japanese> is at least as ambiguous, and in my view, misleading.
Given that most of the Japanese immigrants (a) had come for economic reasons--many had no land or inheritance in Japan due to primogeniture, (b) had established themselves in the U.S. with farms, businesses, etc., and (c) had U.S.-citizen children, it is reasonable to believe that at least a sizeable minority of the 40,000 Japanese nationals would have chosen to be citizens if they had been given the choice--just as immigrants of other ethnicities have since the dawn of the union. It is highly unlikely that any sizeable minority was composed of students or any other indifferent group.
That many Japanese immigrants stayed after the war and naturalized after the 1955 McCarran-Walter Act may be neither here nor there (Japan was a mess), but may also be an indication of the immigrants' prior preference, having established their lives in the U.S.
To Mav's last point, the "exclusion zones" applied to "all" persons of Japanese ancestry. Mav looks at it from the point that they didn't distinguish between who was a Japanese national and who was an U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry. From a historical perspective, the key point is that the exclusion order applied to "Americans" (citizens, by Mav's definition) as well as "aliens."
While people of German and Italian ancestry also were interned, there is no historical event of "German Internment in the United States" because the judicial error--massive violation of the Bill of Rights--did not occur with German Americans--however we define them.
The Japanese American Internment is a unique (we hope) event in history and American Justice. I belive it is proper to describe it as a _Japanese American_ event because the American-ness of the detainees (regardless of citizenship status) is the core of the issue and is indisputable, both for the immigrants and the native-born. ishu 23:40 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Just saw Mav's message to ANON re: moving pages w/o attribution. I am really sorry! Now that I have an account, I can move pages the right way with all the attributions. However, I'm not in a hurry to move this page, at least until we continue this dialogue and see where it goes.
ishu 00:03 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I went ahead and moved it according to Ishu's proposal. Googling "japanese american internment" turned up many sites with the "i" capitalized. -- Jiang
I read or heard a few days ago -- from where I couldn't remember -- that a high percentage of the interned were Nisei. Any stat on that? -- Menchi 06:27, Jul 31, 2003 (UTC)
I moved this page back from Japanese American relocation. You should confer on this page before making any drastic move like that and change all the double redirects after you move. -- Jiang 00:14, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
What's wrong with the current title? On google: "Japanese American relocation" - 3490 sites; "Japanese American Internment" - 16200 sites. The US government's various websites use "Japanese American Internment". -- Jiang 06:06, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
"Internment" is not limited to prisons. These people were confined and forbidden to venture back to the coast. How is this not internment?
Encarta, Britannica, and Columbia Enclyclopedias all use "internment". Of course the US government would want to tone down the severity of its own actions. Why trust the government in 1941 rather than the government of today? That doesnt make sense. -- Jiang 22:03, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)
VV - history uses the them "internment", thus that is what we use. Anything else would be revisionism. -- mav
I've chosen to start a new section distinct from renaming this page.
Several dictionary definitions refer to confinement during wartime, but vary as to the nature of the confinement. The dictionary definitions share an emphasis on wartime confinement, and one specifically refers to foreign troops. Since Japanese Americans had already been classified as 4-C "Enemy Aliens" and since this was the basis for EO9066 and everything that derived from it, from the standpoint of the U.S. government and military, internment is not an unreasonable term.
But the key question of internment, from the perspective of these definitions, hinges on whether the Japanese Americans were confined, i.e. whether they were required to report to the camps.
While in a literal sense it was true that they were "free to settle anywhere outside the exclusion area," as a practical matter, that was a severe hardship. Travel on short notice to another area was uncommon and difficult in those years. EO9066 was signed on Feb 19, 1942; on March 2, Public Proclamation No. 1 was issued, defining the Military Areas that would form the exclusion zone. The first exclusion order was written three weeks later, on March 24; the last exclusion order was written June 6.[See this collection of exclusion orders.] Less than four months elapsed between the authorization for exclusion and the last order, which is not a lot of time for people to uproot, make arrangements for their businesses and belongings, and find another place to go if they were to do so "voluntarily."
Although the Japanese Americans were not required to report to the camps, the term relocation doesn't fit well either because it implies a voluntary sense that I don't think is appropriate. Relocation' implies that there were many options for the Japanese Americans, that they simply had to "relocate" from where they were.
I am not aware of any WCCA/WRA-sponsored trains to New York, Chicago, etc. to assist the Japanese Americans in leaving the exclusion zone. I haven't heard of any WRA programs to find alternate locations outside the exclusion area--at least not at the beginning. Of course, the WRA did transport them thousands of miles to Wyoming and Arkansas. Wouldn't it have been less expensive to pay for a train without the necessity of providing housing,etc.? Unless security was more important, and then it's less of a "choice."
Since the WCCA was responsible for the exclusion, how it accommodated the removal should guide what we call this action. If there were real options for the Japanese Americans that were facilitated by the WCCA, then relocation is a fair term. However, the more compulsory and controlled it was, the more appropriate is internment as a name.
The exclusion orders started out fairly vague, such as No. 7 of April 20, though later orders, such as No. 92 of May 23 were more specific. All of them are clearly compulsory, and specify a short time frame from the issuance to execution of the orders. We could split hairs and argue that those affected by the later orders could have read the writing on the wall, and "voluntarily" "evacuated" after seeing what was happening to Japanese Americans in other parts of the exclusion zone. But even so, I'd argue that we'd have two groups, the "early" internees and the "later" relocatees.
FWIW, the official government term of the time, 'evacuation' is clearly inappropriate, as it implies that evacuation is for the benefit of the evacuees. -- ishu 23:40, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This
1943 WRA document states:
That sounds like internment to me. No choice involved, and no time to make a "voluntary" "evacuation." Changing references to internment. -- ishu 03:04, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)