tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4122629330054677829.post8807690459973967556..comments2024-01-19T07:18:48.331-08:00Comments on Commander Kelly: Executive Order 9066 -- The InternmentCommander Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03602902461964252463noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4122629330054677829.post-2397032888726703132012-02-26T14:48:15.301-08:002012-02-26T14:48:15.301-08:00Nice to see the Commander softening his stance and...Nice to see the Commander softening his stance and acknowledging some of the points I and others raised this past week. Thank you Commander.<br /><br />I am not an american conservative, liberal or libertarian. I'm a "Decline to State" registered voter which in my home state of California means unaligned with any political party. I do not think positions on this topic fall along traditional conservative, liberal or libertarian lines. Indeed, I find spot on the 1988 federal legislation signed by President Reagan, the hero of american conservatives, that apologized to American-Japanese interned and authorized more than $1 Billion in reparations. The legislation said that US government actions were based on "...race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".<br /><br />Internment of 80,000 Japanese-Americans was one of the darkest moments in our great nation's history. I acknowledge that much of the west coast was sparsely populated and poorly defended and that people truly feared an invasion by Japan's Imperial Navy. But our country's leaders at the time should have known it was legally, morally and ethically wrong to intern these americans. And these were "americans". The 80,000 were not Japanese citizens living in our nation, but american citizens who had as little as 1/16 japanese ancestry. These people lost their homes, their business, their property and most shockingly their liberty even though they were law abiding, loyal americans who had done nothing wrong. We threw-out our most cherished and important Constitutional principles on the only basis that these people had some japanese ancestry. And unfortunate for them, they looked different from the majority of americans. Italian-Americans and German-Americans whose blood lines came from the other two axis powers at war with America had the good fortune of looking like the majority of us...and they were not interned.<br /><br />Our nation's leaders gave in too easily to the west coast war hysteria amped-up by a long history of west coast discrimination against Japanese immigrants (especially in agriculture). Worse yet, the US Supreme Court, charged with the responsibility to employ the constitution as a backstop against such government-imposed actions, totally blew it. In my opinion, it ranks among the top five Supreme Court failures. And as the last voice able to stop such government-imposed wrongs, we simply cannot afford our country's top court making these types of grave errors.<br /><br />The mark of a great nation is its ability to safeguard in the most difficult of times the most vulnerable among us (those the majority fear or dislike or distrust). Our country's most important and fundamental laws, embodied in our Constitution, should have protected the Japanese-American population from denial of its liberty and the theft of its property. It's one of the rare times that our country failed the test. We are one of the greatest nations to ever have graced this planet and I acknowledge that at times we fail to live up to important ideals and stray from our moral compass - after all our leaders are only human. But we also learn from our history. Case in point, post 9/11 our nation did not round-up and intern muslims and/or people of arab descent, nor did our nation put under surveillance everyone who fit into one of those categories. But heed this warning. For those who say what happened to Japanese-Americans will never happen again, I say you are wrong. It can, and if we are not careful I dare say will, happen again. Only through education and honest self-reflection do we reduce the risk of repeating history.<br /><br />BTW, if Ben Franklin could pop out of his coffin, he'd yell "Darn it Commander, the "majority" of our great country in 1942 did not deserve liberty and safety because they snatched the liberty from these other americans just to buy themselves some temporary peace of mind."<br /><br />Thanks Commander for giving me the vine.<br /><br />David MichaelsonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com