Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Feb 19 is Japanese American Day of Remembrance, marking 81 years since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and set in motion the internment of some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, ~70,000 of whom were US citizens.



E.O. 9066 also led the US gov’t to detain roughly 11,500 people of German ancestry and about 10,000 of Italian ancestry—many of whom were US citizens. Another 600,000 Italian-Americans had their movements sharply restricted.




During World War II, the U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

German and Italian detainees

Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover , the FBI began a secret five-year plan in 1935 to investigate individuals residing in the United States who maintained ties to communist or Nazi organizations. With assistance from the Military Intelligence Division (MID) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), by 1938 the FBI had developed a list of 2,500 alleged communists and Nazis living inside the United States. Just a year later, with war looming in Europe, U.S. officials claimed that the FBI was monitoring "more than ten million persons."

I wonder what those numbers are today?


In 1988, after a ten-year campaign by the Japanese-American community, Congress passed and President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, formally apologizing for the racial prejudice and hysteria that led to the internment and offering $20,000 redress payments to survivors.





In all, 82,220 survivors received payments from the government totaling more than $1.6 billion. On October 9, 1990, Hisano Fujimoto, 101, of Lombard, Ill., received her redress check from Attorney General Dick Thornburgh in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Takeshi Nakayama/Rafu Shimpo)


Legislation prohibiting the government from detaining or imprisoning American citizens solely on the basis of race, religion, nationality, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability is pending before Congress.


Statement from Grifter-in-Chief...

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, eighty-one years ago today, it ushered in one of the most shameful periods in American history. The wrongful incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent tore families apart. Men, women, and children were forced to abandon their homes, their jobs, their communities, their businesses, and their way of life. They were sent to inhumane concentration camps simply because of their heritage. And in a tragic miscarriage of justice, the Supreme Court upheld these immoral and unconstitutional policies.

Despite losing liberty, security, and the fundamental freedoms that rightfully belonged to them, 33,000 Japanese Americans volunteered or were drafted for service in the U.S. military during World War II. While their own families were behind barbed wires, Japanese Americans fought in defense of the nation’s freedom with valor and courage.

The incarceration of Japanese Americans reminds us what happens when racism, fear, and xenophobia go unchecked. As we battle for the soul of our nation, we continue to combat the corrosive effects of hate on our democracy and the intergenerational trauma resulting from it. We reaffirm the Federal Government’s formal apology to Japanese Americans for the suffering inflicted by these policies. And we commit to Nidoto Nai Yoni – to “Let It Not Happen Again.”
The White House

Feb 19, 1947: “The Beginning or the End” a docudrama about the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—premiered at the Lowes Palace in Washington, DC. Despite MGM’s huge promotion, it received very mixed reviews and flopped at the box office.



The Beginning or The End (1947) - Trailer



For the full and fascinating story of how this film came to be made—including how Lt Gen. Leslie Groves, who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and military director of the Manhattan Project, was heavily involved in rewriting the script, and how President Truman demanded changes to his portrayal, see this 2020 book:

One of the interesting ones to pop up again and again is the question of whether the United States warned Hiroshima and Nagasaki about their impending destruction. It’s a discussion in this case that has actually been confused by the abundance of context-less primary sources on the Internet. In particular, the Truman Library posted (some time back) copies of leaflets that it has labeled as being dropped on August 6, 1945 — the day of the Hiroshima bombing. These leaflets have proliferated across the web onto other reputable sites, like PBS’s Truman resources. The understandable result is that a lot of amateur historians out there have concluded that indeed, we did warn the Japanese.

But the truth, as with many things, is more complicated. I want to talk about three potential “warnings,” here, as both a means to help clarify this issue (to any other future Googlers about this topic), and also to use it as a case study for why history is more than just finding documents.

A Day Too Late

(If you goto that link, check the comments)


Of the 12 American POWs killed by Little Boy, 10 died immediately. Naval aviator Normand Brissette and Army Staff Sgt. Ralph Neal dove into a water-filled cistern but were still burned by the thermal pulse and received lethal radiation doses. Both died on August 19, 1945.


Under the Atomic Bomb: American POWs in Hiroshima