- Headline
-
By Henry McLemore
- Publication Date
- Saturday, April 25, 1942
- Historical Event
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FDR Authorizes Incarceration of Japanese Americans
This database includes 2,214 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Location
- Page Section and Number
- 7
- Author/Byline
- Henry McLemore
- Article Text
- NEW YORK, April 25.—Uncle Sam should buy himself a dictionary. Two words that sound alike seem mighty mixed up in his brain. One is 'interment." The other is "internment."
In fixing the penalty for enemy aliens caught with the goods, Uncle Sam chose the word interment, which means to segregate or detain auspicious persons.
The word he should have chosen is interment, which means the act or ceremony of burial.
Right under the ground, a good ten feet under, in a box that wasn't cut for comfort, is the place for any Japanese, German or Italian alien whose household equipment includes such items as firearms, ammunition, short wave radio sets, dynamite fuses, coastal maps and the like.
Every day the efficient and hard-working FBI agents round up such characters; men and women whose hidden possessions automatically brand them as traitors to this country. And what happens to them?
You know. They are courteously escorted to the Black Maria, taken to a comfortable and in many cases air-conditioned jail, and, eventually, without so much as a smart rap over the knuckles removed to an internment camp. There they are given three square meals a day, dry, clean lodgings, and are generally looked after as if they were rare animals that must not be lost to humanity.
I've said it before and I say it again that this country is going to pay a whale of a price for its courtesy. It's all right to say that just because our enemies are savage and unyielding is no reason for us to lower our standards of conduct, but that's just a bunch of phony sweetness and light. There is no sense in fighting skunks with an atomizer of Christmas Night or Chanel No. 4. The thing to do is to fight them with their own musk, and that goes double when they're out in front in what all of us have been told, and know, is a battle for survival.
Personally, and I believe a lot of other Americans feel the same way, I'd rather be a free, live, tough American than a dead or conquered American gentleman of the eld school of warfare.
What do you think would happen to an American in Berlin, Tokyo or Rome, who was caught with a short wave set or a drawerful of dynamite fuses? Can't you just picture the Lord Chesterfield manners of the Getapo [sic] boys who picked him up, caught him red-handed? He'd be lucky to last long enough to straighten his tie. They wouldn't even wait to see if his rent was paid before shooting him.
The rules of warfare call for shooting an out-and-out spy. A spy takes the job knowing that the reward for a bad job as a spy is death. So there is something to admire in a man who'll venture on such assignment.
How much better it would be to spare an out-and-out spy, who, after all, has courage, and shoot the enemy aliens who deliberately prey on the leniency of their adopted country. The senseless decency of this country, even when its back is to the wall, is the only thing that gives enemy aliens sufficient courage to carry on their cowardly, underhanded work. They are not men and women of courage in any language. The world would lose nothing by their passing.
If your son were on a tanker plying the coastal waters how would you feel about an enemy alien caught on the coast with a short wave receiving set? Would you vote in favor of a measure which guaranteed him comfort and safety for the duration? Or would you———?
Our soldiers don't get that, so why should an enemy alien, who aids in getting our boys killed, be handled with consummate kindness?
The day the first American soldier was killed in this war, we should have started leveling and started admitting that this was no musical comedy war where the social graces had a part to play.
The one sure way to put an end to sabotage and subversive work is for the government to say and mean it that in the future, enemy aliens will be treated just as they are treated in the countries of our enemies.
There isn't a blessed one of them that won't know what that means. - History Unfolded Contributor
- Jenna A.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: FDR Authorizes Incarceration of Japanese Americans
- Teaching with Documents: Documents and Photographs Related to Japanese Relocation during World War II (National Archives)
- Japanese Relocation and Internment During World War II (National Archives)
- The War Relocation Centers of World War II: When Fear Was Stronger Than Justice (National Park Service)
- The War Relocation Authority and the Incarceration of Japanese-Americans During World War II (Harry S Truman Library and Museum)
- Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment (Densho: Preserving Stories of the Past for Generations of Tomorrow)
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