The Rooseveltian Concentration Camps for Japanese-Americans, 1942-1946
This is a 1967 publication of what was apparently a pamphlet of some kind.
The first part refers to the Roosevelt administration's ignoring of the Constitution, and holds that the rounding up of the person of Japanese ancestry was a racist decision.
The author (Austin J. App) talks about how the freezing of the funds of the Issei and Nisei resulted in major losses to their businesses. Of course they then generally lost the businesses, if not in that way, then when they had to evacuate the area and sell everything, or leave it in the hands of other people who often cheated them out of what had been theirs.
He also brings up something not generally discussed; lost wages. Not only did the internees lost property (homes, businesses, and personal property), but they lost wages for whatever length of time they were in the assembly camps and the regular camps which, for some, was three or four years or so.
The author goes into the topic of lost wages.
The author definitely uses the term “concentration camps” for where the internees ended up. He also notes that originally eleven camps were approved, but only ten were built.
The author holds that the discipline at the camps was about equal to the German concentration camps, then talks about how some did die by the hands of the military.
Books had begun to appear which challenged the decision to intern the Japanese Americans.
He then quotes Earl Warren.
He talks about how some Governors regarded the immigrant Japanese, and then how Walter Lippman, a political commentator, came out against the Japanese Americans. v
He then talks about how the War Department made it illegal to disobey the evacuation order.
The author wonders what would have happened if the Japanese had actually invaded, and postulates that at least some of the locked-up internees would have been freed and then turned against the U.S. There is also the possibility that, if the Japanese had invaded, the internees could have ended up being killed by vengeful civilians or the military.
A frightening thought, either way.
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