They are being pampered!

There was a lot of discussion about the Japanese Americans in the internment camps being pampered. These articles all tended to overlook the slight detail that they were not in the camps voluntarily, but that they had been rounded up and shipped to the camps, but sometimes facts are convenient to overlook.

The first article, from the Nevade State Journal, Jan. 10, 1943, charges that the internees were getting "scarce foodstuffs" in "plenty" while surrounding areas of non-interned people were rationed. The article also attacks the educational system being set up in the camps. It also discusses the division between the internees who supported Japan in the war and those who supported the U.S.

The same paper, less than a week later, ran another article (Jan. 16th, 1943), this time noting complaints that the camps were getting schools built for them when surrounding areas weren't, and also sites some of the behavorial troubles in the camps.

The next article,from The Times Record, Jan. 16, 1943, for some reason refers to the internment camps as "colonies".

The next article, from the Hammond times, May 9, 1943, says the "Japs" "live like kings" in the camps (which would have been news to them, to say the least). The senator complains that the camps were only surrounded by five strands of barbed wire and guard towers were a full half mile apart. This is overlooking, of course, the point that the vast majority of people he wants behind more barbed wire never committed any crimes, were never charged with any crimes, 2/3rds of them were American citizens by birth and it was the government's idea in the first place to put them into the camps.



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