
Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photos of Japanese American Internment Camps (2017) - fezz
https://anchoreditions.com/blog/dorothea-lange-censored-photographs
======
rukuu001
"The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and
confirming indication that such action will be taken.”

— General John L. DeWitt, head of the U.S. Army’s Western Defense Command"

Could be straight out of Catch-22

~~~
fiblye
Reading that statement horrified me and sent me back here to comment on it.

There was literally nothing these people could've done to prove themselves. If
authorization were granted to fully exterminate them, this person would've
gladly run with the order.

As terrible as this whole time period in American history was, it's even more
terrifying to think of just how close it came to being even worse. And it all
would've been justified and swept under the rug, and instead of being given a
half day of US history class as a passing mention of "yeah bad things happened
but it won't happen again", maybe given 2 days of study and a "we definitely
learned to not do that again".

~~~
yostrovs
Your speculation of what America was close to doing to Japanese Americans
sounds much like the quote you are commenting on.

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geofft
What do US schoolteachers assigning _The Diary of Anne Frank_ say about it,
these days? When I was in middle school you could say things like
"concentration camps are bad" and "hiding persecuted people in your attic is
good" without much fear of controversy, and also without much fear of
applicability to the present day. Are they still saying that?

~~~
inflatableDodo
>"What do US schoolteachers assigning The Diary of Anne Frank say about it,
these days?"

As a depressing guess, unless they are still working off the censored edition,
it may well be something along the lines of; _' This reading material is
unsuitable due to lesbianism, we must remove all editions from the school
library immediately!'_

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zeristor
Were ethnically German Americans put in concentration camps too? There far
more people of German heritage in the US, Col Schisskopf from Catch 22 for
example

~~~
youdontknowtho
Race is a factor. After the camps were initially liberated prisoners became
"displaced persons". Obviously, they were treated better than under the Nazis
but many were held in the same camps for years after the war.

This is from Patton's journal...

"Harrison and his ilk believe that the Displaced Person is a human being,
which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews who are lower than
animals,”

We have so mythologized our victory in WWII that's our mistakes and failures
don't really exist for most people. We were only noble. We were only brave. We
were only just. It's way more complicated.

~~~
geofft
I'm reminded of this story of a man who was sent to the concentration camps
for homosexuality, only to be imprisoned after the war for the same offense by
the same judge:
[https://twitter.com/holocaustmuseum/status/11371006966066954...](https://twitter.com/holocaustmuseum/status/1137100696606695424)

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matthewmacleod
It’s genuinely horrifying to see examples of this sort of thought emerging
again into the public sphere in the West.

------
sitkack
David Suzuki [1] the Canadian environmentalist talks about his time in
concentration camps.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2FD0DoHiK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2FD0DoHiK0)

DS: I don't like to look in the mirror at myself.

BM: Why?

DS: When I look at myself I see the slit eyes, the face that was for four
years during WW2 depicted as the enemy.

DS: And it was my enemy too! That face was my enemy because I was a Canadian.
And we wanted to go out and kill Japs.

...

BM: Were you bitter or your parents bitter? [3]

DS: I think if one broods on this and becomes bitter and hateful, then
ultimately the bigots win, you become them.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2FD0DoHiK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2FD0DoHiK0)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8TQTuMqM9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8TQTuMqM9g)

[3] [https://youtu.be/Y2FD0DoHiK0?t=117](https://youtu.be/Y2FD0DoHiK0?t=117)

------
blue_devil
The real reminder is to be aware that under the "right" conditions most people
would actively or passively support such things being done to their fellow
human beings. The reminder is to be wary of setting the stage for those
conditions to materialize.

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qazpot
A reminder of how Freedom is often a very flimsy thing in even in First world
democratic countries.

------
TomMckenny
If you are habitually detaining large numbers of civilians, including
children, then you are on the wrong side of history.

Somehow this point never seems to be learned

------
tr33house
> This government can never repay all the people who suffered. But, this
> should not be an excuse for token apologies. I hope this country will never
> forget what happened, and do what it can to make sure that future
> generations will never forget.

Every school system has succeeded in whitewashing the history. Almost no one
in America now knows about the camps

~~~
krapp
>Every school system has succeeded in whitewashing the history. Almost no one
in America now knows about the camps

That's not true. The internment of Japanese Americans in WW2 is taught about
in school, and almost everyone knows about it, although not everyone
necessarily cares, and some Americans will defend it (and even suggest that
maybe doing it to Muslims would be a good idea.)

The US doesn't really "whitewash" its history, nor practice mass
indoctrination or nationalist brainwashing through its educational system, to
the degree some believe. Learning _about_ our history, and learning _from_ our
history, are two different things, though.

~~~
fiblye
I think part of this depends on the school. The ones I attended would
completely skip sections regarding the ~1,000,000 civilian deaths during the
Philippine American War, the blunders in Korea and Vietnam (my classes
basically said "they happened" and then the rest of the year was Civil War and
WW2 movies), and there was absolutely zero discussion of American affairs in
Central/South America and events leading to the Middle Eastern situation
today.

Schools and teachers aren't 100% standardized in America. Some have thorough
history programs. Some absolutely do brush over a lot of bad parts in history,
and my high school in the South was one of the types to say "The Civil War had
nothing to do with slavery." Our biology class also had a huge disclaimer
about evolution and how nobody had to, or really should, believe it, but they
were just required to teach it.

So I think when some people talk about how ridiculous/amazing the school
system is, it's because that's just their experience. Schools are completely
different depending on what state or even what part of town you live in.

------
inflatableDodo
Here's the conditions of the current ones;

> _The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday
> that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children
> apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete
> floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that
> requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.

>All three judges appeared incredulous during the hearing in San Francisco, in
which the Trump administration challenged previous legal findings that it is
violating a landmark class action settlement by mistreating undocumented
immigrant children at U.S. detention facilities.

>“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a
question of safe and sanitary conditions?'” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon
asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.

>U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher also questioned the government’s
interpretation of the settlement agreement.

>“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring
you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long,
lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil
blanket?” Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the
government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”

>The settlement at issue came out of Jenny Lisette Flores v. Edwin Meese,
filed in 1985 on behalf of a class of unaccompanied minors fleeing torture and
abuse in Central America.

>Finally agreed upon in 1997, the settlement established guidelines for the
humane detention, treatment and release of minors taken into federal
immigration custody. The guidelines include the right to a bond hearing and
requirements that immigration authorities timely release children to parents
or guardians and place those not released in facilities that meet certain
standards. The facilities are supposed to be “safe and sanitary.”

>The settlement landed back in court in 2015, when class members moved to
enforce it following the Obama administration’s announcement that it would
scrap bond hearings because they conflicted with newer immigration laws. In
legal filings, the class contended the elimination of bond hearings and dirty
and dangerous conditions at short-term holding facilities operated by the
Border Patrol violated the agreement.

>U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles granted the class’ motion and
ordered the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure government
compliance with Flores.

>Gee said the administration had breached Flores by failing to provide
detainees with adequate food and clean drinking water, or with hygiene items
like soap, toothbrushes and towels. She also concluded that the children were
being deprived of sleep and access to bathrooms, and were subjected to near-
freezing temperatures.

>The Ninth Circuit affirmed much of Gee’s ruling in July 2017, finding that
detainees were still entitled to bond hearings.

>On Tuesday, Fabian asked the Ninth Circuit to reverse Gee’s findings because
they added new requirements – such as giving detainees soap and toothbrushes –
that were not specifically included in Flores.

>“One has to assume it was left that way and not enumerated by the parties
because either the parties couldn’t reach agreement on how to enumerate that
or it was left to the agencies to determine,” Fabian said.

>“Or it was relatively obvious,” Fletcher shot back. “And at least obvious
enough so that if you’re putting people into a crowded room to sleep on a
concrete floor with an aluminum-foil blanket on top of them that it doesn’t
comply with the agreement.”

>“It wasn’t perfumed soap, it was soap. That’s part of ‘safe and sanitary.’
Are you disagreeing with that?” he added.

>Class counsel Peter Schey said that, although Gee had listed specific items
such as toothbrushes in her order, which were not listed in the settlement,
settlement compliance must be analyzed in terms of California contract law,
under which the general terms in an agreement must be “reasonably
interpreted.”

>“The first thing you do is honor the plain meaning” of words like “safe” and
“sanitary,” Schey said.

>“Today we have a situation where once a month a child is dying in [federal]
custody,” he added. “Certainly the Border Patrol facilities are secure, but
they’re not safe and they’re not sanitary.”_

[https://www.courthousenews.com/feds-tell-9th-circuit-
detaine...](https://www.courthousenews.com/feds-tell-9th-circuit-detained-
kids-safe-and-sanitary-without-soap/)

~~~
masonic
In fairness, it should be noted that all four of the referenced judges are
Democrat nominees (Gee:Obama, while all three judges on the panel were Clinton
nominees).

~~~
inflatableDodo
In fairness, this is about access to things like soap. Party really shouldn't
matter here. Unless you are saying that if they were Republican nominees, they
would have no problem with child detainees not having soap?

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thedevil555
Before you all jump to the condemnation of Americans, Think. It was warfare.
I'm Australian and one of my ancestors spent some time as a prisoner of Japan
on the burma railway. I might add Japan had no Americans on it's soil during
ww2.

~~~
moose462
Well, if your country is much stronger, has no real possibility of being
invaded, no real possibility of being bombed, and interns 2nd and 3rd
generations of immigrants, maybe your country is just paranoid and racist.

~~~
rolltiide
The entire American condition is held together by paranoia. If there isn't a
credible external threat then it turns on itself:

The idea of a soviet expansionist theory that actually impacts the US is
laughable to enough of the population

Nobody powerful actually believes the teachings of Karl Marx except to placate
their internal public

People kind of seem to understand that interference in the middle east creates
danger from very specific people who dont represent everyone, not really
protecting us from anything

so now that paranoia leads us to ideological introspection, in the absence of
a common enemy

