Possibly similar Washington DC persons who have stalled the world's first "Victims Of Communism Memorial" which was provided for by law in 1993 and may finally be constructed this year -2007 (don't look for it in all the familar memorial places - e.g. near the National Mall).
After all - it was only 100 million victims for the cause of utopia on earth.
Perhaps 80-90 years from now a memorial to victims of jihad will be constructed ...
http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/

Posted by: TINBH at January 7, 2007 6:28 PM

The same mentality that equates the Israeli government with a rule of "Apartheid", and Abu Ghraib with Saddam's prisons, also equates the American internment of Japanese with the Soviet Gulag

Posted by: remote_control at January 7, 2007 7:05 PM

They had to run this exhibit at Ground Zero. The similarities between the Leninizm-Stalinizm, and the force that moves at us right now, are obvious to anyone who can see past "faith" and is capable of analyzing the things people actually believe in.

Posted by: Terry Crane at January 7, 2007 7:22 PM

Hugh, do you mean Manzanar? It's a great pity this exhibit won't be more accessible to us in California.

Posted by: Kate at January 7, 2007 7:22 PM

Yes, he means that one...Manzanares is in Spain.

Posted by: Hubert the Friar at January 7, 2007 7:42 PM

But of course it was the same. Didn't we slaughter most of the prisoners at Manzanar? How about those held in Colorado who are now the backbone of the vegetable and other irrigated farming along the Front Range? How could we have left any of them behind?

What a bunch of dupes and idiots. I thought it was against the law to preach the violent overthrow of the U.S., including obliquely?? Oh well

Posted by: spinoneone at January 7, 2007 8:48 PM

We've sure come a long way in two generations. I predict a hard landing.

Posted by: pez at January 7, 2007 9:33 PM

What is forgotten is that the overall compelling reason for detaining the Americans of Japanese decent at that time is for their own protection!

That generation of American's would have torn them from limb to limb. Rosevelt did that as much for the Japanese-American's as well as national security. If it was all just a national security plow then it would have made no sense to arm and train an division of a " national security threat ".

The real reason for the detainments were for the protection of the Japanese-Americans. George Taki, aka Mr. Sulu recalls being detained during this time as a kid at an horse race track. He recalls having a lot of fun there playing with other kids. That does not sound like a maximum security location much less a concentration camp.

The American population had a lot less wealth then, but a lot more back bone and resolve to impose their will. If say a 9/11 type attack on the Empire State Building would have unfolded then by Muslims, you better belive every Mosuqe in America would have been raised. Public lynchings of clerics, the jihadist would have had their " Holy War " alright. And been hanging from the end of a rope. All existing ' sleeper cells ' in America would have been put to sleep for good.

The same is true for the Russian counter parts at that time. Could one imagine a Chechen uprising under Stalin? He would have had every single one of the jihadist executed.

Back to the American situation during WWII. One has to remember during that time if you were of what is now called African-American decent and you so much as walked on the same side of the street as a white person rather than cross over to the other side of the street, that night you would be executed. So you could imagine how such a culture would react to an actual threat.

The cultural offspring of that mentality far from being hostile to Muslims in America are aligning themselves with jihadist forces such as David Duke hobnobing in Iran. The way the far-right has abandoned American and buried Christianity as a morale foundation is another indication of the weakness of the present American culture.

One has to remember the Japanese used racism as well to advance their Imperilist agenda. Asia for the asians, lets kick the whites out. They also viewed other asians with sub-human distain.

The American population then ( as well as Russian ) was willing to fight fire with fire and do what ever it took to win the day. I cannot say the same about either population today. The jihadist see this as well.

----Nossy

Posted by: Nostrodamus at January 7, 2007 9:44 PM

Yes, I should have written "Manzanar" and not "Manzanares" which is the river that flows near, and in some places through, Madrid. I will correct it. Thank you.

Posted by: Hugh at January 7, 2007 10:23 PM

Isn't this the same utopia FDR's friend Stalin ran? The same utopia the New York Times worshipped and the same utopia drooled over by Ed Asner?
Surely Soviet communism was a worker's garden and rivers of honey flow too in the Islamocommunist ideals we all read about.
When and I ask WHEN is someone going to start asking the real psychological question of why is it Congressman El of Minnesota and those males of CAIR why is it an enslaving, dictatorial and murderous religion appeals so much to their weak male egos.
When is a Reagan going to stand up and start exposing this misery to the light of Truth.

Posted by: Lame Cherry at January 7, 2007 10:32 PM

"FDR's friend Stalin..."
-- from a posting above

Stalin was not Roosevelt's friend. Stalin was the despot who ruled the Soviet Union, and during World War II, though not before and not after, the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States and of Great Britain, the ally whose armed forces inflicted, by far, the most damage on the armed forces of Nazi Germany.

Posted by: Hugh at January 7, 2007 10:47 PM

Hugh said

There is no Muslim equivalent of the 442nd Regiment, proving its loyalty to the United States.

But there was the Muslim who attacked his own regiment, killing several before he was arrested. And there was the Muslim who went AWOL in Iraq, then was captured, claimed to be kidnapped, then went AWOL a second time. There was the Muslim chaplain who smuggled documents in and out of Guantanamo Bay for his co-religionists.

I think they've proven their loyalty.

Posted by: special_guest at January 8, 2007 12:12 AM

Nostrodamus said

The real reason for the detainments were for the protection of the Japanese-Americans.

I've never heard that particular revision of history before. I'm surprised that it was a forced (at gunpoint) protective custody. And I'm surprised the guards and barbed wire were setup to keep them in, not keeping the hordes of racists from breaking into the camp and tearing them limb to limb.

I think making favorable comments about the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII is a mistake. I think making comparisons with Muslims today is an even bigger mistake. Hugh said elsewhere that Japanese spies were in the U.S. I don't know of any Japanese spies arrested in the U.S. (there were some German spies who were caught soon after they snuck off a U-boat into the U.S., and who were executed).

There have been many, many cases of Muslims attacking people in the U.S., with Qur'anic verses given as justification. Their holy book demands that they attack infidels. They send massive amounts of money to jihadist groups overseas. They have powerful lobbyist groups that crush any infidels that dare speak out against the violence of their religion.

There was none of that with the Japanese Americans. Unless someone can enlighten us with any citations.

Posted by: special_guest at January 8, 2007 12:29 AM

I hope the comments by "special guest" are addressed to "nostradamus" and not to me. I did not endorse the internment during World War II, that is concluding that in the end it was justified by subsequent events. Subsequent events, and the loyal behavior of Japanese-Americans, and especially the spectacular record of the 442nd Regiment, tell us that the internment was very likely an overreaction. But it was not a crazed policy, undertaken by the loony. Earl Warren was a rational man. It was rational to worry about a fifth column, along the Pacific Coast, and rational to worry as well about war hysteria among the general population. 1942 was a different time, and cannot be adequately judged in peacetime, decades later. And when we come to such works as the movie "Bad Day at Black Rock," in which Spencer Tracy comes to find out the fate of his friend, a Japanese-American, after the war, or the novel "Snow Falling on Cedars" (same theme), it is easy to now take the side of the angels, but not so easy in 1942. Several Japanese-American women, not one, made up collecively that personage known as "Tokyo Rose." There were some sympathizers with Imperial Japan, and even some spies.

I was making a different point: that the deliberate choice of Manzanar as just the place -- far from populaton centers -- to show the exhibit on Soviet labor camps suggested the desire to make morally equivalent Soviet camps in which millions were sentenced to hard labor, and often death, and a measure undertaken that was limited in time (it ended with the end of the war) and space (Japanese citizens, and Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast were interned, but not Japanese citizens or Japanese-Americans living in New York or Ohio or Virginia or anywhere else). Life in the camps was extensively documented, and books of photographs have been published. So have accounts of those who were in them. One can easily compare what went on in these places -- the stores, schools, post offices, and so on -- not only with labor or concentration camps of the German or Soviet variety, but with the internment camps in which those who were regarded as potentially sympathetic to Nazi Germany were held in Great Britain. Not only German citizens, but even German Jewish refugees from Hitler, were frequently interned. In order to properly judge these things, some kind of sense of the past, beyond mere book-learning, has eitherto be retained, or if that sense of the past was never possessed, then it must be acquired. It is easy to denounce any and all cases in which governments make mistakes, but not everything that governments do, and in which some innocent people suffer (that happens, has been happening, in every war in modern times -- and will continue to happen. The only demand one can make is that an effort be made to minimize the numbers of those innocent, to be as careful as possible).

It is the moral equivalence aimed for by placing this exhibit, for its West Coast stay, at Manzanar, that grates, no matter what one thinks of Earl Warren's actions in 1942.

Posted by: Hugh at January 8, 2007 12:55 AM

The first paragraph was addressed to Nostradamus, the rest are not addressed to anyone in particular; there certainly is no reference to any particular poster. But the topic of Japanese internment has come up before, and as mentioned, posters did try to justify it, and to draw inferences to Muslims today. I think that would be a mistake, an inference that would tend to undermine the message of JW/DW.

I agree that there were reasons for doing it at the time, that it was rational under the circumstances. But, it was a mistake. With the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, the majority opinion decided that it was a mistake; but there has been a passage of time, and attitudes have changed since then; it would be unwise to ignore that reality. Our leaders, any leaders, can make well-intentioned and rational mistakes. We're not perfect, and that's okay. I don't feel the need to self-flaggellate over it, it was just a mistake we made. If the simile is drawn, "it was right then so it's right now", and if people today cannot be convinced it was right then, that weakens the overall argument. I believe that there are very important differences between then and now. I think Japanese internment is the wrong horse on which to hitch the wagon; it could lead us places we may not want to go.

When there is another catastrophic attack within the U.S., we will need to consider very strong measures, measures that have never been taken before in our history. Our leaders today don't even dare name the enemy. To take bold and decisive steps, they, and the population, need to be free of doubts that they are repeating the mistakes of the past. We have never faced the situation we face today. That was my point, again not directed at any particular poster, and it was not a response to Hugh's point that this Soviet gulag exhibit is being used to draw an inference between the U.S. in the 1940's and the Soviet Union in the 1950's through the 1980's, which is a morally repugnant and indefensible slur against the U.S. The Americans trying to deal with the war suddenly forced on them were not a totalitarian state trying to crush any dissent. Whoever was trying to make that point with this exhibit is in need of a brain transplant.

Posted by: special_guest at January 8, 2007 2:50 AM

From Nossy above -

"Back to the American situation during WWII. One has to remember during that time if you were of what is now called African-American decent and you so much as walked on the same side of the street as a white person rather than cross over to the other side of the street, that night you would be executed. So you could imagine how such a culture would react to an actual threat...."

That may have been true in some rural towns in the old South. However, that was not general throughout the whole USA. True there was prejustice, but I seriously doubt anything like that happened North of Mason Dixon. I grew up in the Midwest at the time of WWII, and I never heard of such a case, nor were there the trappings of segregation such as separate water fountains, back seat of the bus, etc. That sort of thing was Old South holdover.

As for the Japanese internment, there is no better source of information on this than Michelle Malkin's tome "In Defense of Internment". A few highlights from the book are germain to some of the above discussion.

1. Between 3000 and 5000 Japanese Americans (Issei and Nisei) served in the Imperial Japanese armed forces. This does not take anything away from the 442nd, which indeed was the most decorated unit of WWII. But it is a fact that others served for the Empire of Japan.

2. Interred people were free to come and go at the camps to work outside the camps, to go to college, etc.

3. The Japanese had dozens of pre-war societies on the West Coast dedicated to the Emperor. One ladies' guild prepared "care packages" for Imperial troops before war broke out. There was a Sword society, a Japanese Naval Reserve Officer Association, and others.

4. Malkin documents a number of spying and sabotage incidents, as well as submarine shelling in the LA region and the balloon drops in western forests.

While Imperial Japan made significant subversive inroads before the war started, they were amnatuers compared to the Islamists of today, who have infiltrated the government, the prisons, the schools, and who have lots of money to finance law suits, and a network of several thousand mosques which can be used as armories under Islamic rules.

Malkin makes the point that Imperial Japan did not have sufficient resources to devote to propaganda and gaining the hearts and minds of Americans. they therefore kept primarily focussed on sabotage.

Malkin also makes the case for not only internment of enemy aliens and subversive Americans, she also makes the case for profiling.

This is an excellent book, well-researched, and a recommended read to debunk many myths about the 1942 internment. We are going to have to deal with these problems again, and people need to get up to speed on the 1942 issues. FDR and Warren were absolutely right.

Posted by: Jimmy Bones at January 8, 2007 3:41 AM

I’d argue that we should bypass internment. The next move should be to welcome Apostates and deport Believers. It is a humane and rational ‘final solution’. Organized Islam in America would be gone.

Something will happen and, when it does, a Constitutional Amendment banning the teachings of Mohammed will be appropriate. The American Ideal can be maintained.

Posted by: pez at January 8, 2007 3:52 AM

"The Sacramento Bee's Ginger Rutland writes, her hand on her forehead in anguish, that if she stopped attending CAIR events, "I would fear for my country, for its cherished traditions of religious tolerance, open debate and fair play."

Yes, we have such people over here, too. They do not live among the muslims, are called as "intellectuals", have never seen what is compulsary for a 4 year old muslim child to perform (saw off the head of an animal), are generally unaware of history, and are unable to connect the present to its roots in the past.

Posted by: arjun.sevak at January 8, 2007 6:06 AM

Mother Ecclesiastica said

If Islam takes over UK, I am hoping the Australian govt has the good sense to inter people like me: British born.

And when British-born Australians start sawing the heads off their fellow Australians, and driving SUV's over them, and stabbing them in the neck as they are driving a Greyhound Bus, and flying planes into skyscrapers, while singing the British national anthem, I'll be right there hoping with you.

If race, not actions, is the only decider, then you're going to miss those like Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, Moussaoui, and the like. A hypothetical Egyptian Copt who immigrated to Nebraska 20 years ago and has been living quietly and working hard in that time, poses no threat in my mind. A Kansas-born (and of German-Anglo lineage) 20 year old who "reverts" to Islam, does. It's not what's inside their veins, it's what's inside their heads, that is the danger.

Posted by: special_guest at January 8, 2007 10:57 AM

Mother Ecclesiastica said

David Suzuki, a Japanese-American, was interned during WWll. He is on the Pulic Record stating that he thought it was the wisest thing for the American govt to do, as did many Japanese-Americans of that time.

That, ironically, proves that it was not required. Their loyalty to the nation was (much) greater than their loyalty to their former homeland. I hope I would have as much patriotism in that situation.

If they decide that it is best for the country to quietly go along with it, that does not mean that they agree that it was a wise decision in the first place.

Posted by: special_guest at January 8, 2007 11:04 AM

Jimmy Bones, I think some people blame the U.S. for every evil thing that has ever happened (even things that happened before the existence of the U.S.). Others think that the U.S. has never made a mistake, and to say so is un-American and un-patriotic, that we must be angels or else that means we are demons. There is a wide area in between those two extremes.

Posted by: special_guest at January 8, 2007 11:08 AM

Don't forget that the Japanese were not the only people interned but many Germans and Italians were also interned.

Also... Islam is not a race but more of a political ideology / religion (talk about your unholy union!).

Posted by: CrazyFool at January 8, 2007 11:23 AM

A little true story.

In the early days of WWII, and long before America had anything to do, the British Government decided the internment of all enemy residents. Among others, 800 Italians were put on a ship, bound for I don't remember where. A German sub torpedoed it. The heroic British sailors made off like hares, leaving the Italians to drown. Almost every one of the dead was an anti-Fascist exile who had consciously left the land of his or her birth in the hope of finding freedom in Britain.

What is the answer? I don't know. But I do know that internment is not nice and rarely works.

Posted by: Paolo at January 8, 2007 5:02 PM

Not only loyalty keeps muslims from being 442 material. They don't have the balls or discipline to be 442 people.

Posted by: pismopal at January 8, 2007 10:58 PM