beautiful, horrible WWII movie

The irony is that the Japanese would've loved to have more "human intel" in the US during the war, but very much like the sentiment in the US at the time, the high command didn't at all trust the expat community, and people of Japanese ancestry who weren't first-generation in general.

Takeo Yoshikawa tried to flip some other Japanese residents of Hawaii, but apparently found that at the very least they were overwhelmingly neutral to the idea, and wrote his superiors in Japan discouraged that his impression was none of them were good for very much.

I haven't had time to watch the documentary fully but at 1:48 minutes there appears to be a rally in Hiroshima shortly after the a-bomb went off.

Check against this image:

People usually move to get better prospects in life. Hence the Japanese that left Japan prior to WWII (heck many came over in the late 1800s!) were looking to have a better chance in Canada and the US for their families.

And look how they were treated.

How many were traitors to the US and Canada? I suspect the number was very, very low.

As Mr. Yoshikawa said, you can't interest settled in folks to rise against their friends and compatriots. Hell even after the Japanese were interred many insisted that they wanted to fight against the Axis powers, and near the end of the war some 4000 were allowed to.

People of German, Austrian, and Italian ancestry were not rounded up during the war and sent to concentration camps like our government did here in Canada (and the US) to our Japanese citizens. It was reprehensible and disgusting that people simply looking to better themselves in a 'free' country were impoverished and locked up because they were the wrong race.

We need to remember this when new 'leaders' tell us that some weaker group is bad and that we don't know what they want. What nonsense - they (like almost everyone on the planet) want to live in peace.

If you don't think this can happen again...

John

Finished watching the documentary - the bit I speak of above was from

John

Hideously missing any detailed facts and or analysis.

The interred Japanese weren't starved, tortured, experimented on, forced to labor, or machine-gunned or gassed to death. That's something.

Yep, fortunately or unfortunately that sounds like just the kind of place I'd want to head for if I were a Syrian refugee ~70 years later.

AFAIK Japan is still not high on anyone's list of places to seek asylum.

War taints everything and everybody. In this case "Unit 731" has some relevance.

"Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937?1945)...

"Some historians estimate that up to 250,000 men, women, and children ... were subjected to experimentation conducted by Unit 731 at the camp based in Pingfang alone... Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes referred to euphemistically as "logs" used in such contexts as "How many logs fell?..."

"Instead of being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation..."

That's one of those STUPID pseudo-documentaries about an era as told by unrepresentative people in a bunch of fake diary entries and letters. It's total garbage IOW. You sure do know how to pick 'em.

It's a collection of rare color film, starting before the war. I liked it.

Do you think the diaries and letters were fake? Of course, they had to use other narrators, especially for dead people. The Japanese accents weren't necessary.

Pity they didn't mention proximity fuzes, but it wasn't that sort of film.

That'd be something, fighting while buried!

Did you mean interned?

:)

BTW I kinda agree about migrants from enemy nations, but they were still a security risk due to their sympathies and family associations. I'm sure there were over-reaches, but overall, I think that many of these people deserved some close scrutiny at least.

The sobering remnants are worth a visit next time you're in Heilongjiang. There are some charts of how long it takes a child to die in ice-cold water, for example.

I heard an interview from Japan not many years ago with a former 'researcher' who performed vivisection on a prisoner- sans anesthetic. He didn't sound very remorseful. He said things like "the poor fellow started to scream".

--sp

True, the dead don't fight very well, although I hear zombies can be annoying.

Yeah, none of us are innocent. One hopes we learn from the past!

John

.... Phil

There was also the argument that they were isolated for their own protection. It was a pretty racist time.

I knew a Japanese family that lost a lot of agricultural property in Florida. It wasn't just the West coast.

The Australian internment sounds more severe than the USA one.

"Most of those of Japanese origin, however, including some who were

A number of foreigners are being hosted by the US government. Oh, wait, we can't say they aren't tortured, can we?

WTF are you yammering about now?

Gulp... Deep sigh, I don't know what to do... attempt to honor the dead?? I'm sorry, but I don't want to look at the data points... and error bars...

George H.

Yes indeed. There are other "unpleasant" examples in the wackypedia article.

ISTR several decades ago hearing that they determined something or other about the different races by tying their arms out horizontally, drenching a cloth with cold water, and timing whatever happened. Some of those were US/European POWs.

The paragraph below plus the realisation that there are such bastards in all countries lead to my statement that "war taints everything and everybody".

What would save more lives in the future? Punishment would only slightly discourage future war criminals, but the data could and maybe did save lives.