Another tale of Thanksgiving dinner conversation woe

[magellan]

Both my parents are moderate in most of their views, but unfortunately I know them both to be lightweight (as opposed to raging) bigots and racists. So when my dad raised the story of the imams who were removed from the US airways flight, I wasn't too surprised when they said it was the right thing to do and they would have done the same, turned them in.

They're both of the Greatest Generation so I mentioned the internment of the Japanese. This country indiscriminately locked away thousands of Japanese-American citizens in prison camps during WWII because of their names and ancestry. Many of them were born here. Their only crime was "living in America while of Japanese descent."

Predictably, my parents averred that it had been a necessary wrong. But I pressed the point.

Why didn't we do the same to German-Americans, I asked? Could it be perhaps because it isn't easy to distinguish German-Americans from other European-Americans on sight or even by surname? And if superficial markers didn't facilitate the detention of Japanese-Americans, then why did Asian-Americans of non-Japanese descent also suffer public harassment and exclusion during WWII?

(Found on another site: “Me not Japanese” was the sad little window sign scrawled by a Chinese American shopkeeper during World War II, a sentiment shared at the time by some Korean Americans who wore buttons declaring, “I hate J-ps more than you do.”)

This is part of primitive human nature. Tribalism. If the enemy has distinguishing marks -- skin color, features, religion, attire -- then it makes them easier to spot. Unfortunately everyone who shares those attributes stands a good chance of being lumped in with the enemy and suffering for it whether they deserve it or not. This has been discussed here many times.

And the reverse is true. We don't take it as seriously when it's one of our own.

I was told "There haven't been any American terrorists." How quickly we forget! Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the brutal tortures and murders of Iraqi civilians....

"That's not the same as 9-11" was the response. And finally we got to the guts of it: the 9-11 hijackers weren't American. McVeigh et al were. Therefore the OKC bombing, the Atlanta bombing and the murder of an abortion doctor, the torture and killing of Iraqi civilians -- not real terrorism.

:wow:

There's a sickening hierarchy of discrimination at work in the minds of people.

You know, I can guarantee that my folks would be shocked and angered if they went to Europe and were mistreated because "Bush** is a terrorist". Just as RW Christians resent places like Saudi Arabia that wouldn't welcome them praying in the airport, or anywhere in public for that matter. Any yet none of them have a problem treating others to a little good old-fashioned American superficial subjectivity of their own. And expect them to "understand" it.

Sadly, "I'm okay, you're not" is a pervasive attitude around the world. It's easy to just react. Especially when it's not your rights or your life hanging in the balance.

In the end we agreed to disagree and got on with the pumpkin pie, which was delicious.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. BRAVO

We got into a different argument, and that was whether women belong in subs.

God I THOUGHT feminist would be all for having women in the sub service... but I heard every argument uttered from the mount of a JO Naval Officer, (female no less) that I heard of why women did not belong in the overnight shift when I was working as a medic. I fought them stereotypes, and I asked well New Zealand, Autralia and the UK have women serving on board their subs/

Well it has to be a single gender crew

Nope, mixed, so what are they doing right and what are WE doing wrong?

EGADS, you'd think we have evolved, we haven't

[magellan]

6. I don't get the sub thing either

For crying out loud, the only difference between a sub and a ship is one spends a lot of time underwater. (The other not so much, at least not on purpose.) Those who oppose it can't offer a reasonable excuse for barring women from sub duty because there aren't any.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. The admiralty does not want it

but one of the excuses was that the spaces are far more closed in.

Bull crap... they could do this with the Ohios right now.... the Viriginia was designed to be able to accomidage boht, aka two emlisted heads... the admirals had the designers remove one

[magellan]

26. I don't understand

Too closed in? I mean I know older subs are cramped, but geez! What are they afraid of, some bubblehead might accidentally brush up against a female breast and fire the wrong torpedo? lol

That's pretty condescending to both men and women in the fleets, I think.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Yes it is

the major fear was rape in a sub. Having known a few bubblehaeds over my life time, gee I married one... I'd hate to be the sailor who crossed that line.

Yes Sir, he slipped on a bar of soap and cracked his head Sir. (said 139 voices in unison)

[magellan]

29. Ain't that the truth!

I was in the Navy; one of a handful of women in an A school of over 500 guys. My class were all my brothers. If anyone from another class had even looked at me wrong that sailor would have rued the day.

[CountAllVotes]

2. they did lock up German americans

Many German people changed their surnames during WWII so people would not know they were German.

I remember I had a teacher that opened up the class the first day and said, "My name is Miss Smith. My real name is Miss Schmidt however. It was changed during WWII because of the war with Germany."

I've looked into further discrimination against Germans during WWII in America recently and talked to a few old people out there that remember and they told me that yes, Germans were also "on the list" so to speak.

Sad isn't it? No wonder my full-blooded GERMAN American grandma never spoke. :(

[magellan]

3. But were they placed in prison camps?

I know there was discrimination -- my family's German on both sides -- but I don't recall that German American families were rounded up and sent off to armed camps like the Japanese Americans were.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Yes, a small number ended up at Ellis Island

in ahem, protective custody

[no_hypocrisy]

5. German-Americans and Italian-Americans, but not due to racism.

http://www.foitimes.com/internment/udq.htm

Two months prior to any relocation order, the Justice Department began to intern thousands of individual Japanese, German and Italian Americans believed by the FBI to be potentially dangerous to the security of the country," Fox writes in The Invisible Gulag: An Oral and Documentary Biography of German American Internment During World War II, a work in progress. "The government proclaimed that all internees had been arrested 'for cause.'"

-snip-

Europeans and European-Americans accounted for 56 percent of all internees during World War II, according to Arthur Jacobs, co-editor of World War Two Experience: The Internment of German-Americans. In all, some 10,905 enemy aliens from Germany were interned - along with 16,849 Japanese, 3,278 Italians, 53 Hungarians, 25 Rumanians, five Bulgarians and 161 others.

[magellan]

11. Huh, I didn't know that

Shocking to learn. Still, I think that article supports my point, that the Japanese-Americans were easily singled out and "relocated" in larger numbers. (The article says Japanese-Americans were "relocated" as opposed to "interned"? I've seen photos of the camps and my ex-boyfriend's mom and dad spent time in one; that was no friggin' mere "relocation"!)

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Oh it was not

I talked to Nissei who live in Hawaii who survived them. After Sept 11 the fear of one old lady is that we were about to do the same thing again, with Arabs

My husband was active at the time, and we've talked about it. If the Bushies had ordered it, they faced a general mutiny in the armed forces. That is why they floated the balloon and quickly lowered it.

He said that many senior enlisted and even mid level officers threatened to leaving their commands on the spot

So you could say we did learn something from that experience

[magellan]

21. Thank goodness for that much

Although we've still detained a lot of people in places like Gitmo who are probably innocent.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Hey I do find some hope in that little

as to Gitmo, we are doing it becasue previious admins, aka Bush I and Reagan, got away wiht so much in CA that most Americans do not even know about... they don't care, and it has never been covered in the US

[Gormy Cuss]

16. Right, interned individuals suspected as enemies, rather than wholesale relocation of families.

In most cases just as incorrect, but the difference with German and Italian Americans is that it would have been impractical if not impossible to round up all people with those ethnic identities in the U.S.
Racism and the relatively low number of people involved made it easier to relocate the Japanese families.

[no_hypocrisy]

18. That's the concept.

Supreme Court case, Koramatsu, allowed (and still allows) segregation and detention of any particular group of people the government deems to be dangerous to the public population. That's why I'm fearful of the recently enacted Military Commission Act as the Supremes will use Koramatsu as precendent to uphold it.

[magellan]

22. Yep, despite my error in thinking German-Americans weren't interned

...that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Looking Japanese made it easier for the government to round up Japanese-Americans.

[Gormy Cuss]

24. The opposite side of the coin was true too

It was easier for German and Italian Americans to 'pass' by changing their names and not speaking their mother tongues. That and the sheer number of people involved.

[CountAllVotes]

7. Yes

<eom>

[WinstonSmith4740]

8. I used to wonder the same thing.

I'm of Italian descent, and they didn't round up and of the people from my grandparents neighborhoods, either. And it would have been easy if they wanted to...just round up everyone and let the non-Italians go.

[CountAllVotes]

13. my mother remembered them collecting the Japanese

She was a young woman at the time and she remembered seeing the Japanese lined up getting on buses. She did not know what to think but she was told they were likely devotees of Hirohito and that "explained" it to her.

As for the German thing, no one in my family ever talked about this. My grandma was a blond haired/blue-eyed German no doubt. She even spoke fluent German and my father knew some German too.

Hush hush was the word. Don't talk and do NOT tell.

Luckily my grandfather was full-blooded Irish having an notorious Irish surname and no one bothered his German wife that never spoke.

In hindsight, it is all so very sad. They would have had no reason to lock up my grandma because she was sort of an orphan being both of her parents (from Germany) had died around 1900 or so.

[GoneOffShore]

20. This might change your mind

A friend did a documentary on the detention of Italian-Americans during World War 2

http://www.prisonersamongus.com/

". . . And when Italy joined with Hitler as an Axis power, Italians in America, quite young in their assimilation process, were faced with yet another dilemma. Lines of loyalty were now less clearly drawn; their sense of identity, already in flux, was thrown into turmoil. Paranoia in this country ran the gamut from street-side prejudice to formal declarations of war upon non-citizen Italians.
This sentiment reached a crescendo in December of 1941 when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Proclamation Number 2527. This law branded the 600,000 non-naturalized Italians as potential "enemy aliens," stripping them of their right to privacy and empowering the Attorney General "to direct the conduct to be observed toward the aliens who become so liable." Furthermore, the document allowed discretion in "the manner and degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject and in what cases, and upon what security their residence shall be permitted…."

[kineneb]

10. sure did

And during WWI German-Americans who still spoke German at home were considered traitors (that is when my great-grandfather and g-grandmother quit speaking German). So when I went to college, I earned a degree minor in German, sort of in their honor.

Lots of German restaurants and businesses also changed their names: "Vierjahreszeiten" became "Four Seasons," etc. And don't forget the infamous "Liberty Cabbage" (Sauerkraut). Shades of "Freedom Fries".

Hello, fellow German-American! :hi:

[no_hypocrisy]

12. I'll give you an example of forgetting history.

I saw on the menu of the Coplay (PA) Saengerbund "Freedom Fries". I've complained and they're still there.

[CountAllVotes]

15. hello back!

I'm admittedly very mixed blood being mostly Irish and about equal portions German and Native American.

What a mess, that is all I can say about this (I do not recall ever hearing German being spoken around me but my mother told me that my father and his mother both spoke German to one another).

It sickened me when I found out.

:hi: again!!

[kineneb]

27. my heritage

typical Heinz 57 "American":

German/Swiss- mother's father
English- mother's mother
German/Norwegian- father's mother
Arcadian French- father's father

and by adoption:
Persian- step-father

Great-grandma's (the Swiss side) baptismal certificate was printed and filled out entirely in German, even though she was born in Kansas.

[magellan]

19. Well, I guess I misspoke on that minor point then

I'm really surprised, my grandmother was fluent in High German and we talked about WWII all the time -- she never mentioned anything about internment of German Americans. And she was a straight-ticket Democrat all her life, the kind who kicked about all sorts of injustices! But it seems that German-American/etc internment wasn't on the massive scale of the Japanese-American internments.

Guttentag and Gott Mit Uns to you -- that's the extent of my German, sad to say! :hi:

[Sapphocrat]

9. Your parents may change. Mine did.

Both my Greatest Generation parents used to believe that both the internments and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been necessary. My father maintained his belief in the bombings, but sometime in the 1980s, not long after becoming friends with the Japanese-American couple who moved in across the street, he began to seriously re-evaluate his position on the camps. He was already in his 60s at the time. Knowing how set in his ways my father was about many things, this sea change only strengthened my belief that the path to harmony, among all of us, is as much exposure to one another as possible. People can change.

(My mother, btw, had already long since changed her views on both the internments and the bombings.)

P.S. Not to be a point killer, but... I don't know about German-Americans, but I can give you an anecdote about one Italian. One of my great-uncles, who had been in the U.S. for some 40 years and owned his own barber shop -- but had never gotten around to naturalizing -- suddenly found himself under a curfew; he wasn't allowed to leave his home from dusk to dawn for the duration of WWII, because he was an Italian citizen. (I doubt that his surname had anything to do with it, since the rest of his immediate family, all either naturalized or born here, were not subject to any such restrictions.)

Which is neither here nor there, but I expect a lot of Italians in the U.S. (and perhaps Italian-Americans) suddenly found themselves labeled potential "enemy combatants."

[magellan]

23. Thanks for that

I honestly had no idea that German and Italian Americans suffered this level of government scrutiny during WWII. Some, yes, but I thought it was more targeted, and that the discrimination by neighbors was worse. I guess that'll teach me for thinking our government has ever been "good" at this sort of thing.

The change in your parents, brought about by their own experiences afterwards, is encouraging. But somehow I don't think my father will change. He wouldn't speak to me when I dated an African American, but loves the Brit I subsequently married. sigh...I've basically accepted it, although I do try to challenge his views every now and then.