Talk:Internment of Japanese Americans
Is the article brilliant?
The discussion moved from Brilliant prose candidates
- Japanese American Internment. Nominated by Taku 03:40, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
- Seconded. --Infrogmation 17:14, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- I object. I don't think that the article is that well-written and it is anything but NPOV, since it consistently dismisses the role of anti-Japanese xenophobia and the magnitude of the constitutional violations [even if a wartime Supreme Court did affirm the curfews, internment and other denials of liberty] involved. --Italo Svevo
- Object. Agreed, needs much more NPOV, too much apologist language. Fuzheado 01:15, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- The article is perfectly in NPOV. Remeber we are not concerted about if the internment is justified or not. -- Taku
- But don't you see using the phrase "perfectly in NPOV" shows how far from N your POV is? :) Fuzheado
- Well it was brilliant before VV's additions but alas a stub. Now it needs more NPOVing and a bit of expansion cited above before being re-nominated. --mav 05:57, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Restructuring the article
How about the following structure in place of the existing History section:
- Military context: Brief timeline of Japanese military victories in early 1942; discussion of security concerns. This section would be confined to (1) decisions made by political and military authorities; and (2) discussion of the perceived and demonstrated security risks.
- Social and political context: Discussion of actions by civilian authorities and citizens' groups to advocate for exclusion/relocation/internment.
- Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor: Arrest and detention of community leaders; reactions to the war.
- [Name TBD]: Description of evacuation-->assembly centers-->camps.
Others? --ishu 05:00, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I moved this from the version with the inappropriately capitalized "i" in the last word in the title. I've started fixing the links and will continue... Michael Hardy 22:01, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Why is it inapproprate? See discussion above. I'm moving it back. --Jiang 02:34, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Furthermore, the dash is considered to be offensive/inapproprate by some. Almost all Japanese American organizations leave it out. --Jiang 02:36, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- FYI, I've started Hypenated American and welcome your additions/edits. Fuzheado 03:17, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Ug, what a mess! This article does no justice to one of the most arresting periods in American history. I aim to find time in the future to give this thing a proper and correct working-over. Garrett Albright 22:50, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)
This paragraph doesn't make sense to me:
- Only 9,009 people of Japanese ancestry from the US were interned under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 (50 USC 21-24), compared to a total of 23,435 internees from America. Of those 9,009, only 8,004 were from the continental US.
What is being compared in the 9009 and 23435 figures? Japanese from US vs. Japanese from the rest of America? Japanese from US vs. others from US? Were the other internees interned under the same act? And what is meant by "from the US", have they gone back to Japan "from the US", or are they "from the US" because they were born in the US, or is it supposed to mean "in the US"? --A5 05:17, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The next paragraph is also confusing:
- Of all American citizens who were descended from "enemy" ancestry (Italian, German and Japanese), the only recorded instances of American citizens asking for renunciation of their citizenship were of Japanese ancestry. 5,620 of these renunciants, who had asked to be repatriated to Japan, were not included in the general internment totals (which would otherwise be 14,629 out of 29,055 - not including any non-American residents).
Context would help. Are we claiming that the only German-, Italian-, or Japanese-American citizens who have ever asked to renounce their citizenship have been Japanese? I doubt this is true. Are we talking about American citizens who were interned? American citizens alive during WWII? Under what circumstances did they ask to renounce their citizenship, was it as part of the internment process, or did they decide to go to the INS one day...? --A5 05:26, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Presidential Proclamation 2537 issued on Jan.14, 1942, 1 million enemy aliens register.
Verb? --A5 05:38, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Please take out apologist tone
This article is definitely reliant on apologist sources. The section on conditions at the camps states simply that they had "a high live birth rate!" The author(s) need to consult some Japanese American accounts of the internment. My mother and father and all four grandparents were interned as were the parents and grandparents of all my Japanese relatives and neighbors. I can tell you that this article is NOT a fair representation of the events. To call the reparations a "dole" is insulting. The reparations are represented in this article as a dole paid without attempt to individually assess losses. This is an apologist spin as there was no way to determine individual claims several decades later and with many of the oldest Japanese Americans having already died. It might also be pointed out that nearly half of the internees died prior to the reparations and were not compensated in anyway. There are too many of these gaffs to list. Please consult any of the numerous Japanese American accounts of this experience.
This is all pretty understandable and human and everything. The same phenomena is seen in other parts of the world, as for instance in Finland with regard to those Russian citizens of East Karelia that were "evacuated" and came to suffer in "hastily erected housing facilities" - by any normal person known as concentration camps. Unfortunately, this word has been that much colored by WWII-time propaganda, that it seems as English speakers prefer phony euphemisms. I think particularly in the introduction to the article this is detrimential. Call a spade for a spade! /Tuomas 09:07, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- If a person uses the word "concentration camp" to describe something, it will inevitably be compared to the original "concentration camps" in South Africa (where 28,000 women and children died), or to the Nazi Konzentrationslager. Mackerm 09:56, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, and what's wrong with that? It could only reflect positively on the US. Using evasive euphemisms in the introduction, where by necessity there can't be much wording about formal definitions and so on, just works in the other direction - it contributes to, and enhances, an unfortunate Spin-tendency at many articles, that diminish the credibility of all of wikipedia and gives the reader a feeling of something really scandalous might be hidden behind the Newspeak. /Tuomas 05:52, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- The main problem is that it diminishes the story of people who were in the Nazi or South African concentration camps. Mackerm 06:37, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This article is not at all reliable
In addition to being clearly apologist in tone, this article contains numerous factual inaccuracies and distortions in pretty much every section. What's especially bad is that the vast majority of the incorrect assertions and inaccurate numbers do not even cite a source, so it's impossible for a casual reader to evaluate the truth/falsity/bias in the article! It needs a serious working-over.
Take, for instance, these three paragraphs:
"Using different definitions of internment, you can arrive at different numbers of those affected.
Only 9,009 people of Japanese ancestry from the US were interned under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 (50 USC 21-24), compared to a total of 23,435 internees from America. Of those 9,009, most 8,004 were from the continental US.
Of all American citizens who were descended from "enemy" ancestry (Italian, German and Japanese), the only recorded instances of American citizens asking for renunciation of their citizenship were of Japanese ancestry. 5,620 of these renunciants, who had asked to be repatriated to Japan, were not included in the general internment totals (which would otherwise be 14,629 out of 29,055 - not including any non-American residents)."
The numbers are problematic in that they (1) apparently mix together figures from several different detention regimes, authorized by different authorities; (2) are so poorly worded that it's hard to tell what various numbers refer to (e.g. what is the "total of 23,435 internees from America"?); (3) do not cite a source; and (4) if they refer to the populations which I think they refer to, some numbers are just plain incorrect!
And that's just the beginning... there are numerous other places in the article where highly suspect assertions are made without even citing a source. My guess is that many or most of these inaccurate allegations come not from primary sources, but from the small number of polemic writers who opposed the 1988 redress legislation. If this is the case, then the source REALLY needs to be noted!
Takei 19:19, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
Edit: Since nobody has stepped forward to clarify or offer sources substantiating the specious numbers cited above, I've removed them.
Takei 15:48, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There is a broken link: the EO 9066 EO 9066 doesn't go anywhere.
DrGradus 14:42, 22 May 2004
As per the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, this article should be moved to Japanese American internment, and this page should be made into the redirect. Any objections? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:24, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
Japanese American Internment
To adequately report history,it might be helpful to the occasional reader to refer them to the Robinson and Muller books written on this subject in what appears to be a much more scholarly and less sendational approach to the subject at hand. What I am looking for is history, not an editorial espousing an opinion.