[HN Gopher] Camp that imprisoned 7000 Japanese Americans could b...
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       Camp that imprisoned 7000 Japanese Americans could become National
       Historic Site
        
       Author : sofixa
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2022-02-21 20:56 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
        
       | goldcd wrote:
       | It should - but it's not so much about a piece of land, it's
       | about what it represents.
       | 
       | As a non-American, the US does still seem to be a 'very patriotic
       | country' - national anthems played for any reason, standing for
       | flags, pledging allegiance to abstract concepts, USA*n chants to
       | fellow americans etc etc.
       | 
       | Not in itself wrong - but always struck me as a bit try-hard on
       | the homogeneity. Darker edge is that it means you (not you
       | specifically, but <i>you</i>) still label people as being
       | "unamerican".
       | 
       | Even in political discourse - there seems to be an abstract
       | "America" (that everybody loves) and then criticism from both
       | sides is couched in terms of how the other side is trying to
       | destroy this great abstract.
       | 
       | I was just thinking of Eileen Gu and the whole balagan when she
       | chose to compete for China. She's a skier. I can't think of any
       | other country that would get so upset that a national would
       | choose to perform sports for another country.
        
       | pirate787 wrote:
       | They can start by mentioning this history at the FDR memorial in
       | Washington, DC.
        
       | ghaff wrote:
       | News related to this a few days ago got me thinking that people
       | who want the US Supreme Court to ratify "sensible" mandates and
       | orders coming out of the Executive Branch even if they're legally
       | sketchy should perhaps be careful what they wish for.
       | 
       | Korematsu v. United States which basically upheld FDR's executive
       | order is probably one of the least defensible SCOTUS decisions of
       | all time and definitely one of the worst if you include a few
       | pre-Civil War cases.
       | 
       | ADDED: And, yes, SCOTUS is political too but it should act as at
       | least some degree of check. I'm also not specifically commenting
       | on any particular decision but I've certainly read decisions (as
       | a non-lawyer) that were counter to my personal preference but
       | which seemed the right thing legally.
        
         | colpabar wrote:
         | You don't understand - that won't happen because the good guys
         | are in charge now.
        
           | pirate787 wrote:
           | Not sure if you're being sarcastic but it was liberal icon
           | FDR who sent these citizens to prison camps.
        
             | zdragnar wrote:
             | Don't worry, he'll get cancelled soon enough. That way,
             | there wont be a problem giving good guy government more
             | power in the future.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | I assume the comment (and early downvotes) was related to
             | the fact that one could take this as commentary on SCOTUS
             | shooting down some COVID vaccination mandates (along party
             | lines). Which admittedly is what mostly triggered my
             | thinking about the point.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | Please don't post unsubstantive comments or take HN threads
           | further into hellish flamewar. It's not what this site is
           | for, and it destroys what it is for. We want _curious_
           | conversation here.
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
         | avs733 wrote:
         | > News related to this a few days ago got me thinking that
         | people who want the US Supreme Court to ratify "sensible"
         | mandates and orders coming out of the Executive Branch even if
         | they're legally sketchy should perhaps be careful what they
         | wish for.
         | 
         | Please explain how science-supported public health measures to
         | control the spread of a deadly infectious disease are similar
         | to imprisonment of a group based on their nationality because
         | they were assumed to be helping the enemy during a way.
         | 
         | You just compared antibiotics and the fear of eclipses.
         | 
         | If institutions can't tell these apart they have already
         | failed...all of them.
        
           | SllX wrote:
           | SCOTUS is a legal institution that interprets laws given the
           | facts and case in front of them. It is not their job to
           | ratify Executive powers in the absence of Congressional
           | action. They are not, nor should they be, a backup Congress.
        
             | avs733 wrote:
             | > SCOTUS is a legal institution that interprets laws given
             | the facts and case in front of them.
             | 
             | >that people who want the US Supreme Court to ratify
             | "sensible" mandates and orders coming out of the Executive
             | Branch even if they're legally sketchy should perhaps be
             | careful what they wish for.
             | 
             | Yes...based on facts and laws...what are the facts and the
             | laws in each case. Start with the facts, they are pretty
             | simple.
        
               | SllX wrote:
               | The facts before them, which are provided by the
               | plaintiff's and defendant's lawyers who are both charged
               | with providing their best arguments; and according to the
               | laws written by Congress.
               | 
               | This is not a small distinction.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | You can read the decisions and there's no shortage of
               | expert commentary on important SCOTUS decisions. If you
               | actually care you're far better off going there than
               | relying on comments from mostly non-lawyers.
        
               | WillPostForFood wrote:
               | The use of facts in the Supreme Court is to determine
               | whether a law is legal, not good policy. The court is a
               | check on legality of the actions of other two branches,
               | not a check on their judgement.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | I assume that any mandates re: vaccinations passed by
               | states that roughly conformed to the facts of Jacobson v.
               | Massachusetts would probably not even be taken up by
               | SCOTUS as they would be matters of settled law (and have
               | been effectively held up in more recent cases related to
               | school vax requirements). However, expanding this to OSHA
               | requirements was a bridge too far for (some) justices.
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | At the time, there was a widespread fear, even among (as
           | someone else mentioned) liberal icon FDR, that there was a
           | significant security risk associated with Japanese-descended
           | Americans. Even so, SCOTUS should have (ideally) said there
           | was no legal case for interning them or (less ideally but
           | better) simply declined to hear the case. It sounds very
           | similar if the legal justification in equally weak. It's not
           | the job of SCOTUS to make up legal reasoning for whatever the
           | other branches of government want to do even if you (or the
           | majority) agree with them.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | justinzollars wrote:
       | I think this is a good idea.
        
       | dathinab wrote:
       | Also interesting:
       | 
       | As far as I know the Japanese Americans where forced to sell land
       | they own for close to nothing and where never reimbursed.
        
         | nataz wrote:
         | Not just land. Bank accounts and personal property were also
         | liquidated under duress.
        
           | dathinab wrote:
           | The think is, at least in some of the US states, there are
           | major benefits for long term land holders (wrt. property tax)
           | and some of the land once owned by Japanese Americans became
           | very expensive (I have heard, as it was in Silicon Valley).
        
         | WillPostForFood wrote:
         | There were reparations paid in 1988 - not saying that it was
         | enough, or should count as reimbursement, but there was some
         | financial acknowledgement.
         | 
         |  _In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil
         | Liberties Act of 1988 which officially apologized for the
         | internment on behalf of the U.S. government and authorized a
         | payment of $20,000 (equivalent to $44,000 in 2020) to each
         | former internee who was still alive when the act was passed.
         | The legislation admitted that government actions were based on
         | "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political
         | leadership."[30] By 1992, the U.S. government eventually
         | disbursed more than $1.6 billion (equivalent to $3,500,000,000
         | in 2020) in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had
         | been interned.[29][31]_
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Liberties_Act_of_1988
        
       | zxcvbn4038 wrote:
       | Definitely worth preserving so that people are aware it happened
       | and hopefully prevent it from happening again in the future.
        
         | fr33d0m_ wrote:
         | Why should something like this never happen again? War is war.
         | Japan in current day is an ally, so let's discuss the CCP.
         | 
         | Couldn't you say compared to the current modern day Communist
         | Party of China and being as of today 21 Confusion institutes
         | currently located in the United States? Do you think the
         | current Communist Party of China does not have spies and people
         | designed to infiltrate the United States government and the
         | current Republic in various levels? Haven't they even been
         | stealing secrets and intellectual property from governments?
         | 
         | Also, alerts last month from British Intelligence (MI5)
         | regarding infiltration in their parliament?
         | 
         | And lastly, the CIA finally started a division to investigate
         | China as of late last year.
         | 
         | So if you ask me, if there was a large security threat in the
         | United States or Canada for example or any allied nation
         | regarding spies from lets say the CCP, I believe they should
         | absolutely be investigated and potentially put into secure
         | camps regarding national security of a country.
         | 
         | It's not pretty(war isn't pretty), but how else would a
         | military secure foreign threats in their country?
         | 
         | Sources:
         | https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/how_many_confucius_institu...
         | 
         | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/13/chinese-spy-infiltr...
         | 
         | https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/china-is-stealing-our...
         | 
         | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/cia-china-m...
        
           | mcphage wrote:
           | > So if you ask me, if there was a large security threat in
           | the United States or Canada for example or any allied nation
           | regarding spies from lets say the CCP, I believe they should
           | absolutely be investigated and potentially put into secure
           | camps regarding national security of a country.
           | 
           | Were the people imprisoned there actually a security threat?
           | Were they investigated? Was it before or after they were
           | interred?
        
           | RunawayGalaxy wrote:
           | I think you missed the point about Japanese American
           | internment.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-21 23:02 UTC)