Nice story but the picture doesn't fit

Alright, I am glad to see the coverage of the connection between pesticides and ADHD but I have to question the relevance of a C-130 with a city skyline in the background. Is the exhaust supposed to represent pesticide being sprayed near a city?

Does conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Jeff Rense know something we don't. Just take a look at at his claims showing that the U.S. does has a  a rather dark history of secret experimentation.

I'd like to find out more about these events.

1944 Portable Phone

Credit: September, 1944 - Popular Mechanics, Page 9

Texting was not available on this service plan.

Opinion: Arizona SB 1070

The April 23rd, 2010 signing into law of Arizona SB 1070, which revised the state's statute regarding the enforcement of state and federal immigration laws, has stirred up a wave of controversy and increased racial tension between whites and non-whites across the United States. News coverage and video of protests, riots, assaults and civil disobedience in support of or against the measure are commonplace.

The law, in its most basic terms, requires law enforcement officers ask for green card if they suspect someone is an illegal alien and detain those who are unable to produce documentation for possible prosecution and deportation. In defense of her signing the bill, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, said in an official statement, “Senate Bill 1070 – represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix… The crisis caused by illegal immigration and Arizona’s porous border.” (Brewer 2010)

Within the state and across the country, Governor Brewer has strong support as shown by a Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of state voters showing her approval rating had risen to 56% as of April 28^th 2010. (Rasmussen Reports, LLC 28). A brief search of Yahoo ANSWERS Politics forum yielded some insight as to why supporters are in favor of the new law.

A poster using the screen name “hanson” shows his support for Brewer by calling her a national hero before explaining he is a 10 year resident of Arizona before loosely referring to the victims of a current murder case in San Francisco as his justification.  (hanson 2010) The currently case of Edwin Ramos, an alleged gang member accused of killing a father and his two sons, fits the poster’s description of an illegal alien arrested for murder who had been arrested 3 times previously and was shielded from deportation by San Francisco’s sanctuary status and California law barring local officials from turning him over to immigration authorities for deportation. (Van Derboken 2010)

Supporters of the law see illegal aliens as the source of violent crime in their communities. The murder of Robert Krentz, an Arizona rancher found shot dead on his all-terrain vehicle, has other ranchers feeling uneasy andfearing for their safety. A trail of footprints leading away from the crime scene and tracked back to the Mexican border fuels speculation that Krentz was murdered by an illegal alien. In response to the murder, demands for immigration reform are growing stronger and advocates for stricter immigration control are citing Krenzt’s murder as proof that border violence is out of control.  (Wood 2010)

Realistically, what can be done to reduce or prevent illegal immigration into the United States? Let us briefly examine a few American ideas that are often stated facetiously over a beer.

The first idea: Why don’t we annex Mexico and make it the 51^st state? Plausibility aside, let us examine some potential results, problems and benefits of this unlikely solution.

What this would in effect do is create a state with 112,000,000 citizens (CIA 2010). And now, being Americans, a large percentage of the Mexicans that have lived in squalor all their lives are going to qualify for welfare and health care. While this in itself is not a bad thing on a humanitarian level, economically however, the wallet of John Q. Taxpayer recoils instinctively at the thought of the tax burden associated with such an endeavor.

Second idea: Build a solid barrier across the border from the sea off the shore of Border Field State Park in California to the sea off the shores of Boca Chica Park in Texas.

Besides potential international mockery regarding any East German or North Korean influence on any sort of design that would approach something effective in stopping illegal crossings, the cost of such a project would be staggering. The current 1 million dollar-per-mile border-security fence constructed in Arizona and California is easily crossed by children and the elderly. (Von Drehle 2008) Such an idea also has environmental concerns as it would likely disrupt wildlife patterns by breaking small populations of animals into smaller populations separated by said fence. (Science Centric 2009)

The third option: Open the US-Mexican border completely and let whoever wants to come in.

Putting Homeland Security concerns aside regarding potential terrorist incursions, illegal drug smugglers and crime, the idea was actually suggested by Mexican 2000-2006 President Vincente Fox during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” in 2000 in which he inaccurately predicted an open border where people moved freely between Mexico and the United States would exist by 2010. While American politicians and journalists rebuked the idea, it has some merit when taken into consideration from the perspective of globalization. In this aspect, America is in a better position to benefit than Europe is with its European Union to benefit from a North American Union and should be seen as an evolutionary step rather than a cataclysmic event. (Michaelidis 2000)

Looking historically at the amount of American and foreign interference that has occurred in Mexican affairs since before the time of Mexican independence, it is no wonder that Mexico has internal strife problems. American imperialism has made certain Mexican resources such as oil and labor were historically made available cheaply to American interests while little or nothing went to better Mexican society. (La Botz 1999)

Whatever solution the Obama Administration may come up with in regards to immigration reform, it will likely be so twisted and diluted by political infighting that it will end up being as effective as the current policy is at stopping illegal crossings. 

Bibliography:

Brewer, Janet K. "STATEMENT BY GOVERNOR JAN BREWER: SB1070." Sonoran Weekly Review. April 25, 2010. http://sonoranweeklyreview.com/statement-by-governor-jan-brewer-sb1070/ (accessed May 2010, 15).

CIA. "Mexico." The World Factbook. April 28, 2010. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html (accessed May 15, 2010).

—. "United States." The World Factbook. May 3, 2010. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html (accessed May 15, 2010).

FOX News Network, LLC. "Border States Deal With More Illegal Immigrant Crime Than Most, Data Suggest." FoxNews.com. April 30, 2010. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/29/border-states-dealing-illegal-immigrant-crime-data-suggests/ (accessed May 15, 2010).

hanson. Open Question: Is jan brewer a secret democrat given her recent efforts to destroy the republican party? May 11, 2010. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100511232657AAIKBML (accessed May 15, 2010).

La Botz, Dan. Mask of democracy: labor suppression in Mexico today. South End Press, 1999.

Michaelidis, Gregory. "Open U.S.-Mexican Border." Brookings. July 28, 2000. http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2000/0728mexico_michaelidis.aspx (accessed May 16, 2010).

Rasmussen Reports, LLC. "Election 2010: Arizona Governor." Rasmussen Reports. April 2010, 28. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_governor_elections/arizona/election_2010_arizona_governor (accessed May 2010, 15).

Science Centric. "US-Mexico border wall could threaten wildlife species." Science Centric. July 8, 2009. http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=09070834-us-mexico-border-wall-could-threaten-wildlife-species (accessed May 15, 2010).

Van Derboken, Jaxon. "Slaying suspect once found sanctuary." SFGate. July 2008, 2010. http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-07-20/news/17173999_1_immigration-status-el-salvador-illegal-immigrant (accessed May 15, 2010).

Von Drehle, David. "The Great Wall of America." Time. June 19, 2008. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1816488,00.html (accessed May 25, 2010).

Wood, Daniel B. "Robert Krentz killing stokes fears of rampant illegal immigration." The Christian Science Monitor. March 31, 2010. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0331/Robert-Krentz-killing-stokes-fears-of-rampant-illegal-immigration (accessed May 15, 2010).

Reasons for Japanese Internment in World War Two

Official government reasons for Japanese internment included a fear of the presence of Japanese spies, terrorists and sympathizers within the Japanese-American population on the West Coast that were loyal to the emperor instead of the United States. General Dewitt for example was afraid the Japanese-Americans would be active in subverting American war efforts on the West Coast via sabotage and the marking of coastal targets for Japanese invasion or attack. Through other sources, I have found that some of the ridiculous claims included reports of Japanese Americans growing tomato patches in the shape of an arrow that pointed the way to Pamona, California (home to aircraft factories and other defense industries) and other potential targets.

Some historians cite one reason behind the passing of executive order 9066 was issued was to appease the fears of citizens on the West Coast who were in a near state of panic at the time due to submarine raids along the coast and the fiasco of the Los Angeles Air Raid. Additional motives at the time included moving the Japanese to a location for their safety as much as the nation’s. While I would like to believe our government to be so noble in cause by protecting people from racist opinions and paranoia as public opinion and propaganda of the era support the reason for a need to protect them, I feel the public’s opinion was stirred up intentionally by those who’s interest was served best in seeing the Japanese moved away.

For the Japanese-Americans, the internment was humiliating and enraging experience. Being allowed to only take a suitcase with them, many Japanese-Americans lost everything during the war. Many young men, born to Japanese immigrant parents, volunteered to fight in Europe to prove their loyalty to America and regain their honor.

Truman Had Little Choice but to Drop the Bomb Considering the Intelligence Available at the Time

World War Two ended literally with a bang. That bang was the start atomic warfare. The decision to use the atomic bomb against the Japanese has fueled controversy ever since. Overall, my opinion on the use of atomic weapons against the Japanese was justifiable given the intelligence available to the planners and decision makers, however, later intelligence would prove the bombs use were less effective than the introduction of Soviet Forces into the Pacific Theater.

The US entered World War Two as a result of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The island-hopping campaigns fought in the Pacific were especially brutal and as the Allies got closer to Japan, the fiercer the Japanese fought - Guadalcanal: 7,100 American casualties and 31,000 Japanese killed (Kickman n.d.); Peleliu: 8,200 American casualties, nearly 11,000 Japanese dead and 19 Japanese and 198 Koreans captured alive(Gypton n.d.); Tarawa:  3,000 American casualties and 4,500 Japanese killed with only 17 survivors (History.com n.d.);  Iwo Jima: 26,000 American casualties and nearly 22,000 Japanese casualties (O'Brien n.d.); and lastly Okinawa: 40,000 American casualties, 143,000 Japanese casualties and 142,000 Okinawan civilian casualties (GlobalSecurity.org n.d.). As a result of the bitter fighting over Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted the Japanese would fight for their homeland tooth and nail to the last man and estimated that American casualties for the final invasion of Japan would be in excess of 1,200,000 (JCOS n.d.).

World War Two was fought on the concept of total war – that is every resource available to a nation is put towards the war effort and as a direct result, everything, including the civilian labor force was considered a legitimate combat target. Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping was practiced by both sides as was unrestricted aerial bombing of cities. The cities of Germany and Japan were being turned into rubble with no regard for human life as the firestorms of Dresden and Tokyo would show.

American scientists began working on the Manhattan Project which culminated in the Trinity Test where an atomic bomb (the “Gadget”) was successfully detonated in a desert bombing range outside of Alamagordo, New Mexico (Department of Energy: Office of History & Heritage Resources n.d.). The success of the test lead Truman to order the development of the “Fat Man” and the “Little Boy” atomic bombs as they would decrease the need for American reliance on Soviet involvement in the Pacific Theater. At the Potsdam Conference, Truman hinted to Stalin about a "new weapon of unusual destructive force." To which Stalin, having been receiving information about the American atomic program since 1941, showed little interest and merely hoped the weapon would be put to use against the Japanese (Department of Energy: Office of History & Heritage Resources n.d.).

The losses at Okinawa, which provided a glimpse at the potential casualties involved in invading the Japanese home islands, in combination with intercepted Japanese plans for defending Honshu from invasion that described the depth of resistance planned shocked Truman immensely ("Magic" – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 502, 4 August 1945 n.d.). With the success of the bomb, he now had two options to ending the war with Japan – one atomic, the other an invasion. During the planning stages, it was considered to use the atom bombs in preparatory strikes to clear the beaches or strictly military targets however the mindset of total war on cities won the day ( Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, "Memorandum of Conversation with General Marshall May 29, 1945 – 11:45 p.m.," Top Secret n.d.). The final factor in bombing Japan with atomic weapons came from the fear that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria would not be enough to convince the Japanese to surrender unconditionally (General George A. Lincoln to General Hull, June 4, 1945, enclosing draft, Top Secret n.d.).

History shows the Soviets invaded Manchuria and the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and shortly after that, the Japanese signed the surrender documents on the deck of the U.S.S Missouri. It is my belief, considering the intelligence available to President Truman regarding the Japanese resistance on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the resultant American casualties of those battles in combination with the possibility of another 1 million casualties forced Truman’s hand on the matter.

Additionally, while I feel the atomic bombs did their part to end the war, I honestly believe the injuries, damage and destruction caused by these comparatively low yield weapons when compared the destructive power of the later hydrogen bombs introduced war planners to the destructive power of the atom and in a way contributed to the lack of their use during the Cold War.

Bibliography:

" Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, "Memorandum of Conversation with General Marshall May 29, 1945 – 11:45 p.m.," Top Secret ." n.d. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/11.pdf (accessed May 9, 2010).

""Magic" – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 502, 4 August 1945." n.d. "Magic" – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 502, 4 August 1945 (accessed May 9, 2010).

Department of Energy: Office of History & Heritage Resources. "Potsdam and the Final Decision to Use the Bomb." The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History. n.d. http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/potsdam_decision.htm (accessed May 9, 2010).

—. "The Trinity Test." The Manhattan Project: An Interactive Story. n.d. http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/war_1945.htm (accessed May 9, 2010).

"General George A. Lincoln to General Hull, June 4, 1945, enclosing draft, Top Secret." n.d. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/13.pdf (accessed May 9, 2010).

GlobalSecurity.org. Battle of Okinawa. n.d. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/okinawa-battle.htm (accessed May 9, 2010).

Gypton, Jeremy. Bloody Peleliu: Unavoidable Yet Unnecessary. n.d. http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/peleliu/bloody.aspx (accessed May 9, 2010).

History.com. Battle of Tarawa. n.d. http://www.history.com/topics/battle-of-tarawa (accessed May 9, 2010).

JCOS. ""Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House on Monday, 18 June 1945 at 1530," Top Secret." The National Security Archive. n.d. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/20.pdf (accessed May 9, 2010).

Kickman, Kennedy. About.com: World War II: Battle of Guadalcanal. n.d. http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/peleliu/bloody.aspx (accessed May 9, 2010).

O'Brien, Cyril J. Iwo Jima Retrospective. n.d. http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,NI_Iwo_Jima2,00.html (accessed May 9, 2010).

Don Quixote: Progressive Views in a Time of Discrimination.

The story of Don Quixote was written by Cervantes in a time of chaos and fear that in many aspects is not unlike our time in the 21st century. While today our concerns in America are Muslim terrorists and illegal Hispanic immigrants, in Don Quixote’s time, the target of hate and mistrust was also directed towards the Muslim population of Spain as well as the Jewish population.
It is my impression that Don Quixote is satirizing the xenophobic outlook of the government in power. His desire to return to the “Golden-Age” represents a desire to return to a time of peace when Christian, Muslim and Jew lived together in harmony and mutual respect for each other.
While the Don still feels there is a separation between the common man and nobility, as shown in his unwillingness to assist Sancho when he is being blanket-tossed because he cannot draw his sword upon a commoner. His honorable intentions, while making things difficult for Sancho, are clear in his mind and to the reader. Looking at today as an example, we see a similar separation between the low-income apartment dwellers and those living in gated communities.
Today, we see the class separation determined not so much by religious beliefs as in the time of Don Quixote and Cervantes, but rather economics. The power of the dollar has replaced nobility and position as the unit of measure when determining importance or respect.
Don Quixote longs for a time when honor and morality were as important as one’s position. The Don, as a minor noble, does not expect to pay for services – such as staying a night at the perceived castle which his refusal to pay leads Sancho to suffer through the blanket tossing episode. The Don is operating according to his chivalric beliefs.
This chivalric belief came forth through the intermixing of Jewish, Moorish and Christian views. Through a common language, the people of Al-Andalus were able to flourish. The arts and science flourished in this rich environment, only to be brought into question during the inquisition. As Cervantes writes, it was a time when books were burned and people were jailed and tortured in the name of Christianity.
While King Phillip II wanted Spain to become a homogeneous state, and his country as a result was suffering the painful and violent process of ethnic cleansing, Don Quixote was longing for a time of peace and harmony. To me, this is very reminiscent of America today.
We Americans, like Don Quixote, long for a better time - A time when we were on top of the world and loved by everyone and seen as a protector of freedom such as the end of World War Two. That time of peace and prosperity in Spain and America was short lived however and was quickly replaced with the paranoia of the inquisition and in America, the McCarthy era and repeated again in the post 9/11 era. The loss of acceptance and tolerance led to dark times in both countries. It is this dark time that Don Quixote is set in and is in my mind what Cervantes is satirizing in his story of Don Quixote.

Two reasons for American Isolationism in the 1930s

One of the reasons for America’s isolationism during the 1930s was the Great Depression itself as Roosevelt felt that becoming heavily involved in foreign affairs would take away energy that could be better spent on domestic policy and recovery. Roosevelt chose to focus on domestic issues while maintaining a low-profile international policy that focused on free-trade and international peace.

A second reason for isolationism in the United States in the 1930s was the presence of hostilities in Europe and Asia which reinforced isolationist sentiment. The failure of Wilson’s goals after WWI made many Americans question the reasons behind the US entry into the Great War. In the minds of many, the industrialists/capitalists were to blame.

The arms manufacturers and bankers were perceived as greedy merchants of death. It was this sentiment in combination with the Nye Committee report that saw the creation and passing of the 1935 and 1937 neutrality acts prohibited the selling of arms and the making of loans to countries that were at war as well as the later creation of a cash and carry policy for nonmilitary goods. This policy supported foreign trade and helped our economy while helping aggressors fight their war and thereby thwarting any chance for peace.

Wartime Fears and Racism Weakened the Constitution of the United States

It is my belief that racism, combined with public outrage over foreign events affecting U.S. interests and the ensuing fear and panic aroused by the mass media’s portrayal of events, created an environment of mass hysteria in which innocent people’s civil rights were violated through prejudiced enforcement of the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 because of ideologies, race or where they or their family came from. These discriminatory arrests occurred during the First Red Scare, with a large part of the arrests occurring during the 1920 Palmer Raids. The Espionage and Sedition Acts were again used in combination with racist beliefs and wartime propaganda to essentially imprison 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

In the words of "Star Trek" actor George Takei (Sulu), he and his family were part of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who spent World War II in internment camps across America "not because of anything we'd done, but because we looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor” (Takei). The precedent that allowed this action to occur in 1942 happened twenty five years earlier during World War I with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts in 1917 and 1918. They were enacted in order to appease public fears against those deemed “unpatriotic” in time of war (Oregon History Society).

In 1917, America was divided on multiple fronts. To name just a few examples, there were supporters for both sides of the war in Europe; the labor unions and industrialist clashes were becoming more frequent and better organized and of course the socially accepted “white-superiority complex” that made non-white Americans into second class citizens (Capper). Fear of a revolution in America came about partly as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but also the Seattle General Strike and the Anarchist Bombings of 1919 (Ohio Historical Society). Additionally, United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer fueled the public’s fear of communism with his claimed possession of Trotsky’s plans for Marxist revolution in the United States and vivid description of anarchist and communist activities being perpetrated by immigrants (Palmer). Further labor actions perpetrated by the unions would lead the United States into a period called the First Red Scare (1917-1920) with the resulting Palmer Raids occurring in 1919-1920 (Ohio Historical Society).

Theodore Roosevelt can easily be attributed as an early source of immigrant alienation with his 1915 statement “Those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic” (Digital History). However, seeing the clouds of war heading to America’s shores, President Woodrow Wilson looked to instill patriotic fervor in an effort to suppress the anti-war supporters and in 1917 created the Committee on Public Information (CPI). Using an army of 75,000 volunteers around the country to talk of Allied successes in the war, the ex-muck-raking journalist and now CPI Director George Creel used the CPI to develop and distribute anti-German propaganda to induce fear and hatred into the American public and thereby increase public support of the war. The propaganda resulted in massive increase in American patriotism as well as strong anti-German sentiment. This led to a literal witch hunt for actions of disloyalty by German immigrants and other foreigners. Anti-German sentiment was so prevalent that in a move that would later inspire the future renaming of French fries to “Freedom Fries” in 2003 due to anti-French sentiment after France’s refusal to support the American invasion of Iraq, patriotic American’s referred to sauerkraut as “liberty cabbage”. Later Wilson would enact the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 that made it a crime to cast the government of the United States in a bad light (1918). The acts would later be used to combat communism and anarchy in America. (Roark, Johnson, Cohen, Stage, Lawson, Hartmann).

The use of fear, stereotypes and the appropriate withholding or releasing of specific information regarding the Germans fed a wartime anxiety that an evil “Hun” was hiding in every corner and resulted in numerous reports of disloyal activities as well as subsequent arrests. In the name of patriotism, even a murder was excusable if the victim was German-American as the April 1918 lynching of Paul Prager, a 29-year-old a German-born bakery employee in Collinsville, Illinois proved. Prager was accused of making "disloyal utterances" and taken from the town jail by a mob and hanged from a tree outside of town. The defendants accused of the lynching wore red, white and blue ribbons to their trials while patriotic music played in the courthouse. After a mere 25 minutes of jury deliberation following the trial, the defendants were subsequently found not-guilty. In a gesture of greater decency than America had shown at this time, an international protest was lodged by the German Government who also offered to pay Prager’s funeral expenses (Digital History).

As the Bolshevists took Russia into civil war, industrialists in America became fearful of strikes and labor unions. Efforts to gain better working conditions and wages were mercilessly crushed during World War I, The success of the 1919 Seattle General Strike in combination with Anarchist bombings across the country in the same year would see America’s fear turn from Germans to the Communist threat. The period would be known as the First Red Scare, and it threatened the very core of Democracy and Free Market Capitalism. At the forefront of actions to combat the Red Scare were the Palmer Raids

Led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, the Palmer Raids resulted in over 6000 arrests of alleged subversives and 500 foreign citizens being deported in 1920. Labor activists and workers wanting better wages and equal rights activists representing African-Americans and women were labeled as “Red” and faced bullying, beatings and even jail or deportation. By December of 1919, with the departure of the “Soviet Ark,” which deported Emma Goldman and other radicals, the hysteria began to calm. (Roark, Johnson, Cohen, Stage, Lawson, Hartmann).

In early days of World War II, America’s fear turned towards the Japanese. Fear and resentment of Japanese-Americans had been growing since before the turn of the century, however its rapid growth after 1920 can be attributed in part to the success of Japanese-Americans farmers in America as much as the military success of the Empire of Japan in Asia throughout the 1930s. It took less than 100 years for America to turn from accepting the Japanese to hating them.

The first Japanese to come to America were five shipwrecked sailors rescued from the Pacific by the American whaler ship S.S. John Howland in 1841. While four of the sailors departed at Hawaii, one of these sailors, Nakahama Manjirō would go on to America and eventually with the other four, return to Japan in 1845 to serve as an interpreter and teacher of American culture during the Opening of Japan in the 1850s (Korea in the Eye of the Tiger). Unfortunately for the Japanese, the United States interest would begin to wane in the early part of the 20th century and as a result Japanese-Americans began to suffer discrimination and segregation.

In 1893, in response to increased Japanese immigration, the San Francisco School Board attempted to force all Japanese children to attend the Chinese School. While the Japanese Consul was able to get the measure rescinded, it would continue to pop up over the next few years. In 1913, in response to a perceived economic threat to white farmers due to Japanese farmers being able to profitably farm their plots of land better than the whites, California enacted the Alien Land Law of 1913 which prevented Japanese-Americans from owning property. Other acts intended to further reduce the influence of Japanese-Americans included the 1920 California Alien Land Law, which closed any loopholes of the 1913 act, and the Immigration Act of 1924, which ended all further emigration from Japan. By 1924, the Japanese-Americans were facing growing racism and outright fear grew as the Empire of Japan began to expand across Asia and the Pacific in the 1930’s. (Niiya)

By February of 1942, many Americans saw the Japanese as an unstoppable force due to their early victories in Asia and the Pacific as well a result of the shelling of an oil refinery in Goleta, California by Japanese Submarine I-17, the shelling of Fort Stevens, Oregon by Japanese Submarine I-25 and the panic-induced fiasco referred to as the Great Los Angeles Air Raid (the hilarity of which was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 1979 cult film “1941”) the very next day.  The American public was unprepared for war and by using similar propaganda methods to alienate the German-American population in World War I; the Japanese were made to be savage and barbarous in the eyes of the public via movies, news stories and news reels showing the savagery of the fighting in China. Despite opposition from J. Edgar Hoover who felt that any valuable Japanese spies had already been rounded up by the F.B.I. after Pearl Harbor and Eleanor Roosevelt attempting to persuade the President to change his mind on the matter on the basis of humanitarian concerns, Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to intern 120,000 Japanese-Americans, 11,000 German-Americans and 3,000 Italian American by signing Executive Order 9066 into law in the early days of World War II in an effort to calm the public hysteria (Leo).

Hindsight is always 20/20 and looking back at the passing of the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918, we can see that they resulted in increased animosity towards German-Americans and resulted in multiple violations of civil rights during and after the war. Not only did German-Americans suffer under the oppressive fist of the United States Government but process was repeated to combat Communism and anarchy during the First Red Scare. At this time, the Japanese were already suffering racism in the form of segregation and not being allowed to own land (Oregon History Society).

By the time America became involved in World War II, the Japanese successes in the Pacific Theater gave the impression of invincibility to the average American. Debacles like the Los Angeles Air Raid helped to fan the flames of fear and resulted in the wrongful and misguided passage of Executive Order 9066 in an attempt to assuage the rampant public hysteria gripping the United States population (Webber).

 Backing up my belief that this series of events was simply wrong and unjust, President Gerald Ford rescinded Executive Order 9066 in 1976. In 1988, Japanese-Americans received an apology from the US Government in via the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed into law by Ronald Reagan on August 10th. The following year President George H.W. Bush signed an appropriations bill authorizing redress payments up to $20,000 for each surviving internee (Oregon History Society).

The Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918, while enacted for justifiable wartime concerns, were used instead to bully and quiet the anti-war voices that were dividing the country (Robert La Follette Demands his Rights). Later the acts were against communist sympathizers during the Palmer Raids fear as a tool to violate their First Amendment right to free speech (Roark) by silencing their voices of change as well as silencing representatives of labor unions and other activists working towards racial and gender equality.  While the many of the convictions would be later overturned, thousands were wrongfully detained, beaten and deported in the name of national security (American Bar Association).

As soon as World War II began, paranoia and racist propaganda again reared its head in America via the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans as well as smaller number of German-Americans and Italian-Americans. Japanese-American internee Marielle Tsukamoto, now an elementary school teacher in Elk Grove, California, said in an interview, “because the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed by Congress, our constitution is strong again. It was weakened by Executive Order 9066 when President Roosevelt ordered 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans into internment camps” (Library of Congress: The Learning Page). In 1980, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of three Japanese-Americans who refused to submit to internment on the grounds that the government intentionally withheld evidence that would have proven the internment measures taken at the time were not a military necessity (American Bar Association).

Even during World War II, a few voices of reason in America saw the internment of Japanese as an immoral act. Along with the previously mentioned J. Edgar Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt, Colorado Governor Ralph Lawrence Carr was among the loudest of those oppositional voices as he worked towards bettering the conditions within the internment camps, openly apologized to Japanese-Americans in 1942 for their status in his state and urged his fellow Coloradoans to welcome the internees (Ellerdale Inc.). Another dissenting voice was Justice Frank Murphy who wrote in 1944 during the Korematsu v. the United States trial that the exclusion order “goes over the very brink of constitutional power and falls into the ugly abyss of racism” (Korematsu v. the United States).

I would like think that we as a country have evolved passed segregation and oppression and those terms such as Nip, Jap, Gook, Chink, Wetback, Polack, Raghead, Redskin, Nigger or Cracker are not examples of socially acceptable language. Unfortunately, I still hear these words used too frequently in our society. I see the current news reports of an episode of “South Park” mocking of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad (Riley) as well as ongoing reports of abuses committed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba against the detained Al-Qaeda members that occurred under the Bush era (Rosenburg) and I see my hope of a better society is being shattered again by fear, brutality and racism. I urge “We the People” to take heed of the lessons of the past so as not to repeat the acts of bigotry and oppression as was endured by Japanese-Americans and other immigrants, minorities, political activists and communists of the 20^th century.

Bibliography:

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