.
It was a class about civil rights and ethics, during which a favorite topic of the Left’s came up: Japanese internment during World War II. There were quite a few Asians in the class, and they were taking particular umbrage at the steps our country took 60 years ago in the aftermath of the bloody sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The comments ranged from America is racist to America is racist, imperialist, racist, unethical, racist, depraved, and of course, racist. The Japenese had been targeted because of, let’s see, oh yeah, racism, and they were interned only because they looked different. This went on and on and on.
So here I was, sitting in a classroom at one of the more respected universities in the nation [USC], and I was waiting for the professor to bring up a fact about the World War II internment that was historically relevant and certainly not a national secret. By the 1990s it was never discussed in the media, but I fully expected it to be in an academic environment, where issues are to be probed more deeply. (I know, I’m naive!)
I finally raised my hand, “Excuse me, but I think it should be noted that it wasn’t just the Japanese who were interned here during the war. Italians and Germans were, too. In fact, they were in the same camps, some integrated and some separated into sections.” [45]
The room erupted into a cacophony of chairs moving , students standing to glare at me, gasps, and indignant shouts. It was absolutely amazing. I had assumed some discussion would ensue but this was truly a surprise. A young man of Japanese descent sitting in front of me turned and muttered “Racist bitch”…
The professor, who was as nice as he was clueless, told the class he had never heard that Germans and Italians had been interned. Very nicely, he asked me if I could bring in material to substantiate my assertion. Of course I could, and did, and then I dropped the class.
The raction of the Asian students exposed their almost desperate need to deny the truth. Why? If they accepted the reality that people of European ancestry were also displaced and held in camps, that would completely annihilate their certainty that internments of the Japanese were compelled by racism as opposed to national defense. And if that were the case, then their victim-based identity could not survive.
Victimhood keeps people from having to think critically about the complexity of the issues they face. With victimhood there is one pseudo-moral note: “The oppressor hates me.” To stop that nonsense would require people to expand their notions of morality and relate to the world on a deeper, more complex level. Seeing the truth of history — like the reality of the internments — makes it possible for young people especially to contemplate the United States as a moral, just society.
If fact, the internments here in the United States during World War II involved everyone with whom we were at war. They had everything to do with national defense, and nothing to do with racism. Which brings us to something that must be faced — the Japanese internment issue perpetually casts the Japanese as victims in a war they so brutally started. The internments, plus the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were intended to, and did, stop the continuation of that war.
[45]
http://www.foitimes.com/internment/FeingoldS1356.htm
http://www.internment.org/ja_faq.shtml
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ny17_engel/pr010327.html
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/evac.html
http://www.osia.org/public/newsroom/pr11_08_00.htm
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0015/goodyear.php
Tammy Bruce
Chapter Six, “A Weapon in the Hands of the Left: The Real Agenda of the Academic Elite”
The Death of Right and Wrong
