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From: lkk@teddy.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: You ain't Done Nothin' if You ain't been called a Red:
Message-ID: <1855@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Dec-85 13:07:09 EST
Article-I.D.: teddy.1855
Posted: Sat Dec 28 13:07:09 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Dec-85 07:45:13 EST
References: <756@whuxl.UUCP> <29200244@uiucdcs> <362@whuts.UUCP>
Reply-To: lkk@teddy.UUCP (Larry K. Kolodney)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 30
Summary: 

In article <1482@jhunix.UUCP> ins_akaa@jhunix.ARPA (Kenneth Adam Arromdee) writes:

[Talking about the internment of the Japanese during WWII as a form of POLITICAL
intolerance.]

>
>So why was that a reason to imprison them?  People may have thought that
>Chinese-Americans owed allegiance to China, but they weren't imprisoned,
>because at the time few people thought there was anything wrong with
>allegiance to China.  The imprisonment was due to the racist viewpoint
>that Japanese Americans all "held allegiance to Japan" but that essentially
>meant that they were accused of working for a right-wing government.
>The accusation was racist, but it still meant that they were accused of
>being right-wingers; the racism was in the assumption used to deduce that
>they were right-wingers.

Nonsense.  Japan had a right wing government for decades before the
internment, but there were no interments then.  The interment only
happened because we were in the midsts of a war with Japan.  The
particular political ideology of the government was  irrelevant.

Communists were imprisoned BECAUSE THERE IDEOLOGY MADE THEM SUSPECT.  Japanese
were imprisoned BECAUSE THE SHAPE OF THEIR BODIES MADE THEM SUSPECT.  The two 
issues are entirely unrelated (except as general cases of irrational fear).
-- 
Sport Death,       (USENET) ...{decvax | ihnp4!mit-eddie}!genrad!panda!lkk
Larry Kolodney     (INTERNET) lkk@mit-mc.arpa
--------
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
- Helen Keller