Originally posted by AggieDad No, we did not commit the same types of atrocities - we committed different ones. Consider that that these folks were given little time to get their affairs in order and then sent away, without recourse, to live in what were little more than tarpaper barracks. Add to that the fact that they typically came from the warm climes of Southern California and ended up in places like Wyoming with totally inappropriate clothing.
The same treatment was not given to Germans in other parts of the country.
Germans didn't conduct a surprise attack on the US Pacific fleet, sending most of it to the bottom of the ocean, killing 2400 people, and injuring another 1200.
While the images of the internment camps of Americans of Japanese ethnicity is awful, you have to also think how did non-Japanese Americans think? Their brothers and dads and uncles were slaughtered on December 7th 1941 by people who looked, talked, and held many of the same cultural activities of those that killed their loved ones. So I can see a lot of hysteria and some fear in the US over who is friend and who is foe. They didn't know and weren't going to chance it.
So they took a safe over sorry approach and housed everyone. The sad thing is the accommodations look pitiful, especially for an extended (years) stay. It does look like a prison, because it was a prison of sorts. Then again, the country was fighting a 2 front war and resources were extremely slim.
I sometimes wonder what the world, and specifically our part of it in the US, would look like had we possessed more communication and kindness.
Had the accommodations been
a lot more.. accommodating, I think these Americans might possibly have been safer and thus better off in the camps during the war. People do crazy things when they feel threatened. Survival instinct kicks in and logic drops out.
---------- Post added 12-09-16 at 08:39 PM ----------
Btw some of these images are stunning to me.. such as the kids with the flag and some of the portraits. I can see the civility, humanity, and dignity in them... which was likely often dismissed while in these camps (and for a time after the war). A fantastic job was done to document photographically this part of history. However, I dislike the packaging of it on the website though because it is one sided.