Senate Bill Would Name Tule Lake Internment Camp a Historic Site

[marylander1940]

A new bill introduced in the Senate this month would establish Tule Lake as a National Historic Site, making it the third internment camp that held Japanese Americans during World War II an official historic site.

 

For nearly three years during World War II, the Tule Lake Segregation Camp served as a destination for already interned Japanese Americans deemed particularly disloyal to the United States. It would grow to be the largest of 10 internment camps, but to date it hasn't been recognized as a standalone historical site like the internment camps at Manzanar in California and Minidoka in Idaho.

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/senate-bill-would-name-tule-lake-largest-japanese-internment-camp-n487036

[seaboy4hire]

I love how history kind of repeats itself with gitmo.

 

Hugs,

Greg

[+ quoththeraven]

Make all of them National Historic sites to the extent they're not in current use as a functioning businesses or residences. As ridiculous and against our supposed principles as Americans often act, it is a strength that we remember and acknowledge our mistakes. It's what separates us from countries like Japan, where downplaying its past actions is part and parcel of statecraft.

 

More needs to be done to acknowledge the reality of slavery -- it's a shame that people can tour historic places where people were enslaved and avoid seeing or hearing about the bad stuff (being up early to cook is not, to my mind, the bad stuff) -- but slavery was state-sanctioned, not state-imposed. Internment of Japanese-Americans - many of them birthright citizens - was done by our government in our name. Unlike the Nazis, we didn't deliberately harm them physically or kill them, but we had no problem confiscating their property and moving them into camps. The $20,000 each survivor received in the 1980s still doesn't make up for that loss.

 

While I'm at it, another group that deserves more recognition are the Chinese who were brought here to build the transcontinental railroad under terrible conditions no white man would put up with. They had no rights, were treated brutally and as expendable, looked down upon for not being white, Western and enlightened, and were completely separated from their families. Maybe there is a museum dedicated to them, but I'm not aware of it. I am also skeptical that any display dedicated to railroad expansion itself is completely forthcoming and blunt about how badly the men whose labor made it possible were treated.

 

One last thing: mass Asian emigration to the US as permanent residents, as opposed to guest workers, wasn't legal until 1965. So on the one hand we have a group - descendants of African slaves - that was forced to emigrate here and whose ancestors' forced labor buoyed the US economy. We have the people (almost certainly originally from Asia) who lived here originally, whose land we stole and conquered, to whom Westerners gave smallpox and other diseases unknown to them, and who got pushed into reservations and poverty as "uncivilized" when parts of the US Constitution owe its structure to the governance of the Iroquois Nation (which, admittedly, got along better with and got a better deal from the white settlers than other Native groups).

 

Then we have Asian immigrants, who are held up now as a "model minority" even though they are in no way homogeneous. And what about immigrants from the Balkans, Middle East, Cauacasus, or North Africa? Are they white or not? Are they terrorists or not? Are they Muslims or not? What continent are they from and does it even matter? I read a well-reasoned article that argued that Europe was invented as a continent for the purpose of claiming moral and intellectual supremacy and distinguishing Europeans from those shifty slanty-eyed folks to the east. Look at a map. There's really just one huge land mass -- Eurasia -- not two.

 

And yet there are still huge divides of all sorts in our society based on race and national origin that seem more intractable than divides based on, say, sexual orientation.

 

(Sorry, I may have just dragged this discussion into War, Politics, and Religion territory, but I swear, every single fact above is verifiable.)

 

/end rant

[+ quoththeraven]

I love how history kind of repeats itself with gitmo.

 

Hugs,

Greg

 

Gitmo should be closed, and the interrogation and incarceration techniques used there should never have been used. I'm sorry it proved politically impossible for the Obama administration to accomplish. (Yes, I believe his pre-election position on this was sincere.)

 

Gitmo and the "collateral damage," and friendly fire, and out-and-out war crimes we were willing to countenance in Afghanistan and Iraq are what turned my stomach most about the George W. Bush presidency. There are plenty of countries that believe the ends justifies the means. This country should not be one of them. Otherwise, we might as well tear up the Constitution and admit we are as lawless as any other country in the world.

[bigvalboy]

Manzanar is haunting and spiritual...

 

...and surprisingly emotional.