Camp

I know I’m swimming against the conservative blogger tide here, but Michelle Malkin is an idiot. Well, that may be a little strong, since I agree with some of her anti-liberal political views, but I’m appalled at her current book that basically excuses FDR’s Executive Order 9066 that put all West Coast Japanese-Americans into internment camps. Since she is Filipina, I will assume that nobody in her family was stripped of all their possessions and herded into barracks in remote desert areas, despite being American citizens.

I have not read her book, nor will I. However, I have read excerpts and analyses which seem unanimous in delineating her fundamental thesis, which is that it is OK to imprison thousands of ethnic Japanese since it was known that there were a few dozen Japanese spies on the West coast during WWII. Perhaps she wants the readers to draw parallels to modern times and is making a case for imprisoning citizens of Middle Eastern descent during the current War on Terror, but the parallels are tenuous at best. There is a big difference between detaining people for questioning, and uprooting entire families, depriving them of their property and freedom, and putting them behind barbed wire for years with no due process.

My father was born October, 1941 and my mother was born in April, 1942, just prior to the actual relocation specified by EO9066. Their toddler years were spent at Tule Lake and Topaz, with armed guards and barracks. My maternal grandfather was in the 442nd battalion, the most decorated unit in WWII, and fought for the United States despite the government order that imprisoned his family. He was a farmer in Northern California when the war began, and lost his farm and land to the forced relocation. He was a citizen, born in California in 1908. He wasn’t a spy. He wasn’t a subversive. In fact, part of the problem was that the Japanese-American leadership at the time passively accepted the EO, reluctant to fight for their rights or make waves during a politically volatile time.

Michelle Malkin didn’t know my family. Her book is based upon published government reports of espionage on the West Coast, somehow rationalizing imprisonment of an entire ethnicity based upon the acts of a few. This would be comparable to imprisoning 2/3 of the black population because of the high crime rate in inner cities. Of course, she frames her pro-internment beliefs within the context of the War on Terror, trying to pander to the anti-Muslim paranoia, but using a disgraceful period of American history to further her own political agenda is pathetic. Maybe if a Filipino sets off a bomb and all Filipinos are rounded up into camps, Malkin will see the errors of her ways.