Conversation

I was kind of floored to learn that no Japanese-American internment took place in Hawaii unlike in the mainland U.S. You know, the Pearl Harbor Hawaii? The attack that was the reason the U.S. went to war with Japan? More vulnerable than any other of the so-called U.S. territories to hostile capture and sabotage, if Japanese-American loyalty was so uncertain as the U.S. government so racistly claimed?

I mean that factoid makes it SO OBVIOUS internment wasn't based on security concerns, even ones made up as a pretext for racism, but by economic and politic concerns. There were, put simply, too many people of Japanese descent in Hawaii and too many in key positions for the settler-capitalist economy imposed on Hawaii to function through mass internment of Japanese Americans, or for internment to be politically feasible. Just another reminder that Japanese-Americans in the mainland U.S. were rounded up, and their properties snapped up in fire sales to white people, because they didn't have the numbers and the political power to resist racist scapegoating and not for any real security concerns.

This ended up kind of blowing up in the U.S. Army's face when it couldn't meet its own recruitment goal for inducting Japanese men from the mainland. Locking people up based on their ancestry didn't inspire a whole lot of fervor to die for their country, who knew! 10,000 Japanese-Americans in Hawaii volunteered, on the other hand, far over the Army's quota. No doubt it was helped by the established U.S. military presence there and the fact that the war was precipitated by an attack so close to them--but not being subjected to racist internment probably helped too, just sayin'. The Army later ended up drafting Japanese-Americans straight from internment, real classy and consistent there I guess.