JA-internment vs. EU-internment

I love "Kenji" by Fort Minor. First time I heared the song, I was completely blown away by its heavy beats, knock-out lyrics and strong bass. I'm sure anyone who's heared the song will agree. The song really got my interested in Japanese American Internment. Before the song (and before Modern American History) I never knew that during World War II there had been internement camps inside the United States, especially for their own people! The innocent Issei and Nissei who lived in the US doing their jobs.

The Japanese Americans even tended to do their jobs a lot better than the average Americans, which lead to a lot of intimidation. After the bombing on Pearl Harbor--which had been a mission of the Japanese to make sure the US wouldn't get involved but backfired--president Roosevelt had been more than happy to sign Executive order 9066. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known as FDR, is a president that still to this day is seen as a powerful leader and succesful president. Unfortunatly I have learned that the president was biast. FDR had always resented the Japanese Americans and therefore did not blink twice when the singed the paper which would put thousands of innocent people in camps.

Manzinar, as Mike mentions in his song, was one of the biggest camps. Most of the camps were located in California and some in Oregon and Arizona. The camps were wrong of course, but not as horrible as most of the Nissei and Sanssei made or make it out to be. People had, however small, a roof over their head, small gardens, sports clubs and were even allowed to leave the terrain to attend college and university. I am not saying what Roosevelt and his followers decided to do was the right thing, but it could have been way worse.

Because while the Americans put Japanese Americans in camps, in Japan there were camps for Europeans, and in particular the Dutch who have had a lot of colonies in the east. Those camps, in contrast to American camps, were truely horrible. People hardly had any shelter against the weather conditions, were starved and had to do backbreaking work. Women had to be put on a leash and were taken out "for a walk" by the Japanese soldiers, often kicked in the genitalia untill they bled and could walk on no more. People who have lived in the camp still find themselves severely traumatized by their experience in those camps. A famous Dutch writer admids that he can not look at woman without feeling abusive towards them, since all the males in the camps were encouraged to abuse woman. Internees were abused even more severely when the Japanese had suffered from a loss again. The most horrible thing described has to be what happened at the end of the war; people were starved and malnourished. The Japanese soldiers came in with food and the people were happy to finally get food. The soldiers made the woman dig a 7 to 8 feet deep hole, made them dump all of the food in there and fill up the hole. Only than the people could start digging for food.

Second World War has done way more damage than we believe. German American, Itallian American (although those two hardly existed), Japanese American, European German and European Japanese camps were horrible and should not ever be seen on the face of this planet ever again. Appologies and retributions have hardly been made. US government has offered 40 million to give to the victims, while over 300 million damage has been made. While the Japanese government merely have appologized to the Dutch.

People are never to be tortured again.