Idaho WWII prison camp controversy flares

[brooklynite]

HUNT, Idaho - The National Park Service wants Congress to remove the word "internment" from the name of a national park commemorating a World War II prison camp for Japanese-Americans.


In a management plan for the Minidoka Internment National Monument finalized this week, the Park Service says the term legally means imprisonment of civilian enemy aliens during wartime and does not accurately reflect the government's forced relocation of thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent.

The agency wants the name changed to Minidoka National Historic Site, which would match with the only similar prison camp under its protection, California's Manzanar National Historic Site.

Monument superintendent Neil King and the leader of a group of Minidoka internees and their descendants said former camp residents have been divided over the name.

Some felt "internment" did not accurately describe what happened there, while others wanted to emphasize the injustice by changing the name to "Minidoka Concentration Camp National Historic Site," King said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060623/ap_on_re_us/internment_camp_1

[Ron Green]

1. Those who do not study their history . . . n/t

[LostinVA]

2. Ummm... lots of US citizens interned there

I grew in a part of NJ where many of those released from these camps settled. What a shameful history. What a shameful present, wanting to deny this.

[daleo]

3. Will Guantanamo be a historic site some day?

And will people look back with shame on what went on there?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

7. Yes with the Cuban National Park Service

after we get run out.

[stevedeshazer]

4. It was an INTERNMENT camp. No bullshit rewriting of history changes that.

This doesn't look like an Idaho block party to me.

http://data2.itc.nps.gov/parkphotos/barracks%2Dgroup%2Dshot1%2Ejpg
http://www.nps.gov/miin/home.htm

[IndianaGreen]

5. I like "concentration camp" better

because that was exactly what it was.

[saigon68]

17. The guards in an SS Camp were cute too

[IndianaGreen]

19. That's the Bitch of Buchenwald in the center of the photo

The woman to her right looks like a young Max von Sydow in drag.

The Master Race indeed!

[saigon68]

20. Yup that's Irma Griese

[nealmhughes]

6. Let me do a little research and see what the camps were actually called

unofficially and officially in the Yellow Scare of the 40s.

[nealmhughes]

8. Technically they were "Enemy exclusion areas".

People were rounded up into "relocation areas" and then transported. FDR used the phrase Concentration camp once (before discovery of the death/labor camps in Europe).
The term was evidently concocted to be "politically neutral" in that internment did not really say that the internments were legal or moral or not, while concentration camp had bad vibes.

It turns out that Canada was worse on the Japanese-Canadians than the US was! They had earlier rounded up the Ukranians that were subjects of the Austro-Hunagarian Empire and put them to work in the fields in the First World War.
Austria did likewise for the Russian subjects captured in Galicia in the First War.

[daleo]

10. "Concentration Camp" was coined by the British in the Boer War

The idea was to concentrate the Boer women and children (or non-combatants) in camps so that the war could be more effectively prosecuted, and civilians would be spared (and also separated from the combatants as this was a guerrilla war). It was probably unintended, but diseases spread in the camps and many died. Thus, the beginnings of the idea that concentration camps and death camps were one and the same. Hitler perfected this, of course, quite intentionally.

At least that's my recollection. Correct me if I am wrong.

[nealmhughes]

12. Yes, Kitchener coined the concept and the idea.

Then the Canadians and Austrians took hold of it in the first war, then Hitler, then the Canadians and Australians and the the US and the Germans...

FDR only used it once in a speech. It was accepted terminology before the Death Camps.

[daleo]

13. Yes, before Hitler it was far less evocative of genocide

Although still not exactly what one would hope from a liberal democracy, such as Canada, Australia or the U.S.

[vixengrl]

9. If Minidoka and Manzanar should match in name--

it should be because *both* share the name internment camp, and if both are to be recognized as Historical monuments, then their history should not be forgotten.

When I was in high school, my English class studied the bok "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jean Houston, and the teacher gave us the assignment of discussing reparations for people who were interned. To really discuss it properly, I turned to the Constitution, and it was the first time I ever really looked at the constitution (forgive me, I was fifteen). I realized then that the government does not always value what should be the basic liberties of its citizens, that American citizens were deprived of both liberty and property. If our hisorical monuments should teach, I can think of no better lesson than introducing people to the basic concepts of our civil liberties, by studying the government's actions in denying them to a unique group. In this way, we can better understand why it should not occur again.

[kskiska]

11. Why not just call it "Best Western?"

[anotherdrew]

14. we should have imprisoned the american bund movement, traitors all

not like the japanese americans, who were treated like this for nothing, but the american bund and all the conservative republicans who wanted to cozy up to hitler, they should have been rounded up - permenantly - or shiped to back to germany, their businesses siezed and stock resold. We let the god-damned traitors take over america instead.

[LostinVA]

15. Bingo -- the difference is that they were "white" and not "yellow"

Because I can't think of ANY other reason. Also, many Italian-Americans were imprisoned for no reason... except the above reason, I think. But, the American Bund members were Nazis and advocated treason.

[anotherdrew]

22. at least we need to advocate for a nation holliday: Smedly Buttler Day

every school child should know about and be proud that our military and Smedly Butler in particular, knows when to call bullshit and preserve democratic rule. Their oath to preserve the constitution is paramount and primary. It's high time someone relieved the commander in chief of command based on menatl disability.

[anotherdrew]

23. "We let the god-damned traitors take over america instead."

and they must fall, can this be done peacefully? We should try for a bloodless revolution, but all orginized political movements need a threat of violence, it's their ultimate threat. I don't see why the undergound reich can't be fully exposed; games, TV drama's, books, comics, flash games, etc... They're finished to anyone with the mind too look beyond the mainstream.

[Solly Mack]

16. America rounded up citizens like cattle and put them behind barbed wire

and armed guards - confiscating their property, denying them their livelihoods,separating families, and taking away their dignity....


http://www.children-of-the-camps.org/history/index.html

Dress it up and rationalize it all you want...it was a crime against Americans and a violation of the Constitution...it was wrong...it was criminal...it was callous...it was cruel

Nothing....absolutely nothing....changes that fact.

[saigon68]

18. The Bush Criminals would like to see Union Leaders rounded up and jailed

[Solly Mack]

21. True that...and all other "non-compliers" to their way of thinking