Can you compare Japanese interment camps to jewish concentration camps?

[del62]

I am not sure how to term this, as when discussing the holocaust and other genocides such as Rwanda, Dafur etc, it is all shocking and irrational, but one peculiarly irrational aspect of the holocaust was when Germany was losing the war, they expended a great deal of time, energy and resources rounding up Jews and sending them to the camps that could have been used in their own war effort.

 

[Arwon]

Oh. And here I thought this thread was going to be about the Japanese-run internment camps during WW2.

Derp.

 

[Lord Baal]

Oh. And here I thought this thread was going to be about the Japanese-run internment camps during WW2.

Derp.

To be fair, so did I, until I read the OP.

The Rwandan genocide was faster and bloodier than the Holocaust, but the big difference is that the former wasn't anywhere near as organised and systematic as the latter. It has more in common with the actions of the einsatzgruppen than the camps, though even that's a straetch since the Rwandan genocide was in large part conducted by civilians. I'm not sure if that's more or less horrifying than the efficient military-industrial system of extermination set up by the Germans, but there are quite a few differences in the execution of two genocides, though their goals are obviously similar.

The Rwandan genocide was an orgy of violence that ran out of steam after little more than a month, which is also very different from the Holocaust, which was carried out over a period of years, and if one includes the various anti-Jewish laws and pogroms it lasted more than a decade. The Rwandan genocide also wasn't expansive, whereas the Holocaust was.

 

[Azale]

The American interment of Japanese-Americans was done for political reasons. You could argue military if you want to believe DeWitt and others involved were really that stupid, you could argue economic if you want to be controversial (the Japanese on the West Coast were well represented in agriculture and rapidly expanding, to the detriment of the established white farmers).

The Holocaust was ideological.

That is my overly simple contribution to this thread

 

[Domen]

but one peculiarly irrational aspect of the holocaust was when Germany was losing the war, they expended a great deal of time, energy and resources rounding up Jews and sending them to the camps that could have been used in their own war effort.

1) When Germany started Holocaust, they were still winning the war and / or balance of forces was evenly matched (1941 - 1942).

2) I suppose they had the illusion that they could win even relatively late in the war (even after Kursk).

3) On one hand they were expending resources, on the other hand gaining resources of their victims.

About the rest, you have no reason to think that there was a genocide with more meaning and determination to extinct people than the Holocaust.

It is possible. But this is a matter of subjective view - we can't empirically prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.

"Determination to extinct people" cannot be empirically measured. Certainly in all genocides in history the oppressors had it.

I see no reason to say that the Nazis were more determined to kill Jews than they were to kill Gypsies, for example. Of course the Jewish martyrology has been stronger and better organized than the Romani martyrology - that's one of reasons why the Holocaust is more famous than the Pharrajimos.

Remember that there were still many European Jews who survived the Holocaust. Even if they already were imprisoned in camps. Some of the Jews were even considered as useful (at least temporarily) for Nazi Germany. For example Jewish Nazi collaborators or Jewish Police in the Ghetto Uprising.

I've read that Holocaust survivors who came to Palestine after 1945 were contemptuously called by local Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews "soap".

That's because those Jews who didn't experience the Holocaust, considered those who did as weak people, who didn't even try to oppose it. Victims were not well regarded in a society that believes in the "cult of force" - such as the post-war state of Israel, surrounded by enemies from all sides.

Especially Mizrahi Jews, who lived next to their Muslim neighbours for centuries and there were mutual antagonisms between them.

BTW - already in pre-war times there were also antagonisms between Yekkie ("Atlantic") Jews and Osti (East European) Jews.

Yekkie considered Osti as rather backward (or maybe very traditional - in a negative for them sense) and uneducated people.

Yekkie had their Zionism, while Osti had their Yeshiva - Osti were more religious and traditional, while less nationalist than Yekkie.

And btw, they didn't end up with the transportions not because they couldn't, just because they started to think about Nazism as a global plan. It wasn't like that at the beggining.

Sorry I don't understand what exactly you mean here. Can you explain it further?

Oh. And here I thought this thread was going to be about the Japanese-run internment camps during WW2.

Derp.

Yeah. I thought the same. And I was also very surprised to see the "Jewish concentration camps" in the title.

It seems that Obama is not alone in unfortunate use of adjectives.

 

[Traitorfish]

The American interment of Japanese-Americans was done for political reasons. You could argue military if you want to believe DeWitt and others involved were really that stupid, you could argue economic if you want to be controversial (the Japanese on the West Coast were well represented in agriculture and rapidly expanding, to the detriment of the established white farmers).

The Holocaust was ideological.

That is my overly simple contribution to this thread

Pretty sure that locking up an entire ethnic group because "they're all secretly traitors" is ideological.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Wasn't the official justification to protect them from possible retaliation by others?

 

[Absolution]

Sorry I don't understand what exactly you mean here. Can you explain it further?

At the beginning, the Nais didn't actually want to exterminate the whole Jewish race.
They just said that Jews shouldn't live among Aryans.
But later they changed their ideas - Jews are not allowed to live anywhere.
The reason for the killing wasn't lack of places to send Jew to. They realy thought Jews are not deserved to exist. No other genocide in history had ever been drived by ideas of that kind.

 

[Azale]

Wasn't the official justification to protect them from possible retaliation by others?

Yea, and what caused the possibility of retaliation? The hysteria of the "fifth column", especially after a particularly poorly researched document highlighted its existence in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor. That later government investigations would disavow the initial report didn't matter much for psychopaths like DeWitt.

If I remember right though, there were plenty of communities in California at least that defended the patriotism of their Japanese-American neighbors and definitely would not have supported the internment.

Pretty sure that locking up an entire ethnic group because "they're all secretly traitors" is ideological.

Meh, but I don't think very many actually believed that, especially when compared to the widespread paranoia against Jews in Europe. I would guess that the percentage of Germans who thought the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were legit was probably higher than the percentage of Americans who thought the Issei/Nissei formed a dangerous 5th column.

I think, personally, they (influential farmers, politicians, military officials) used it as a pretense for economic motives and cheap political points.

 

[privatehudson]

Just as an aside the British set up several camps for internees during both wars. The man who designed the Liver Birds in Liverpool, Carl Bartels was amongst those interned in WW1, despite being married to a Briton and having been a naturalised Briton himself for more than 20 years. It took many years to get his contribution to the city of Liverpool recognised and even today many people in the city have never heard of him.

During WW2 one of the camps was based around an almost finished housing estate in Liverpool (in Huyton) According to a book I have about the camp, a government propaganda film specifically compared them to the German camps:

"To be interned in Britain is like paradise when compared to the Nazi Concentration Camps, so there should not be any complaints here."

(I can just hear the clipped tones of the voiceover now!)

Although it has to be said that reading about the conditions on the estate it was not exactly pleasant there either. I suppose it was not drastically worse than most POW camps in the UK though, the difference of course being that most of the people in the camp had done nothing to deserve being there. In fact many of those interned in the WW2 British camps had only been in the country a few years since they had fled Germany due to the Nazi persecution.

The camps didn't last long though, they started with limited numbers when war broke out, then increased dramatically after the fall of France. Part of the original plan was to use them as staging posts to ship the internees abroad, but this stopped when one of the first ships used for such a purpose was torpedoed and sunk. After a Commons debate most of the internees were released before the end of 1940, with the Huyton camp closing by October 1941.

 

[Verbose]

I demand recognition of Sweden running their own set of camps WWII!

We put a mixed bag of Soviet-loyal Communist acitivists (mostly) but also the occasional so called "Englandsvän" (friend of England) in camps in northern Sweden. These guys were called up to do their military service just like anyone, but then the military authorties decided to place them to the special units, with special tasks... They got to spend the war years as loggers in the deep forests. Selection was apparently based on vehemence of political views expressed...

 

[Masada]

Forever after the expression "Go back to the lumber camp" in Sweden has connoted a war spent in the absence of women

 

[Glassfan]

While we're spreading the blame - any Canadians out there who want to own up about the WW II Japanese-Canadian Internment Camps?

"Early in 1942, when Japan had joined the war, the Canadian government moved to dispossess and relocate all British Colombians of Japanese origin, even those who were Canadian citizens; families were split up and whatever property they could not carry was disposed of by the government. This was the culmination of decades of anti-Asiatic feeling on the Pacific coast.

...Canadian citizens of Japanese origin were evicted from their west-coast homes, their properties confiscated, and the community sent to camps in the interior soon after Pearl Harbor.

...and tried to expel them in 1946 in deference to west coast racism,..."

- From; The Illustrated History of Canada, ed. Craig Brown, 2002.

 

[Lord Baal]

Just as an aside the British set up several camps for internees during both wars. The man who designed the Liver Birds in Liverpool, Carl Bartels was amongst those interned in WW1, despite being married to a Briton and having been a naturalised Briton himself for more than 20 years. It took many years to get his contribution to the city of Liverpool recognised and even today many people in the city have never heard of him.

During WW2 one of the camps was based around an almost finished housing estate in Liverpool (in Huyton) According to a book I have about the camp, a government propaganda film specifically compared them to the German camps:

"To be interned in Britain is like paradise when compared to the Nazi Concentration Camps, so there should not be any complaints here."

(I can just hear the clipped tones of the voiceover now!)

Although it has to be said that reading about the conditions on the estate it was not exactly pleasant there either. I suppose it was not drastically worse than most POW camps in the UK though, the difference of course being that most of the people in the camp had done nothing to deserve being there. In fact many of those interned in the WW2 British camps had only been in the country a few years since they had fled Germany due to the Nazi persecution.

The camps didn't last long though, they started with limited numbers when war broke out, then increased dramatically after the fall of France. Part of the original plan was to use them as staging posts to ship the internees abroad, but this stopped when one of the first ships used for such a purpose was torpedoed and sunk. After a Commons debate most of the internees were released before the end of 1940, with the Huyton camp closing by October 1941.

Weren't the Mosleys housed at that Liverpool estate? I can certainly understand rounding them up, as well as other BUP members.