purpose of internment

Submitted by TAP (United States), Oct 7, 2005 at 23:22

If I remember correctly, the executive order from Roosevelt (concerning internment) specified something called the western defense zone; parts of Arizona, almost all of California and the western halves of Washington and Oregon. Persons of any Japanese heritage outside this zone were not interned. Those of Japanese heritage inside this zone were allowed to relocate outside the western zone, if possible, and continue their lives. If the government were to have detained/prosecuted/incarcerated only those persons of Japanese heritage who were engaged in espionage the government was concerned that it would signal the Imperial Japanese that their high level secret code may have been broken. The Imperial Japanese might have changed the code just to be safe and America may have never broken it again.

Doesn't the fact that the gov't removed persons of japanese heritage only from the western zone and allowed relocation/resumption-of -life to outside the zone and did so for the protection of the secret of having broke Japanese code all point to the gov't doing this for national security and not out of racism? Also, did leaving all this out of the 1980's committee hearings contribute to Japanese Americans getting a huge payday out of the U.S. treasury?

Isn't this type scenario playing out again where a subgroup of a subgroup of American populace are a threat to this nation? The gov't cannot (yet) tell who from whom and this subgroup (Muslims) needs to at least be monitored as well as any more of this group not being allowed into this country for any reason. Are these not reasonable measures?

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