Talk:Internment of Japanese Americans/Archive 4/digest


This page is a digest of key points found in Archive 5. These should be considered as unverified sources. However, this information, if verified, would be of relevance to the article.

Timeline of attacks on US after Pearl Harbor

Refer to header: Revisionist Garbage Being Added Author: [Attributed to History Student as unregistered user] Re: "Japanese submarine attack on the oil refinery"

Dec 7, 1941. On its way to the US west coast, I-26 tracks a US freighter. Precisely at 8:00 a.m., Dec 7, Pearl Harbor time, she surfaces and sinks Cynthia Olson with gunfire. Dec 15, 1941. Japanese submarine shelled Kahului, Maui, Hawaii.

Dec 20. Unarmed US tanker sunk by Japanese submarine I-17 off Cape Mendocino, California. 31 survivors rescued by Coast Guard from Blunt's Reef Lightship.

Dec 20. Unarmed US tanker shelled by Japanese submarine I-23 of the coast of California

Dec 22. Unarmed U.S. tanker sunk by Japanese submarine I-21 about four miles south of Piedras Blancas light, California, I-21 machine-guns the lifeboats, but inflicts no casualties. I-21 later shells unarmed U.S. tanker Idaho near the same location.

Dec 23. Japanese submarine I-17 shells unarmed tanker southwest of Cape Mendocino, California.

Dec 27. Unarmed US tanker shelled by Japanese submarine I-23 10 miles from mouth of Columbia River.

Dec 30, 1941. Submarine I-1 shells, Hilo, Hawaii.

Dec 31, 1941. Submarines shell Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii.

Feb 23, 1942. I-17, shelled Ellwood oil refinery at Geleta on the Californian coast. The skipper had fueled there many times before the war.

June 20, 1942, the radio station on Estevan Point, Vancouver Island was fired on by a Japanese submarine I-26.

June 21. I-25 shells Fort Stevens, Oregon.

Sept 9 . Phosphorus bombs were dropped on Mt. Emily, ten miles northeast of Brookings, Oregon, to start forest fires. A Yokosuka E14Y1 "Glen" reconnaissance seaplane piloted by Lt. Nubuo Fujita was been seen catapulted from submarine I-25.

Sep 29. Phosphorus bombings were repeated on the southern coast of Oregon.

Mention proclamations; "incarceration?"; validity of MAGIC; evidence in coram nobis cases

Refer to header: Noncompliant template: POV and disputes Authors: Ishu, History Student, Ogthor, tomf688; also critic-at-arms (after the fact) Topics discussed:

Ogthor's suggestion of an earlier mention of Presidential Proclamations Nos. 2525, 2526, and 2527 and History Student's recommendation for mention of passed Public Law 503 by a wide majority to back up EO 9066.

Some discussion between Ogthor and History Student regarding length-of-stay in the camps and appropriateness of incarceration as a descriptor.

Ogthor on the Magic intercepts: Transcripts list attempts to enlist "white persons and Negroes" in addition to Japanese Americans. Ogthor: "This, to me, suggests that the (at least this) MAGIC intercepts do not in fact support the idea of mass internment, but rather the careful identification of individual spies and saboteurs as per the FBI's CDI list. MAGIC would likely be very helpful in these efforts. However, my opinions about the relative usefulness of MAGIC notwithstanding, the importance of MAGIC to decision-makers at the time would be useful to note, if available. [snip] --Ogthor 00:01, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

History Student on the coram nobis cases and evidence: 15. "The "newly discovered evidence" that commission "researcher" Aiko Herzig "found" that was used in the Coram Nobis cases of the 1980's is a Ringle memo the pro-reparations lawyers submit to the court as exhibit "D" MINUS THE FEBRUARY 14, 1942 ONI COVER MEMO FROM RINGLE'S BOSS, H.E. KEISKER STATING "IT DOES NOT REPRESENT THE FINAL AND OFFICAL OPINION OF THE OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE SUBJECT." The memo was also carbon copied for MID and two sections of the FBI. Thus, the memo was an unofficial document haveing no status whatsoever was not concealed, but on the contrary given wide distribution, did not represent the stated position of the ONI nor anyone else of any status in the military, and WAS IN DIRECT CONFLICT WITH AN OFFICIAL ONI INTELLIGENCE REPORT AUTHORED BY LT. COMMANDER HIMSELF LESS THAN TWO WEEKS LATER. Thus the lawyers representing the Japanese American reparations movment submitted evidence in a federal court under false pre-tense." This excerpt is from the "Legal legacy" section and desperately needs to be cleaned up.

The remainder of this topic is moot since either (1) the concerns have been addressed by subsequent edits, or (2) the concerns pertain to the edits proposed by History Student, which were largely reverted.

Justification (military necessity) for the internment

Refer to header: Oh yea! I'm here to set the record straight! Authors: User:Gmatsuda, User:Ogthor, comments attributed to User:History Student, possible other unregistered users. Re: Credible sources

This discussion is an invective-filled exchange of dueling sources. It is most useful for the following points:

  • Naming Curtis Munson and Edward Ennis as contemporaneous analyses, and Peter Irons and David Lowman as historical analyses regarding the justification for the internment.
  • Contradictory claims as to whether DeWitt and McCloy had access to MAGIC or any summaries with relevant information. This matter should be clarified in the article.
  • Discussion of the loyalty of Japanese Americans, including whether Nisei "chose to sit out the war".
  • Discussion of the Tachibana spy ring. The relevance of the Tachibana ring should be addressed on Talk or in the article.

Relevance of the MAGIC intercepts

Refer to header: Recent Editing Authors: Ogthor, Phidauex, Ishu; and comments attributed to History Student (as 207.207.79.202) Open questions remain about the MAGIC intercepts, particularly how specific they are to recrutiment of Japanese Americans; whether the information contained was publicly available, and who had access to them.

Consensus for sentence in lead section re: Supreme Court decisions

Refer to header: This is progress: Supreme court decision(s) to uphold exclusion Authors: Ishu, justforasecond, History Student, Ogthor This section is a discussion of the Supreme Court decisions that legitimated the internment. The most important part is an apparent consensus for the following sentence:

  • The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion, arguing that it is permissible to curtail the civil rights of a racial group when there is a "pressing public necessity."

This section also provides some analysis of the court decisions.

Terminology debate: Internment, evacuation, etc.

Refer to headers: Terminology debate; also Terms continued... Authors: justforasecond, History Student, Ishu, and several unregistered users This is a convoluted discussion that reached no consensus. Many of the considerations for one term vs. another are discussed, and I encourage editors and readers to browse through this discussion to get a sense of the controversies.

Ex parte Endo

Refer to header: Mitsuye Endo Authors:justforasecond, History Student, Ishu This section reviews the details of the Supreme Court case Ex parte Endo. It is a continuation of the discussion under heading "Terms continued.... The most valuable takeaway is the review of the actual text of the decision. However, most of this discussion is as convoluted, invective-filled, and non-productive as that in the predecessor thread.