An Interview With Chuck Yeager

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

"William R Thompson" wrote:

1: There is a considerable difference between "Japanese citizens living
in US territory" and "American citrizens of Japanese ancestry."
Interning
foreign nationals during time of war is legal, and obviously a good idea.
Detaining American citizens on the basis of their ancestry is neither
legal nor a good idea. (And I don't recall that any of my Prussian
ancestors were locked up during either of the World Wars.)

While it was not as wide spread and is not nearly as well known as the
incarceration of Japanese-Americans, there were Americans of Italian and
German descent that received similar treatment. I'm working from memory
now, but I believe approximately 5000 Italian-Americans, 10,000
German-Americans, and 120,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during the
war. As I recall, Italian-American internment ended shortly after Italy
surrendered in 1943. German-American internment lasted until well after
the
war ended, 1947 I believe. Some internees were even transferred to
Germany
after the war! I don't remember when Japanese-American internment ended.

Most of the Japanese-American internment camps were closed by November
1945, although one in California remained in business until some time in
1946
(I think it was for internees who refused to take loyalty oaths).
German-American
internments officially ended in 1947, although apparently some people were
still in
custody as late as 1948. Some of the Italian and German internees were
relatives
of internees, who "volunteered" to be interned with them (how a child
"volunteers"
for anything is beyond me).

Your version of German-American and Italian-American internments is more
detailed than what I learned about a dozen years ago. There's a good
resource
(more up-to-date than what I knew) at

http://www.foitimes.com/internment/gasummary.htm

Very disturbing stuff. What's worse, interning everyone in an ethnic group,
or
doing an incompetent job of law enforcement against specific members of
another group?

(In an effort to stay on-topic, here's a picture of Ben Kuroki in his flight
gear.
I haven't found any pictures of his aircraft yet.)

--Bill Thompson