Infamy
by digby
After Pearl Harbor, everything changed.
There was widespread anger and at times hysteria. Reports of violence against Japanese Americans swept across the country.
Many Americans stood guard along the West Coast, fully expecting Japanese troops to storm the California coastline.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order allowing internment camps on Feb. 19, 1942.
In Hawaii, far fewer people of Japanese descent were confined to internment camps. Still, Kakugawa remembers the hostility and the many questions about patriotism.
“We were truly American. We sang patriotic songs in school,” she said in a recent interview. “For a child, it was a time of pure confusion. I know I felt strongly about being American and still do.”
It was a long time ago. But I think we all know that under the right circumstances, how easily that reaction could all happen again.
“Yeah, my criticism of myself would be that after 9/11, I overreacted. and I think as a country we overreacted,” Friedman said.
Which is exactly what they hoped for.
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