Re: Japanese agents in the U.S.

pbromaghin@xxxxxxx wrote:

Excuse me, but when my mother-in-law was "evacuated" and "relocated",
it was to within a barbed-wire enclosure where the machine guns in the
watchtowers were pointed inward and the people were not allowed to
leave.

Sounds like one of the military bases I was in except for the nonsense
about "machine guns in the watchtowers pointed inward."

As the photos show, in isolated cases where there were machine
guns they were pointed *outward* to assure that the residents were
not harmed by irate citizens of which there were many after PH.

Didn't your mother also tell you that the camps like hers had
accredited
schools, post offices, hospitals, liberal off-the-base regulations, all
sorts of
sports and recreation, camp newspapers, dances, stores, churches,
beauty parlors--all that and three squares a day, along with pay for
whatever work they did, which was on a volunteer basis. They also had
the highest birth rates in the U.S. during WWII. Indeed, some had
never
had it so good.

(BTW, the camp photographer at Manzanar, Toyo Mayatake, in a post-war
interview, had this to say: "The barbed wire at Manzanar consisted of
three
strings of cattle-guard wire through which anyone could walk if he
wanted
to. But nobody did."}

Just what would it have been like to be "interned"?

Tighter discipline. No leave granted. Such deportations as could be
arranged in wartime. Internment camps were operated by the Army for
the
Dept. of Justice. The War Relocation Authority, a civilian group under
the
Dept. of the Interior, operated the relocation centers.

W.J.Hopwood

.