What an unexpectedly poignant story.

Found the linked virtual museum exhibit about the internment camps fascinating: https://dp.la/exhibitions/japanese-internment/road-camps

isn’t it interesting how the camps set up by the Good Guys who won the war weren’t so bad, and the camps from the Bad Guys who lost the war were really bad?

I do wonder about bias but so far there's no evidence of gas chambers at these camps. It's not hard to find descendants of these camp prisoners (I went to high school with one) in the US and they don't seem to hold much animosity towards the US govt for what was a terrible mistake.

I imagine that if these camps were actually much worse that what is reported, we'd hear it from the living nisei today.

Of the 120,000 Japanese in camps, 1862 known to have died. That was lower death rate than the US overall. Probably cause there were fewer elderly since immigrants tend to be young. I'm sure there is research if deaths were excessive but couldn't find it.

Compare to German concentration camps which would probably be called death camps if not for the extermination camps. Or to the Japanese internment camps in China.

Internment camps were bad but they are lower level of bad.

How do you mean "interesting"?

That there must be a benevolent God who favours the good guys in wars?

Or that history is written by the victors; ergo "The Nazis weren't so bad"?

Or that the story is false, and really the Japanese American camps were as bad as Auschwitz and Dachau?

>that shines hope on the ability of humanity to totally separate, reconstruct itself and thrive.

Please damper the polish you are putting on a deeply racist and collectively punitive policy. As detailed in the article, the US government systemically destroyed billions of dollars in family wealth and left Japanese-Americans subjected to the damnation and whims of the non-Japanese populace until the US government was finally ordered to pay reparations in 1998.

>the US American concentration camps were simply to "contain" the Japanese Americans

The way you're minimizing this impact almost feels like justification. The United States continues its carceral practices of breaking up families and collectively punishing cultures to this day. There is no "bright side" to this practice, only a deep remorse for the losses suffered by the people that survived (and mourning for those that did not) and a hope that we learn to stop doing this.

To be clear, we weren't "Japanese" victims. 2/3 of us were American citizens, and the remainder of the imprisoned first-generation immigrants -- many of whom had lived in the US for decades prior to the war -- were barred from naturalization because of their race. This would remain the case until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1952[1].

And while I don't wish to be overly prickly about it since you are obviously approaching this from a place of good intentions, you might want to read up on what we call the "model minority myth"[2]. The "success" of the Japanese American community in surmounting the challenges of the exclusion and incarceration experience has been used repeatedly as a cudgel in US cultural and political discourse wielded against other groups for their perceived failures in achieving the "American Dream." From what you have written here, I know that is not what you support.

1. https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Immigration_Act_of_1952/ 2. https://densho.org/learn/model-minority-myth/

> 2/3 of us were American citizens

Also, I should remember this from George Carlin.

The "you have no rights" sketch [0] should be mandatory watching for every American.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnBLZkcgyyQ

> you might want to read up on what we call the "model minority myth"[2].

That's a very interesting perspective. I can see how that could happen and how it feels for those demeaned by the comparison. Thanks for the link (and actually just for being engaging in what feels like HN becoming an increasingly hostile frenzy of flagging and downvoting everything).

Absolutely! I feel like I better understand your original comment as well, and I don't think you deserved to be piled on so aggressively. So many of our potentially thoughtful conversations are turning into circular firing squads these days.

Words do matter, but intentions matter more.

It's surprising to see you flagged and downvoted. I would have thought, "concentration camps are bad" plus "our prisons do incredible harm to people" would be uncontroversial takes.

What worries me more yareal is that the real thrust of my comments are celebrating human resilience and capacity to survive and prosper.

I can understand that some readers just see the words "concentration camp" and have a knee-jerk "eeeew!" reaction and downvote. They are frightened of certain topics without further thought. That's kinda forgivable.

But it's sinister that compassionate comments elicit a frenzy of flagging and downvoting. That seems worse than any simple "far right" sentiment. I'm starting to suspect there's a small but strong anti-humanist element around HN.

Edit: I'm quite sure there are vehement anti-humanists around here. The self-loathing is cloying.

I think some of your initial posts might have read as tone deaf. A sentiment similar to "look at the beauty in this tragedy" can feel like downplaying the tragedy, or it can feel like downplaying similar, other tragedies. ("This concentration camp made their space beautiful" can carry the implication that others don't, unintentionally suggesting that somehow the people in this one are better than the people in that one.)

You later clarified, but I suspect there's also a group of folks who don't want to hear that the US had concentration camps.

You're right. And I was really pleased that geephroh introduced me to the "model minority myth". It's an area of psychology I've not encountered before. Cheers

> uncontroversial takes

That's not sufficient for a good HN post, especially when the effect is to perpetuate a flamewar. The HN guidelines contain a point about this:

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

(which is our euphemism for please don't feed the trolls)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[For the sake of the thread, I'll repost this here since it is under the flagged comments. And I am not the one who flagged it.]

To be clear, we weren't "Japanese" victims. 2/3 of us were American citizens, and the remainder of the imprisoned first-generation immigrants -- many of whom had lived in the US for decades prior to the war -- were barred from naturalization because of their race. This would remain the case until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1952[1].

And while I don't wish to be overly prickly about it since you are obviously approaching this from a place of good intentions, you might want to read up on what we call the "model minority myth"[2]. The "success" of the Japanese American community in surmounting the challenges of the exclusion and incarceration experience has been used repeatedly as a cudgel in US cultural and political discourse wielded against other groups for their perceived failures in achieving the "American Dream." From what you have written here, I know that is not what you support.

1. https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Immigration_Act_of_1952/ 2. https://densho.org/learn/model-minority-myth/

You stirred up an egregious flamewar in this thread, basically ruining it.

You've also been taking lots of other threads on low-quality generic tangents. That's not what HN is for, so please stop posting these things.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry my tries to make an interesting conversation ended in a trainwreck. I did get piled on for basically repeating what was in the linked article, and then defending it. Probably should have just walked away from a topic that cannot be discussed in this sort of format. At least I hope the George Carlin sketch was worth it. Sorry.

I appreciate the link -- hadn't actually seen that Carlin bit before!

Please stop posting like this to HN.

Beautiful bit of history to come from something terrible our government did.