the US reaction could have been much worse, like we see in this movie
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monique79-1 — 15 years ago(October 09, 2010 06:59 PM)
We did during WWII, we put American citizens who were Japanese in camps. You can find info about it on the net. I guess when you can see a difference between you and the enemy, it's not hard to round people up, I guess it would have been too difficult to round up all the Germans. That would have been almost half the country.
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mikeyg24 — 15 years ago(October 09, 2010 08:16 PM)
Spot on monique. Internment camps for citizens from enemy nations were common practise on both sides. The Isle of Wight in Britain was one big internment camp for Austrian and German civilians living in Britain as they were seen as potential threats to national security given their assumed loyalties to their country.
It also happened in Northern Ireland during the troubles. Individuals suspected of IRA involvement (in other words Irish Nationalist), the majority of whom were proven innocent, could be arrested and interred for seven days without charge. The film isn't as far removed from reality as it would seem.
Good guys may not finish last but they sure as sh*t don't finish first! -
RugGuy — 14 years ago(December 09, 2011 10:46 AM)
You said: "I guess when you can see a difference between you and the enemy, it's not hard to round people up, I guess it would have been too difficult to round up all the Germans. "
Yes, that is true. But the fact the Japanese attacked the USA and the Germans did not probably figures into the situation. I know German spies were in the USA at the time, but there wasn't a physical assault. -
paulioetc17 — 11 years ago(October 04, 2014 10:31 AM)
Actually, you're wrong. Just because the Germans didn't attack us doesn't mean its ethnicity in the U.S. were subject to scrutiny. But, there were many reasons why the German-Americans were not interned in large numbers.
- The German-American population was simply too large to intern and they were easily assimilated into American society along with other Europeans who also had the same race as them. Given the history of the Germans setting in the United States since the 1600s, it was not a popular idea to round up whites by fellow whites themselves.
- At the time, non-whites in the United States were not considered to be Americans and were seen as a threat to the "white culture" that helped build the United States (even though the Chinese built the railroads in the American old West in the 1860s). The facial features from Asians helped make a clear distinction to whites. So it's not as confusing unlike rounding up whites who may have German ancestry a long time ago.