gollum
 
  1  
Reply Thu 25 Dec, 2014 02:49 pm
@Setanta,
Setanta-

Thank you.

Were these units deployed against Japan?

Does this mean that only a (small?) percentage of American citizens of Japanese ethnicity were interned? How did the U.S. determine who not to intern?

I had thought African-Americans had their own unit(s) within the U.S. armed forces.
BillRM
 
  0  
Reply Thu 25 Dec, 2014 03:18 pm
@gollum,
Quote:
I had thought African-Americans had their own unit(s) within the U.S. armed forces.



African Americans in WW2 was mainly repeat mainly in support roles to the combat arms and not line soldiers.

President Truman after WW2 order the army to be integrated on July 26, 1948.

PS WW2 treatment of blacks was strange as in the civil war and fighting the Indians in the West and in the American/Spanish war they proved to be great combat troops.
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Dec, 2014 05:01 pm
@BillRM,
There were some combat units like the "Redtails" of Tuskegee nd the "Black Panther" Tanks.
BillRM
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 26 Dec, 2014 07:56 pm
@farmerman,
Quote:
There were some combat units like the "Redtails" of Tuskegee nd the "Black Panther" Tanks.


That was why I used the sentence that mainly repeat mainly they was used in support roles.
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 26 Dec, 2014 08:04 pm
@BillRM,
but lets not forget these little "details" in favor of broad sweeping "truths".
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Dec, 2014 03:23 am
@gollum,
The 442nd RCT/100th Battalion operated in Italy, and then in southern France. (They were not deployed against the Japanese.) They achieved their greatest fame while the war was still being waged by fighting through German lines in southern France to rescue a battalion of the 36th Division, the Texas National Guard division. That unit had already gotten headlines when they were surrounded by the Germans, got cut off and became known as "the Lost Battalion."

There were about 127,000 ethnic Japanese in the continental United States, of which 110,000 or 120,000 (sources vary on the exact number) were interned. They represented just under half of the ethnic Japanese population of the United States. There were about 150,000 ethnic Japanese in Hawaii, of which only about 2000 were interned. Ethnic Japanese were about a third of the population of Hawaii, so it would have been a nightmare to attempt to intern most of them, as had happened on the west coast. There was also not the ingrained racism of the west coast.

Long before the war, the first Roosevelt president, Theodore Roosevelt, had had to deal with institutionalized racism on the west coast. In 1906, San Francisco required Japanese students to be educated in separate, segregated schools. The Japanese were pretty pissed about that, understandably. It didn't go away, either. In 1919, an Anti-Japanese League was formed in Seattle, Washington. The attitude was widespread on the Pacific coast of the United States. So, there was very little internment in Hawaii, where more than half of all the ethnic Japanese in the United States lived, but almost total internment on the west coast--anywhere from 86% to 95%, depending on whose population figures for the internment camps one uses.

FM pointed out that ethnic Germans were interned earlier in the thread, I stood by my statement that the Germans were not subjected to the same penalties. Ethnic Germans who were interned were interned after judicial review on a case by case basis. Ethnic Japanese on the west coast were interned because they Japanese, regardless of age, gender or putative political activities. The entire population of ethnic Germans in the United States who were born in German was more than ten times as great as ethnic Japanese of all categories in the continental United States (once again, this excludes the Japanese in Hawaii--who were, apparently, not seen as a problem in Hawaii). If you include ethnic Germans, both of whose parents were born in Germany, or only one of whose parents had been born in Germany--there were about one hundred times as many ethnic Germans in the continental United States as there were ethic Japanese; even if you include the Japanese of Hawaii, there were still more than 40 times as many ethnic Germans as ethnic Japanese--yet ten times as many Japanese were interned as were Germans. You'd have to be a complete idiot not to recognize the racist nature of the policy.

The U.S. Army and Army Air Force were segregated in that war. The Navy and Marine Corps were not segregated, but blacks were almost never put into combat roles. (Since the war, it has been recognized that blacks on naval vessels, who were cooks and stewards, but who manned [segregated] anti-aircraft batteries aboard their ships, showed exemplary courage and devotion--many were decorated, alas, far too many posthumously.) The armed forces were desegregated by President Truman in January, 1948.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Sat 27 Dec, 2014 05:58 am
@BillRM,
BillRM wrote:
Take note that not even American hero Charles Lindbergh was fully trusted due to his prewar relationship with the German Luftwaffe and could not service in uniform as a result.


Damn right, he was a Nazi sympathiser.

Quote:
In October 1938, Lindbergh was presented by Goering, on behalf of the Fuehrer, the Service Cross of the German Eagle for his contributions to aviation.

Two weeks later, Lindbergh delivered his first nationwide radio address in which he urged America to remain neutral. In the speech he criticized President Roosevelt, who believed the Nazis must be stopped in their conquest of Europe. Lindbergh saw Nazi victory as certain and thought America's attention should be placed elsewhere. "These wars in Europe are not wars in which our civilization is defending itself against some Asiatic intruder... This is not a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion." Building on his belief that "racial strength is vital," Lindbergh published an article in Reader's Digest stating, "That our civilization depends on a Western wall of race and arms which can hold back... the infiltration of inferior blood."
Announcing that it was time to "name names," Lindbergh decided to identify what he saw as the pressure groups pushing the U.S. into war against Germany. "The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration." Of the Jews, he went on to say, "Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government."


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/sfeature/fallen.html
0 Replies
 
BillRM
 
  -1  
Reply Sat 27 Dec, 2014 06:35 am
@farmerman,
Quote:
but lets not forget these little "details" in favor of broad sweeping "truths"


Who stated that we should forget those details however those details does not change the fact that for the most part repeat the most part black troops was used in supporting roles and not front line combat roles in WW2.

Hell they was half the troops used to created the all weather military highway between Alaska and the lower 48 in record time.

A feat along with similar feats that was every bit as important as direct combat roles happen to be.

To sum up it is surely not to the black troops fault that they was limited to such roles for the most part due to white racism of the times and the supporting roles was not without hardships and dangers.
0 Replies
 
 

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