First racist experience

I did not say it is stupid to learn from the past. I said going back to rapes in Poland has little to do with Sweden today.
From 1599 to 1697 Sweden was involved in 15 different wars. Since around 1820 we have had peace in Sweden so I would say we have learned from the past.

Scandinavia has shared Scandinavia and especially Sweden with refugees since WWI and WWII and Sweden has taken more than any other country until recently. That is per capita.
During the middle ages very few people lived in Europe and there was plenty of space - so the comparsing with the middle ages is again not revelent.

sorry Saab, my last post to you was inappropriate as I realize now it wasnt directed toward me... I also mentioned learning from the past and it was bad timing I guess, lol

Trump is a loud mouth who doesn't understand the US Constitution. There is no way he'll be able to round up any group of race or religion and transfer them to concentration camps. We have congress and the supreme court to override stupid people like Trump.

Here is another "confession". I call it racial blindness.
Recently, we are all aware of the issue with the confederate flag. This is not new. I cannot give you exact years, but late 90's? I moved to CA. I was LA born and bred but never racist. But the confederate flag.....well I just didnt see an issue with it. Racial blindness. About that time, there was a hoodoo about georgia and the flag. I didnt see that flag as white pride, or racially charged. I saw it as an example of our past and how, we must remind ourselves of it, to correct our wrongs. So yes, I thought the flag should remain a part of Georgia history. Not for pride, but as a reminder. I was ignorant of how others would see it. That was my wrong. I learned quickly moving to the west coast.
I had LA tags in my truck with a bumper sticker that said "Let the Flag Fly". I was so naive! I had bottles thrown at my truck by black people driving by. The first thing that went through my head was, "yeah! Thats a great way to gain respect, through violence." I still believe that, but I also know my sticker is intrepreted by people in different ways. Now I realize how insensitive I was. I even ran my reasoning by a black friend I had and she said nothing. I wish she had told me how she felt.

I say, as a minority who suffered some from discrimination, better late than never. Some people never learn.
The discrimination I suffered was as a young man, but never as an adult. I was born in 1935 in Sacramento, California. I lived there until we were sent to concentration camps after WWII started, and we lived there for four years. The irony? I served four years in the USAF.
Another irony? I served in the Strategic Air Command, and worked with nuclear weapons - the very bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
My ancestors were from Hiroshima.
I have always been in support of Harry Truman's use of the bombs in Japan.
There was no excuse for Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor to start the war.

I cant imagine how torn you were. It reminds me of the blacks that served during WW1 and 2 nd vietnam. How do you defend and die for a coutry that doesnt even consider you equal once you come home? I cant imagine the anger! That we got over the Japanese hatred, I think, is a miracle. Yes, America was stupid out of fear in those days. I hope we learned from that. I hope we dont repeat those same mistakes. What if we went to war with Africa? Are we going to intern all of black society? Its hard to even imagine they got away with that in the 40's. Maybe bombing Pearl Harbor brought out the "Nazi" side noone wants to admit they have.

I think the 1940s were a different time in our country's history, and I don't see any repeat of it except for the likes of Trump who would deny Muslims entry into the US. Unfortunately, we still have many Trumps in this country; ignorant bigots.

I also don't think we need to fear the likes of Trump winning the presidency. He's too closely associated with groups like the KKK and David Dukes and the white supremacists to win any election. Most Americans are fair minded and see racial bigotry for what it is.

In the early 1940s, we were still children. Children acclimate to almost any condition, because we don't have better understandings about politics and what concentration camps really means. Living in tar-papered barracks surrounded by barbed wire fence and armed sentry was not that difficult for us, and we didn't understand how difficult it was for adults. Families large and small lived in similar sized rooms. Our uncle was responsible for assigning rooms to families, so we got the larger room at one end of the barrack.

It wasn't so much the "Nazi side" but the failure of leadership and racial bigotry at that time in our country's history.

Since the war in the Middle East, Muslims have become the target of bigotry.
Trump is the biggest bigot in our country today, because his rhetoric against Muslims is blind bigotry. We have seen his supporters come out from the woodworks like termites.

I've only heard Japanese refer to those camps as concentration camps. Otherwise, I read that they are referred to as internment camps. The difference is that you and your family were not starved to death in the camp. Concentration camps a la WWII, starved people, worked people to death, or gassed them to death and then cremated the bodies. None of that happened to the Japanese-Americans. They were interred for political reasons that today is condemned.

By the way, I read that the thought was even broached if the two other ethnic groups that were part of the Axis should be interred too. The decision was that their populations were too large to effect that.

But, living in the present, the Japanese might be the leverage against N. Korea, if the Japanese change their constitution to allow for overseas military actions. Then China might find a reason to curb N. Korea's ambitions.

Look up the definition for concentration camp.

I prefer this definition:
Merriam Webster:

Internment of Japanese Americans
is what it is called in internet or relocation. Last word I think is far too mild.
Concentrationcamp is for me as an European what happened in Europe and was to keep people till they could be killed
The personal feeling for you to see the internment as a concentrationcamp is very correct.

I am curious about what happened to your parents and others families homes and belongings while you were in these camps?
There must have been rent to pay, houses to take care of, lack of income?
How much were people allowed to bring along in form of cloth etc?
There must have been a lot of things getting lost for families, which they had saved to build up.

Well, I guess according to your preferred definition one should be looking for six million Jews, and several million slave laborers that survived WWII, just like the Japanese-Americans. Thank goodness the Japanese-Americans were only in concentration camps, since I believe that "internment camps" can be really hard, as they might have been in drafty quarters.

Most lost property and homes. All we could take was what we could carry. My mom was alone with two children. In the camp, our mother got involved with a married man, and he lived with us until he passes away after the war. I have a half brother and sister. I'm closer to them than my older brother who taunted me all my young life.

Still I think young Japanese Americans who had joined the Navy and Army before Pearl Harbor where fighting for USA during the same time as the people like you were in camps. How strange.

Young men volunteered into the military from the camps. Many combined with Japanese Americans from Hawaii to make up the 442 Battalion, and they were the most decorated unit of any war the US was involved in. They worked in intelligence in the Pacific, and fought in Europe. They're the ones who freed the prisoners in Dachau.
Many refused to serve, because their Constitutional rights were taken away. Many still alive from that period have disagreements concerning military service.

Victims of that discrimmination still return to the location of those camps occassionaly to teach their children and grandchildren about those times, do they not? Just like Jews do in Germany. Now, I am not saying there isnt the remotest comparision except bigotry and distrust. And no, the Japanese, for the most part, lost everything they owned, and when they did return after the war, Im sure the bigotry was rife!

It was very bad after the war. What the Japanese experienced in the US doesn't compare in any way to the Jews in Germany or Poland. The only incident in the concentration camp was when a Japanese prisoner got too close to the fence, a guard shot him dead. That's the only one I know of concerning US concentration camps.
I have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau many years ago, and stood on that famous tower where the trains passed through. The living conditions for the Jews were deplorable, with toilets in the middle of the barracks. To imagine that they were executed after that experience shows how cruel people can be against another group. Germany's shame is worse than what we experienced in the US. At least our government apologized and gave each of us $20,000 to those still living. 156 congressmen didn't approve the apology and payment.

Let me guess. Mostly Republicans. I had no idea people were actually shot in the camps! I know life was less then idealistic, to put it mildly, but I didnt think it was a life or death experience. Seems theres alot I didnt know. We were a barbaric people then, and I was hoping we have learned, or at least trying to learn from those experiences. But I also understand that human nature is tribal, animalistic, primitive in its evolution, for all our cell phones and satellites. Technology has outrun our ability to adapt. Thats why we have trollers on twitter, looking for the very worst, or being the very worst, just to feel powerful. A lion doesnt kill a leopard because its competetion for a food source, half the time they steal its kill. They kill the leopard because its different. They kill him just because they can. Is man so different?

this piece of news made me think of your post (thank you for sharing your experience)

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/03/confederate_emblem_outside_ore_1.html