"In the twentieth century, the United States government forced 100,000 United States citizens into concentration camps. In 1941, American citizens of Japanese descent were herded into concentration camps run by the United States government. Like the victims of other mass deportations, these Americans were allowed to retain only the property they could carry with them. Everything else—including family businesses built up over generations—had to be sold immediately at fire-sale prices or abandoned. The camps were “ringed with barbed wire fences and guard towers.” During the war, the federal government pushed Central and South American governments to round up persons of Japanese ancestry in those nations and have them shipped to the U.S. concentration camps. ... the incarceration of Japanese-Americans continued long after any plausible national security justification had vanished. ... what if the war had gone differently? What if a frustrated, angry America, continuing to lose a war in the Pacific, had been tempted to take revenge on the “enemy” that was, in the concentration camps, a safe target. Would killing all the Japanese be a potential policy option? In 1944, by which time America’s eventual victory in the war seemed assured, the Gallup Poll asked Americans, “What do you think we should do with Japan, as a country, after the war?” Thirteen percent of Americans chose the response “Kill all Japanese people.”" | Quote by: | David B. Kopel
American author, attorney, political science researcher. contributing editor to several publications |
Source: | commenting on whether a tyrannical or genocidal government could occur in America in Book Review: LETHAL LAWS. by Jay Simpkin, Aaron Zelman, & Alan M. Rice, Jews for The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Inc., 2872 South Wentworth Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53207, (414) 769-0760, 15 N.Y.L. SCH. J. INT’L & COMP. L. 355, 381-382 (1995) citing Gallup Poll released Dec. 20, 1944, question 2, in 1 THE GALLUP POLL: PUBLIC OPINION 1935-1971, at 477 (1972). |
| |
| |
| |
 |
More Quotations
| |
