"Evacuation" orders issued 69 years ago today |
From A Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story:
The concept of physically detaining any Japanese was first brought to the public by Mississippi congressman John Rankin, who, from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives just eight days after Pearl Harbor, said, "I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps and shipping them back to Asia as soon as possible. ... This is a race war, as far as the Pacific side of the conflict is concerned." Rankin shouted from the well of the House floor, "The white man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism. ... One of them must be destroyed. ... Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!"Thank God for men like Republican Governor of Colorado Ralph Carr, who pushed back. I highly recommend this book about him.
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