Alberto asked how bad the internment camps for Japanese Americans were. I believe that the most unfair thing was that most of the internees had to sell their homes and farms before they left, often at pennies on the dollars. Since they could not derive income from their businesses, farms, etc, they all had to be sold. The internment bankrupted most of the internees.
Now, any situation like this is also going to have individual assholes guarding camps. I'm sure there are people who were mistreated. They were probably treated about as well as the average criminal prisoner at that time. Which is to say, not nicely, but no starvation, killings, torture, etc. I can't remember if the internees were used as labor or not. I imagine they worked....someone correct me... Darryl The internment camps were, without question, one of the black marks of American history. Whenever we talk about them, though, it's important to remember the extraordinary response of Japanese Americans to the camps, which was, quite simply a staggering tribute to both them and to the United States, even in that dark hour. It was, quite simply, a rather extraordinary level of patriotism. _Not one_ Japanese-American was ever even plausibly suspected of espionage on behalf of Japan and, with the exception of some relatively small movements in the camps, there wasn't even any perceptible sympathy for the Japanese war effort. Even more impressive is the record of the Nisei (Japanese-American, roughly) regiment in Italy, which ended up becoming _the single most decorated American unit of the Second World War_. It says something about them that they had the wisdom and patience to see the value of the Allied cause even while they were being treated so badly - and something about the United States that even citizens towards whom it had (temporarily) abandoned its ideals responded with such fervent patriotism. Hawai Senator Daniel Patrick Inouye was a veteran of that regiment, while Commerce Secretary Norman Minetta was interned as a child in the camps. Gautam
