An Open Letter to the Incarceration Apologists in Our Comment Section

First of all, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule of being triggered by other people’s gender pronouns, asking women what they were wearing, and trying to debunk “white privilege” with anecdotes about your blue collar background. We know you have many choices when you engage in online trolling, and we thank you for flying Densho.

We were completely unaware that the president who authorized the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII was Franklin Delano Roosevelt—a Democrat!—before you bravely pointed it out in our comments section. This information is definitely not featured prominently in our archives, encyclopedia, website, blog, and promotional materials. Until you came along, we had labored under the childish belief that racism is a complex and deeply ingrained system that crosses class, political affiliation, and nationality. You are the first person in the whole world who has ever made this astute and original observation. Your eight followers on Twitter are truly blessed with a wise and thought-provoking leader.

Furthermore, your observation that Germans and Italians were also detained was profound and not at all beside the point. The 0.1% of the German American population and even smaller fraction of Italian Americans interned during WWII is absolutely, 100% equatable with the military removal of the entire West Coast population of Japanese Americans. The experiences of European immigrants who were considered white within one generation of arriving in this country is practically a mirror image of the decades of race-based immigration bans, anti-Asian legislation, mob violence, state surveillance, and Yellow Peril propaganda that preceded the Japanese American incarceration of WWII.

Speaking of neglected history, we owe you a debt of gratitude for reminding us of who is really to blame for this tragedy of justice: the many traitorous Japanese Americans who provided aid to their blood brothers in the Empire of Japan. The sinister doings of the Black Dragon Society—exposed to the public in a 1943 film that is obviously a documentary and not a fictional movie—have been ignored by the Liberal Establishment for too long. IT WAS WAR. What were they supposed to do, abide by the laws of our country to determine guilt or innocence like a bunch of soft-hearted suckers? Besides, it’s really hard to tell those Nips apart. I mean… I’m not racist, but all Asian look same, amirite? [Raughs]

And don’t even get us started on the equally reprehensible cover up of the Niʻihau Incident. When will someone write a book or make a movie about this crucial and, despite not being mentioned even once in War Department and White House discussions of Executive Order 9066, completely relevant piece of evidence?

Finally, we wish to thank you for your sage advice to, as you so eloquently put it, stop whining about the past and get over it already. What naivete to think history—literally the chain of events that created the world we live in today—has anything to do with current events! What folly to inject race into a conversation about racism! Indeed, it was hateful and divisive for us to even bring up this topic in the first place, as everyone knows racism ended with the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Thank you for showing us the error of our ways. We will now convene our staff members to carry out the traditional seppuku ritual and erase the stain of our great dishonor.

Sincerely,

The Feminist Harpies & Leftist Cucks of Densho

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By Densho Staff

[Header photo by Thomas D. McAvoy. The LIFE Picture Collection, Getty.]