A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America by Greg Robinson

How a homeland agreements with foe nationals inside its territory throughout times of conflict is as much an topic today as it has ever been. In the western world these days such foe nationals are most probable to be engaged in the 'war on terror', and can be discovered masked behind a multiplicity of nationalities. During the Second World War, the register of foe nationals was possibly more apparently characterised for the Allies. Once conflict had been announced by Great Britain on Germany, German and Austrian nationals at one time became foe aliens, shortly pursued by the Italians. In the United States of America, the day after the devastating strike by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, conflict was announced by the Allies on Japan; and, a couple of days subsequent, America was at conflict with Germany also. Whereas Britain had preceding know-how of considering with foe nationals, having interned all German males throughout the First World War, America was comparatively unschooled in this locality (if one does not enumerate the relocation of Native Americans in the preceding century).  Of course, not only was Britain at war; but its dominions were furthermore, encompassing, most considerably in this case, Canada. Robinson, in his newest supplement to the area of publications on Second World War internment in Allied nations, has went into into the world of relative annals by undertaking the first study of North American internment as a cohesive entire, by analyzing the internment, or 'confinement', of those of Japanese ancestry in both the United States and Canada. .( Robinson 11- 408)

 Not content with the proficiency of the living lexicon of internment to amply express the internment know-how, Robinson has presented a new terminology to the field. There are good causes for Robinson's alternative of the phrase 'confinement' rather than of 'internment'. As Robinson best features, internment, in its factual sense, mentions to the 'detention of foe nationals by a government throughout wartime' (p. 2). While America did in detail intern foe nationals in Justice Department bivouacs throughout the conflict, the scope of Robinson's study is mainly worried with the 'removal' of Japanese Americans to 'camps'. Therefore his terminology is supported, as Japanese Americans were people of the United States, and thus should not have been therefore categorised as foe nationals. Similarly, in Canada, Japanese Canadians, people by birth, were refuted their privileges by being categorised in the identical class as native Japanese. There can be no question of the implicit racism inherent in the activities of the authorities of both the United States and Canada at this time. Those of Japanese ancestry were singled out for victimisation solely because of their racial ancestry. Whereas other foe nationals for example Germans and Italians were deserving to commitment hearings where they could 'prove' their commitment to the territory, Japanese Americans were refuted this right, ironically because it 'would be a unsafe precedent for analyzing the commitment of American citizens' (p. 180). And so, ...