Inouye legislation wants to "investigate" with a "commission".

We've seen this before. It's too bad most Americans just don't care.

Here's the latest from Dan Inouye as provided by the AP.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Jan/25/br/br7950628431.html

You may recall Dan Inouye is the Senator from Hawaii who received an affirmative action upgrade to MOH status from Bill Clinton courtesy of legislation introduced by his fellow senator from Hawaii, Dan Akaka (against the advice of the Pentagon's leading historian).

Inouye wants to use taxpayer dollars to "investigate" the internment of Japanese from Latin America sent to camps in America during WW2. Here's what Inouye has to say about his new legislation:

"They apparently had only one purpose on U.S. soil — to be used for prisoner exchanges with Japan," he said.

This is nonsense, which is why Dan added the word "apparently". Why would the Americans need to use Japanese enemy aliens from Latin America for prisoner exchanges when there were already thousands Japanese enemy aliens in American at the time? I wonder how Dan would answer.

The Accurate History

With regard to the Latin American Axis nationals, it is generally acknowledged by those who have bothered to check the record that only approx 8,500 Axis nationals (Germans, Italians, and Japanese)were arrested and interned by 16 Latin American countries during WWII. (Inouye ignores the Germans and Italians, however.)

In accordance with treaty obligations, the U.S. was obligated to accept Axis nationals for internment in the U.S. from those Latin American countries which were unable to establish costly internment programs. (Apparently Inouye does not know this.)

Accordngly, at least twelve Latin American countries deported a total of only 3,000 Axis nationals consisting of just under 2,300 Japanese (500 of whom who had already applied for expatriation to Japan at the Spanish Embassy in Peru) and just over 700 Germans and Italians.

Hence, the U.S. was only involved in the internment of 3,000 Latin American Axis nationals.

Charges of violation of the wartime civil rights of such persons (enemy aliens)by the U.S. is far fetched. Indeed, such persons were specifically excluded from P.L.100-383 which authorized payment to Japanese enemy aliens and Japanese Americans evacuated from the West Coast or interned by the U.S. during the war.

This isn't going to stop the Japanese American Reperations Movement from investigating the history with your taxpayer dollars. Hopefully America's politicans will show more common sense than they did in the 1980s. Better yet, why don't they just leave the investigating to the academics.

Here's the not so well written blurb. My embelishments are in paranthesis.

Inouye introduces bill to investigate WWII internment

Associated Press

Sen. Daniel Inouye yesterday introduced a bill to create a commission to investigate the relocation, internment and deportation of Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II and the late 1940s.

"They were taken from their homes in countries such as Brazil, Panama and Peru, stripped of their passports, involuntarily brought to the United States, and interned in American camps," Inouye, D-Hawaii, said in a news release issued by his Washington office.

"They apparently had only one purpose on U.S. soil — to be used for prisoner exchanges with Japan," he said.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, (surprise) said the panel will conduct a thorough examination of the largely unknown aspect of the internment of some 2,300 Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry. (500 of whom who had already applied for expatriation to Japan at the Spanish Embassy in Peru)

"We are a great nation, and we should not be afraid of the lessons we can learn from the dark chapters of our history," Akaka said.

Inouye agreed.

"The lessons of history can be painful," he said. "But that pain can also strengthen our nation and our commitment to its democratic ideals, which include equal justice for all."

The other co-sponsors of the bill are Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Carl Levin, D-Mich., Robert Bennett, R-Utah, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

The nine-member commission would be able to recommend remedies, if any, based on what it uncovered. (Who will stack this commission, Sen. Inouye?)

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of about 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry. (Wrong. Adults were enemy aliens.) They received a formal apology from President Ronald Reagan in 1988.