It is sobering to recall that though the Japanese relocation program, carried through at such incalculable cost in misery and tragedy, was justified on the ground that the Japanese were potentially disloyal, the record does not disclose a single case of Japanese disloyalty or sabotage during the whole war.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the unjust treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, highlighting that they were wrongly perceived as disloyal despite no evidence of disloyalty.
Henry Steele Commager's quote critiques the Japanese relocation program during World War II, emphasizing the irony and tragedy of incarcerating innocent individuals based on the unfounded fear of disloyalty. It points to the absence of any recorded disloyalty or sabotage among Japanese Americans, thereby underscoring the deep injustices inflicted upon them due to racial prejudice and wartime hysteria.
In practice
In a discussion about historical injustices, one might use this quote to illustrate the dangers of fear-based policies.
The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error and discover truth. There may be other ways of detecting error and discovering truth than that of free discussion, but so far we have not found them.
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.
The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.
We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past ... while we silence the rebels of the present.
America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.
Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
History had been man's effort to accomodate himself to what he could not do. Amereican history in the 20th century would, more than ever before, test man's ability to accomodate himself to all the new things he could do.
Look at how the British covered India with railroads, and it is easy to view them as modernisers. Look, however, at the abysmal levels of mass illiteracy in the subcontinent they left behind in 1947, and they appear rather differently.
It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master
I'm the son of two Holocaust survivors. As a child, I heard from one of my parents' best friends about living through Mengele's infamous selection process at Auschwitz. He haunted my nightmares.
It takes a willful disregard of history to appreciate how white Southerners could look at the Confederate battle flag and see states' rights or a way of life or a tradition - and not one human being whipping another, which was a common occurrence.
When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair.
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