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.
Thus ended the great American Civil War, which must upon the whole be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record.
It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?
When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.
This was the first Memorial Day [Monday, May 1st, 1865]. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is Black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.
Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same.
During the twentieth century, men fought on behalf of nationalism. Yet the wars they fought were also engendered by dislocations in world markets and by social revolution stimulated by the coming of the industrial age.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.