WI: FDR orders that the interned Japanese-Americans be killed?

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Karate Kid has a darker backstory, I'll tell you that much! Miyagi's wife and son don't die in childbirth but are murdered. Couple that with a racist Kreese and borderline Aryan Johnny...Eesh.
 
Where does this bizarre idea that "Wisonianism" = genocide come from?

I know people here don't like Wilson much but that is no excuse to portray him (or the "Wilsonians"--of whom FDR was in many respects one) as Hitler.

(With regard to the Japanese, by the way, Wilson unsuccessfully sought to get the California legislature to delay the passage of legislation prohibiting aliens "ineligible for citizenship"--i.e., Japanese and Chinese--from land ownership. https://www.nytimes.com/1913/04/20/...pan-through-bryan-he-urges-california-to.html)

I don't like Wilson but you are right, Adolph Hitler he was not.
 
Seems really really unlikely, but perhaps a way worse Nihau incident could result in a way worse internment?
 

Jack Brisco

Banned
What would be more likely is for a camp commandant to torture/starve his particular group and for some superiors to look the other way.

Not going to happen, either. How long do you think such actions could be kept secret? You had a lot of "free" people working at/in the camp, people making deliveries, etc. They'll notice.

And consider this. By June 1942 the Japanese held tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines as prisoners of war, as well as civilian internees. How long do you think those men, women and children would last once the Japanese learned Japanese and Japanese-Americans in US internment camps had been killed/starved/tortured? Things were bad enough as they were.

Nope, just not going to happen.
 

Jack Brisco

Banned
I guess FDR, and pre-Truman American society in general, weren't as ruthless as I thought.

In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. For example, FDR was very hard over on making sure Germany and Japan surrendered unconditionally. He would accept nothing less. FDR was hard over on taking the fight to Japan after Pearl Harbor - to wit, the Doolittle Raid. FDR also apparently had no problem in the Army Air Force bombing German and Japanese cities to smithereens and ashes. But there was no way he would have countenanced the killing of innocent American civilians - men, women, and children. Matter of fact, I cannot think of any President who would do such a thing, and I have seen plenty of Presidents in my seven decades in this world.
 
I guess FDR, and pre-Truman American society in general, weren't as ruthless as I thought.

Note that Nazi Germany took years of propaganda and hate to prepare the people before they actually started committing genocide. These things take time especially in a reasonably stable country.
 

newworldman

Banned
What if FDR ordered the execution of all the interned Japanese-Americans?
I assume as part of your time line, FDR not only regains the full use of his legs through an unholy ritual to the elder Gods, but also grew fell wings, grabbed a nearby flaming sword and then went to dispatch the innocent while death metal plays in the background
 
I think it might be followed actually, given the US's treatment of Racial minorities at the time and similar disregard of rights for minorities(Mexican Repatriation, the ethnic cleansing of Mexican-Americans in the United states) for example.
Although it'd require a PoD of even more resent/hatred of japanese and a more 'uppity' populace in the internment camps, it might be possible.
Hawaii's japanese might be too hard to genocide though, leading to it possibly being taken over by them in a guerrilla campaign and occupied by japan.
 
It just isn't happening.

Only the Nazi went as far to deliberately exterminate ethnic groups. The Soviets and Japanese may have committed mass murder, either deliberately or indirectly but neither of them tried to liquidate an entire ethnic group.

You might just get the internees shipped off to an under populated island with minimal facilities and starvation rations which leads to some deaths (think Burma railway style conditions) but you are not going to see firing squads or hangings agfainst people whose only crime is to be the same ethnicity as opponents in war.
 
I think it might be followed actually, given the US's treatment of Racial minorities at the time and similar disregard of rights for minorities(Mexican Repatriation, the ethnic cleansing of Mexican-Americans in the United states) for example.
Although it'd require a PoD of even more resent/hatred of japanese and a more 'uppity' populace in the internment camps, it might be possible.
Hawaii's japanese might be too hard to genocide though, leading to it possibly being taken over by them in a guerrilla campaign and occupied by japan.

From discrimination is still long way to total genocide. It would at least need years lasting propaganda which could totally deny humanity of certain people. Only Nazis were able go so far and even they needed years lasting propaganda before actual genocide which started during WW2. Other peoples have too commited genocides but not so organised and with such goal for total destruction of certain people.
 
From discrimination is still long way to total genocide. It would at least need years lasting propaganda which could totally deny humanity of certain people. Only Nazis were able go so far and even they needed years lasting propaganda before actual genocide which started during WW2. Other peoples have too commited genocides but not so organised and with such goal for total destruction of certain people.
Well I mean at the very least you could probably get an ethnic cleansing(Ala Armenian Genocide), deportation to a martial law hawaii or just dropping them off in Mexico.
Although this is very unlikely, it could be plausible given enough hatred for the japanese and a more hostile japanese-american population.
 
I seem to recall there was actually -- disturbingly -- a public opinion poll on this after Pearl Harbor. Don't recall what the support for it was, maybe low to mid teens at the most?
 
From discrimination is still long way to total genocide. It would at least need years lasting propaganda which could totally deny humanity of certain people. Only Nazis were able go so far and even they needed years lasting propaganda before actual genocide which started during WW2. Other peoples have too commited genocides but not so organised and with such goal for total destruction of certain people.
Also what do you mean by From Discrimination?
Do you mean From as in the previous status?
There wasn't just discrimination against ethnic minorities at the time, but legit ethnic cleansing and deportation of 2nd generation(birth right citizens) in the united states.(example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation)
 
You know, even Hitler did not publicly say "I'm ordering all Jews killed." (True, he did in his notorious January 30, 1939 Reichstag speech say that if the international Jewish financiers in and outside of Europe plunged the world into another war, the result would be the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." But even here he does not explicitly say how this result will come about or "and I will be the one to do it.") In the US an order for mass annihilation cannot be kept secret. And this is a nation where even the relocation and internment of the Japanese-Americans came before the Supreme Court--true, the Court (unfortunately) sustained it but at least it considered it, heard arguments from lawyers by both sides, etc. The basic problem with the OP is not "FDR wasn't that evil" (though indeed he wasn't) or even "FDR wasn't that crazy" (though again he certainly wasn't). The real problem is that even if (due, say, to some bizarre stroke) FDR does want to do this, he can't get away with it.

BTW, remember that even of the nationalities deported by Stalin (in an infinitely more brutal process than that of the US with Japanese Americans) the majority of the deportees survived. (E.g., "Estimates of the number of deported [Crimean] Tatars range from 180,000 to 250,000 and it is estimated that between 20 percent and 40 percent of the deportees died en route or within the first year after resettlement." https://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/researchdigest/russia/repatriation.pdf)
 
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