"HeyBub" wrote in message
...


Your point is well-taken, but you forget that individuals can be "rounded
up" and placed in detention/jail without being crimnals. Here are a few:
* Juveniles
* Those standing in civil contempt
* Infectious disease carriers
* Illegal aliens
* Those judeged, or felt to be, mentally incompetent
* Unlawful enemy combatants

Point is, one does not have to be a criminal - or charged with being a
criminal - to be jailed.

I'm sorry, I missed the category of belonging to a particular ethnic group,
did you forget to list that one? And since when are illegal aliens not
committing a crime? Nor are juveniles rounded up simply for being
juveniles, they have to be doing something like breaking curfew and then
they are turned over to their parents, not confined for years on end. Those
in contempt have been found by a judge to be disrespectful of a court's
authority--they have done something to justify being confined. Infectious
disease carriers pose a public health risk, the mentally incompetent are a
danger to themselves or others, unlawful combatants or POWs have engaged in
combat against U.S. forces--they have *done something* to justify being
confined. So what exactly did someone born to parents originally from Japan
do to justify being locked up in tarpaper shacks in the desert for several
years?

Oh, and I agree with you, but you are the one who brought up the argument
"How would you feel...?"

If you were properly convicted of a crime you had committed and were
imprisoned you'd feel bad but that is part of the point of sending people to
prison. However if you had not committed the crime the issue wouldn't be
your feelings, it would be the injustice. Americans of German or Italian
descent were locked up in WWII if they retained German or Italian
citizenship--hundreds of German-Americans returned to Germany to join the
military prior to America joining the war, and groups like the
German-American Bund openly supported Nazi goals, so there was some
legitimate cause for concern. But Americans of Japanese descent were locked
up simply because of where their parents came from rather than because of
their actions--that was an injustice.