Poston concentration camp

[Lonerider62]

One of the things I've been able to do for the last fifteen years was to tour different parts of our country on motorcycles and in the process I've learned a lot about our history, some good, some bad. I'm in the Parker, AZ area this winter and although I knew about the internment camps that Japanese/American citizens and other people of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated in, I've never actually walked in one. Yesterday I went to the Poston Camp I, II, and III. Although only a monument to the 17,867 men, women, and children who were held there, the 1200 who served in our armed services during the war, and the 25 who were killed in action is still there to mark the camps, it is a sobering moment to think the whole thing actually happened in a panic that struck our country after Pearl Harbor.
Anyone who gets close to the Parker area should spend an hour and check out the site. It will be good for the soul.

[fredintoon]

Hi 'rider,
us Brits had to make do with interning Germans and Italians.
Quoting actor Victor Spinetti:-
"One minute my dad was Spinetti the grocer, the next minute he was Spinetti the spy."
The Canadians also interned citizens of Japanese ancestry, moving them from the west coast to camps in the interior.
I worked with Kyoshi Kubota who was a child in those camps and asked him how he felt about it.
As I remember it he said:-
" look at all the Japanese doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists you can find in any Canadian city, If we hadn't all been forcibly removed from the west coast they wouldn't be there and I wouldn't be a qualified machinist, I'd be a deckhand on my uncle's fishboat and only be able to speak Japanese."