re: #56 Ward Cleaver

The Japanese were detained because they looked different, and were a visible reminder of Pearl Harbor. You couldn’t easily pick out a German-American on the street, so they weren’t detained.The actor Jack Soo, that played in Barney Miller, was born Jack Suzuki, but changed his name to the Chinese-sounding Soo, to avoid the scrutiny given to Japanese-Americans.

Actually, some were, I think.

Internment, however, was never limited to those who had been to Japan, but “included a smaller number of German and Italian enemy aliens suspected of disloyalty.”[17] By February, “Earl Warren, at the time Attorney General of California, and U.S. Webb, a former Attorney General, were vigorously seeking to persuade the federal government to remove all ethnic Japanese from the west coast.”[17]

With these things, it’s always important to take into consideration the context. We look back in horror at a lot of things - but I think there was actually evidence of Japanese espionage. In fact, I think someone was arrested here in Seattle for signaling someone off the coast with the headlights of their car…I’d have to look that one up to be sure. FDR probably overreacted, but it’s not that there wasn’t anything at all going on to provoke it.