It was seventy years ago today that America sent Japanese Americans to our own concentration camps.

[Bruce Wayne]

59. Interesting sidenote: the RW governor of Hawaii decided not to inter

Hawaii was about 1/3 ethnically Japanese in 1941/42. When the governor of Hawaii was tasked with protecting the island, he realized locking up one third of the populace was madness. He still locked up some Japanese-Americans, but only community leaders--community leaders, priests, business leaders, etc--but, ironically, only after they had warned the other members of their community that they should be unerringly loyal to the United States. After all, most Japanese immigrants had come to America to get away from the stultifying air of Japan's authoritarian regime.

Thus, while there was a wholesale round up along the relatively safe Pacific Coast, the rather vulnerable Hawaiian islands left 99% of their Japanese population intact and unmolested. Any real spies or saboteurs hiding among the Nissei population probably would have had a freer hand, actually, with the community leaders best in a position to turn them into authorities then locked up. But, as it happened, all Japanese who'd come here (and their kids) turned out to be loyal to here.

There were a total of nine Japanese spies caught in the US during World War Two. All 9 were Caucasians.