Ep. 9: 9066 (The Home Front)

De: Audible Originals, Martin Sheen

Although America is a nation of immigrants, mistrust of Italian, German, and Japanese citizens grew as the war intensified. President Roosevelt only codified those fears when he issued Executive Order 9066, forcing Japanese-American citizens from their homes and into internment camps. Hear first-hand accounts from those who were targeted and had their lives completely upended.

©2017 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2017 Audible Originals, LLC

Our greatest shame

Concentration camps, 'Murica style!

Seriously, when I first learned of this in my youth, it was from a friend my age and I thought they must be the biggest conspiracy theorist I'd ever met. This was taught in none of my history classes and it was clearly antithetical to everything we were supposed to believe and represent. At that time, I probably thought that WW II was fought over nazi concentration camps (see previous note about lack of coverage in history classes) so Japanese internment camps just sounded bonkers.

This episode explores this horrible policy and the accompanying audacious hypocrisy that we simultaneously hate and want to eject dangerous these people based on heritage, but we can't survive without their labor ... so I guess we can't let ourselves believe they're tooooo bad. Truly shameful.