[Vision2020] Super patriots

[Ralph Nielsen]

The Japanese who were interned had absolutely nothing to do with the  
Pearl Harbor attack. ALL persons of Japanese ancestry, whether they  
were citizens or not, whether they were born in this country or not,  
were rounded up and deported to internment camps in the interior of  
the country.

Germans and Italians were not treated this way at all. Only those who  
were deemed to be dangerous were interned.

Canada treated its Japanese in the same shameful manner. ALL of them  
were rounded up and deported to the interior. Racism, not "national  
security," was the main motivation behind this crime.

I know of two Germans who were sent to the internment camp at  
Kananaskis, Alberta. (Kananaskis is just outside Banff National Park  
and was the area where Brokeback Mountain was filmed.) One of them  
was a rabid Nazi who was kept until the war was over.

The other was our neighbor, Louis. He was born in St. Joseph,  
Missouri, of German parents and emigrated to Canada with his brother.  
He bought the small farm across Highway 95 from my father's farm in  
the early 1930s. He was a bachelor, and a good neighbor. For some odd  
reason he had chosen the swastika for his cattle brand, although he  
had no strong political views. (Many years later, long after the war,  
a Kootenay Indian on the Columbia Reserve south of Windermere had a  
swastika on the asphalt shingle roof of his house just below the  
highway.)

Our good neighbor was held at Kananaskis for six months before they  
sent him home again. The had found no evidence that he was dangerous  
to anybody. This action created a lot of extra work for my father and  
the other neighbors because we had to take care of Louis' farm and  
cattle as well as our own. My father then persuaded him to borrow our  
non-political cattle brand from then on. Louis had only a 6 or 7 head  
of cattle, so this was no problem.

My father told me years later, when I was "old enough to know," that  
Louis had been denounced by two "upstanding citizens" of Anglo-Saxon  
origin. Besides the cattle brand, the evidence against Louis was that  
he had been seen goose stepping in his fields like a Nazi soldier.  
The facts were, that in order to step across the irrigation ditches  
he had to take goose steps. Every other farmer had to do the same.

So I learned at a young age to be suspicious of super patriots. They  
can do a lot of damage to their fellow human beings.

Ralph Nielsen




Kai Eiselein fotopro63 at hotmail.com
Thu Jun 19 09:48:54 PDT 2008

Pearl Harbor was attacked, not invaded.
Two Aleutian Islands were occupied by the Japanese during WWII, that  
was an invasion.

Little known fact: The Japanese were not the only group of people  
sent to inter[n]ment camps. Germans were, too.
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