"This Mexican American Teenager Spent Years in a..." Topic

… Japanese Internment Camp—On Purpose

"The station was filled with worried faces and hushed voices. Soon, those who gathered there would leave their lives and livelihoods behind as prisoners of the internment camps where over 110,000 people of Japanese descent—most American citizens—would be incarcerated for the duration of World War II. They didn't want to leave, but they had been ordered to go.

Except for Ralph Lazo, that is. The Mexican American teen wasn't supposed to be at the station at all, but had volunteered to go. The person who took down his information in early 1942 had seen his brown skin and assumed he was Japanese, too. "They didn't ask," he told the Los Angeles Times later. "Being brown has its advantages."

Lazo was about to become the only known person of non-Japanese ancestry who volunteered to live in an internment camp. What some saw as a years-long ruse or proof he sympathized with the enemy in World War II, he saw as an act of solidarity…."
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Amicalement
Armand

I remember reading that the Apache code talkers had loads of problems with base security while they were doing basic training. The MP's kept trying to arrest them as Japanese, this was while they were in uniform mind you.

Yes a very interesting[and sad] time in US history with the internment camps. But from the way many "white" Americans believed at that time it is not too surprising, again sadly …

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I remember reading that the Apache code talkers had loads of problems with base security while they were doing basic training.

I wonder if this was unique to Apache code talkers. Might just be an isolated issue related to the individuals who provided base security where the Apache were training, or might be something related to characteristics of Apache appearance.

As a brief aside, the Navajo code talkers have become far more widely known, largely through the "Windtalkers" movie. Fair enough, as I understand they were the largest contingent of native American code talkers. But there were in fact many tribes involved in code talking, including not only Navajo and Apache, as we have mentioned, but Cherokee, Choctaw, Comanche, Cree, Mohawk, and even a few Tlingit.

As I understand it there was even a contingent from the Northern California Basque community who used their little-known home tongue as code talking in the USMC during WW2.

Must have seemed a bit of a Tower of Babel to Japanese Naval or Army intelligence.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Yes, I had heard the same about there being a number of Americans Indians doing Code Talker duties. Many don't know about that. Like many things in history …