I don't know whether the shop keeper in Portland was a spy or
not. I
don't have the facts. But then again, neither does John Lau.
By the
intense tone of his post I suspect he has other axes to grind
here.
I do know that many Japanese were placed in internment camps,
not as
punishment, but for their own self-preservation because their
neighbors
were not amused by the events that took place at Pearl Harbor
on
December 7, 1941 (among other, later, atrocities).
It's very easy to sit back and condemn policies of wartime
governments
from the comfort of our warm homes (50+ years later) using
the ultimate
expression of free speech - the internet (something that
would have been
verboten under German or Japanese rule) but could we drop the
hysterical
automatic theorizing of the "planting of evidence" before we
know the
facts? Are we really to believe there were NO spies within
our shores
during the war? Please....
And Peter Walker, your anti-American tirade DID just play in
America and
I don't hear anyone calling you a communist. I certainly
wouldn't. You
are simply a man with an opinion (some of it even grounded in
fact).
Here we fight a daily war to protect the rights of anyone to
say
anything, no matter how much we disagree with it. We also
protect the
rights of others to respond, which I'm doing right now. It's
called
freedom of speech and we cherish it. Some of America's
toughest critics
reside within her own borders.
I hope this doesn't sound too harsh. I don't mean it to be. I
just
thought someone should speak up for the other side of the
story. Or am I
being too "Hammerish"?
Good reading and good writing to all,
Terrill Lankford
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