What is this guy thinking? _________________ N.C. congressman says internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was appropriate Wednesday, February 5, 2003 ©2003 Associated Press (02-05) 20:03 PST HIGH POINT, N.C. (AP) -- A congressman who heads a homeland security subcommittee said on a radio call-in program that he agreed with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., made the remark Tuesday on WKZL-FM when a caller suggested Arabs in the United States should be confined. Another congressman who was interned as a child criticized Coble for the comment, as did advocacy groups. Coble, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security , said he didn't agree with the caller but did agree with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who established the internment camps. "We were at war. They (Japanese-Americans) were an endangered species," Coble said. "For many of these Japanese-Americans, it wasn't safe for them to be on the street." Like most Arab-Americans today, Coble said, most Japanese-Americans during World War II were not America's enemies. Still, Coble said, Roosevelt had to consider the nation's security. "Some probably were intent on doing harm to us," he said, "just as some of these Arab-Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us." Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., a Japanese-American who spent his early childhood with his family in an internment camp during World War II, said he spoke with Coble on Wednesday to learn more about his views. "I'm disappointed that he really doesn't understand the impact of what he said," Honda said. "With his leadership position in Congress, that kind of lack of understanding can lead people down the wrong path." The Japanese American Citizens League asked Coble to apologize and said he should be removed from his committee chairmanship. "We are flabbergasted that a man who supports racial profiling and ethnic scapegoating" chairs the subcommittee, the group's national executive director, John Tateishi, said in a statement Wednesday. The Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that Coble explain his remarks. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said the comments were "particularly disturbing." In 1988, President Reagan signed a bill authorizing reparations of $20,000 for each surviving camp veteran.
Right. We put them in internment camps for their own safety. Maybe if everyone says it often enough, it'll be true. Not a good year for Republicans talking about the past, is it?
This guy should lose everything...his seat in Congress...his citizenship...EVERYTHING. He is a huge part of the problem. Read the Constitution and the accompanying cases fella.
Where in the Constitution does it say we can remove someone from office, or better yet revoke someone's citizenship, for saying stupid, even reprehensible, things?
At least Trent Lott won't feel lonely in his ****hole anymore. Seriously, what is up with calling Japanese Americans "endangered species?" Maybe Coble believes that they were safer in the internment camps, but referring to human beings as "species" does have just a little hint of bigotry. Furthermore, those people were forced to sell (well below value) or abandon most of their homes and belongings. I don't think anything like that should be referred to as "right."
OMG! It's just totally scary that not only can this dope get elected...but has a critical subcomittee chair. WTF?!
Howard Coble is my Congressman; he has been pretty darn good. He has been re-elected many, many times. This is kind of a bizarre remark but it's not entirely off the wall. Afterall, the great FDR interned the Japanese-Americans and he was no Republican.
I don't think the Supreme Court has overturned the Korematsu vs. US decision that gave the government "war powers" to intern any group or people based on their creed. Even if Coble's views are racist, people in his position could perpetuate it whether the American people agreed with it or not.
I hope you're wrong...I hope they wouldn't do this again. What a dark, dark day in American history. http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/commentary/20011017_levinson.html Would Korematsu Be Decided Differently Today? Just as many of us have assumed Brandenburg and the Pentagon Papers case will remain the law, so too many of us have assumed that the notorious Korematsu case will not. But this assumption, too, may be inaccurate. In 1944's Korematsu case, in a ruling with which many are familiar, the Supreme Court upheld the President's Executive Order 9066. The Order forced relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans–as well as their Japanese-national parents who, though resident aliens, were ineligible to become American citizens under then-existing American naturalization law. In passionate dissent, Justice Roberts termed the internment camps "concentration camps." In 1988, the United States formally apologized and even paid compensation to those affected. Korematsu, however, remains on the books; the Court has never formally overruled it. No one familiar with recent defenses of the rationality of "racial" — or, more accurately, national origin/religious — profiling can be confident that Korematsu would not be decided similarly today.
