Never Again

Never Again

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered into WWII, first against Japan and then against Germany, fear struck our nation.

America rallied the most powerful war machine the world had ever seen. People of all walks of life enlisted to fight. Great manufacturing companies converted to make weapons, ammunition, planes, and bombs. Housewives went to work in those factories, replacing their husbands, fighting overseas. They welded, riveted, and assembled the tools their men used to defeat the enemy. Back at the house, families rationed food supplies so the focus of the economy could be poured into the war effort. Navajo Indians even used their native tongue as a tool to confound the Japanese. By all accounts, the American effort in WWII is nothing short of heroic.

Save one black spot.

Our enemy was Japan and there were plenty of Japanese who were citizens of the United States. Of course, there were citizens of German and Italian descent as well, but they weren’t so obvious. The Japanese looked different. They could be identified and thus associated with the enemy. That bred fear. Fear festered into mania and, before too long, anyone who looked Japanese were rounded up, corralled, and placed in containment camps. They were separated from society. Their rights, privileges, and freedoms as Americans were stripped from them. It was extreme, but it felt justified because it was for the greater good.

Until later.

Now, all these years later, a more enlightened people look at the containment of Japanese Americans as an error, driven by fear. Never again, American elitists, will claim, will we allow fear to strip away the rights of men like that.

Really?

Our nation is once again gripped in a kind of world war. This virus isn’t the first one or even the worst one we have experienced. It’s just the first one we can point to. It has been named, marked, identified by the media. And fear has bred. Such fear that mania has erupted. Fear that makes it seem right even justified to strip away the rights, privileges, and freedoms of American citizens. Our government has taken to confining healthy and hard-working people while at the same time releasing convicted criminals from the prison system. Fear has driven the populace to point out and turn in the offenders of the state orders.

How long will it take for our eyes to open and minds to be enlightened?

How long until we cry out, “Never again”?

And, if and when we do, will it be too late? 

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields (but still under house arrest)