U.S. Didn’t Have ‘Concentration Camps’

* The March 5 issue contained a letter by Mark Malovos that was so offensive to me personally, and I’m sure would be to all Americans who were around at the start of World War II, that I felt obliged to respond.

In a political piece designed to harm Gil Ferguson’s election prospects, (I have no political interest in Ferguson whatsoever) the writer implies that Japanese Americans were placed in “concentration camps” during the war. This is ridiculous.

Most Americans that I know consider the term “concentration camp” to be associated with the forced-labor and extermination camps of Nazi Germany. It is estimated that more than 6 million Jews perished in Hitler’s well-known camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Nowhere in the United States was there a “concentration camp.” Japanese Americans who were placed in relocation centers away from the coast were provided with most everything they required except freedom to travel. They were supplied food, housing, schools, shops, banks, barber shops and post offices. And many were allowed to attend inland colleges. Not a single person performed forced labor and not a single Japanese American was exterminated.

It’s time that citizens who actually participated in history stand up and speak out against those attempting to rewrite history for political purposes. An untreated wound festers rapidly.

RON WALKER

Huntington Beach