While folks (justly) condemn the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII as overreaction and scantly-concealed racism, and note that the service record of Japanese-Americans who served in the armed forces in that conflict was exemplary, most folks don’t know that there was, at the very least, an “incident” that was seized on as justification for the internment — a single Japanese-American man’s actions that arguably led to over
a hundred thousand people being imprisoned.
As the Japanese pilot made his way back to the aircraft carrier, his injured plane fell behind. It soon became apparent that he would not be able to reach the carrier as it steamed away from Hawaii and back toward Japan. Instead he fell back on his emergency orders: he was to land on the uninhabited island of Niihau and wait on the north beach for an Imperial submarine to make rescue. On his first flyby however, he noticed a severe flaw in the plan. Contrary to Japan’s pre-attack intelligence, the tiny island
was inhabited.
Not a reasonable justification (in a vacuum) for what happened, but a lesson, perhaps, in how any individual’s actions can have profound ramifications beyond the moment.