Henry Jackson and the Japanese
Larry in the comments to
this post asks if I got a reply from the H'S'JS on the issue of whether their claim that Scoop ever regretted his support for the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII has any foundation. The answer is I didn't.
The statement I link to in
the post still remains.
However I note in the 'About Henry Jackson'
section it does not mention he regretted it and there is a bit of an html link (which doesn't work) that opens the possibilty that there has been an edit. I can't remember what it used to say, or whether it has been changed at all, however.
Labels: Henry Jackson Society
Tony Benn = Henry Scoop Jackson
Oliver Kamm
loyally makes a brave defence of the left-wingness of Nick Cohen, saying of Tony Benn:
Note that this thoughtful and original sentiment comes from a politician who urged in the 1960s and 1970s a fundamental shift in the balance of wealth away from working people and their families, in the form of a huge taxpayer subsidy to rich people travelling by Concorde
This solves a puzzle. For obviously there is
another politician of that era who will forever be linked with wasting taxpayers' money on a supersonic aircraft, repeatedly voting for funding for it, and against attempts to stop that funding, and minimising very real environmental concerns about it.
Of course I realise that the comparison of 'Scoop' with Tony Benn is quite unfair. Concorde flew successfully for 30 years, whereas 'Scoop's version didn't get off the ground. But it explains what Oliver meant when last week, he said of the late Senator:
His ... interventionist views on economic policy – he believed Nixon’s wage and price controls were too weak – would put him around the position of Tony Benn in today’s political debates.
He must have meant Scoop was too right wing.
Labels: Henry Jackson Society
Did Henry 'Scoop' Jackson regret his enthusiastic support for internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII?
The Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society
claims he did:
In America, Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson initially believed the internment of Japanese-Americans to be a necessary action in the fighting of the Second World War, but he later realised that this action was a mistake.
Oliver Kamm (who possibly could be getting his information from the H'S'JS page, or be the contributor) also
believes this:
I have a suspicion that you refer to his support for the shameful injustice of the internment of Japanese Americans in WW2 because it may be one of the few things you know about him. Yes, he was wrong, and he regretted it.
Others aren't so sure. Robert Kaufamn, in his biography of 'Scoop', makes no
reference to any 'regret'. And David Neiwert, who has written a
book on Japanese/American internment, has noted on his blog that:
In all my research, I could, however, find no evidence that Jackson ever expressed any regret for his wartime activism against Japanese Americans, even as reparations were being discussed late in his career. He remained mum, hoping no one would remember his own role in the affair.
Anyway, it'll be far easier to prove he did than he didn't (if he did), and so I've emailed the head (Alan Mendoza, a Conservative councillor in Brent)
of the Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society asking where their information has come from and hopefully this matter of historical fact can be cleared up quite quickly.
Labels: Decent Left, Henry Jackson Society, Pollard
