Emotions ran high after Pearl Harbor

Now it's time to put in my two cents worth about Japanese internment in WW II.

I lived in Stockton, Calif., then. The Stockton delta was full of workers from the Far East. The farmers of the delta "islands" brought in Hindus, Japanese and Philippinos for the cheap labor. Ex-president Herbert Hoover had big signs on the entrance to his farms, "No white help wanted." That was for the "Okies." (Cheap labor; an Okie told me at Fresno they had cotton rows one mile long. You picked both sides, and when you got back from the end of the rows, you got one dime.)

There was a Japanese man running a tractor with a Jap flag on the radiator. A Philippino cut off his head, put it over the flag and let it run on down the field. (Bataan just fell.)

I wonder if you knew that an Oriental couldn't own property (unless you were born here) in California until the 1950s.

So according to Michelle Trusty-Murphy, the FBI and Naval Intelligence were investigating the American citizen then, just like they are doing now, to see who is not "politically correct."

The other night on the History Channel, they had an hour-long program of where the U.S. government also interned thousands of Italians and sent them to concentration camps in Montana. I bet you didn't know that! I didn't.

The program said they rounded up Germans and Italians on the East Coast, too.

In the north end of Stockton, my dad had a soldier home for supper one evening. We were sitting talking when there was an explosion and the windows rattled. We wondered what the hell happened. The radio said Port Chicago blew up. The soldier said, "What a chance to desert. I'm stationed there, they don't know if we were blown up or not." He went back anyway.