It is sobering to recall that though the Japanese relocation program, carried through at such incalculable cost in misery and tragedy, was justified on the ground that the Japanese were potentially disloyal, the record does not disclose a single case of Japanese disloyalty or sabotage during the whole war.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the unjust treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, highlighting that they were wrongly perceived as disloyal despite no evidence of disloyalty.
Henry Steele Commager's quote critiques the Japanese relocation program during World War II, emphasizing the irony and tragedy of incarcerating innocent individuals based on the unfounded fear of disloyalty. It points to the absence of any recorded disloyalty or sabotage among Japanese Americans, thereby underscoring the deep injustices inflicted upon them due to racial prejudice and wartime hysteria.
In practice
In a discussion about historical injustices, one might use this quote to illustrate the dangers of fear-based policies.
The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error and discover truth. There may be other ways of detecting error and discovering truth than that of free discussion, but so far we have not found them.
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.
The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.
We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past ... while we silence the rebels of the present.
America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.
Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history and there her destiny is evolving.
When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.
The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.
It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind.
Our prime minister could embrace and forgive the people who killed our beloved sons and fathers, and so he should, but he could not, would not, apologise to the Aboriginal people for 200 years of murder and abuse. The battle against the Turks, he said in Gallipoli, was our history, our tradition. The war against the Aboriginals, he had already said at home, had happened long ago. The battle had made us; the war that won the continent was best forgotten
There's a tendency when we write history to do it with the power of hindsight and then assume almost god-like knowledge that nobody living through history has.
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