Play it Again, Uncle Sam

Tashima, currently a federal judge, relates his experience in a Japanese American internment camp at Poston AZ during WWII. The unjust internment was in part a failure of the federal courts to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens

Fighting terror with law? Some other genealogies of pre-emption

Within criminology and criminal law the reception of post-9/11 counter-terrorist law has generally been critical, if not hostile. The undeniable proliferation of preventive statutes has been regarded as incompatible with conventional liberal norms and as dangerously innovative in its embrace of new strategies of control. But is such law innovative, and does it threaten to leach into other areas of criminal law, as some have feared? Exploring three governmental innovations – mental health law, habitual criminal controls, and civilian internment in war-time – that developed as expressions of the liberal state’s desire to ensure the safety of its citizens in times of peace and war, the authors argue that a more historically grounded understanding of the governmental and geopolitical contexts of security provides a surer foundation on which to construct the frameworks of interpretation of contemporary counter-terrorism law

Watching the Watchers: Enemy Combatants in the Internment Shadow

In the past, the government has avoided accountability for the atrocity of allowing the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. Kang examines whether the federal judiciary is again shying away from its responsibilities of holding the other branches accountable for their actions as they conduct their war on terror

Triumph of an Idea_Japanese Internment and the Survival of Democracy

The principles found in the Declaration of Independence have been what has united the disparate cultures and ethnicities that make up the United States of America. Racial prejudice, war hysteria, and political opportunism have attempted at times to smother these principles. Such a time occurred during World War II when the Japanese Americans were interned. But, those in the academic community, the church communities, and the Nisei themselves ensured that the democratic principles of the Declaration would ultimately triumph

No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience (Book Review) by Bohdan S. Kordan

Review of No Free Man: Canada, the Great War, and the Enemy Alien Experience by Bohdan S. Kordan

Medical Care of American POWs during the War of 1812

In 2005, a service in Halifax commemorated US soldiers and sailors who perished in Britain’s Melville Island prisoner-of-war camp during the War of 1812 and whose remains now lie on Deadman’s Island, a nearby peninusla. The service culminated nearly a decade of debate, in which local history enthusiasts, the Canadian and American media, and Canadian and US politicians rescued the property from developers. The media in particular had highlighted the prisoners’ struggles with disease and death, often citing the sombre memoirs of survivors.1 Curiously, Canadian investigators relied largely upon American accounts and did little research on efforts at amelioration from the British perspective. Coverage has emphasized British cruelty, citing accounts of internees such as that edited by Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (an American medical officer) and American deaths at the hands of guards at Dartmoor Prison in England during a riot in April 1815,2 while ignoring more positive elements, such as medical care. This article explores British medical care for American prisoners of war in terms of organization, delivery, treatments and results, and US observations of the matter. In fact, British medical authorities addressed problems in the custody system and provided humane and compassionate medical care. In the absence of international codes for the treatment of prisoners and substantial provision for handling thousands of prisoners of war, upkeep was difficult, rendering medical care often chaotic. British medical officers none the less cared for captives adequately and comparably to the way they assisted their own forces