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May 28, 2024 26 tweets 9 min read Read on X
In 1942, the U.S. government forcibly removed more than 110,000 ethnically Japanese people from their homes and sent them to internment camps in remote parts of the country.

People are resilient, but losing everything is hard.

How did victims' lives turn out?🧵 Image
First, we need background.

Japanese citizens began arriving to the U.S. in the latter part of the 19th century.

The scale of migration was substantial. By 1942, 40% of Hawaii was Japanese (Hawaii wasn't a state until 1959). Image
This influx of immigrants quickly became a political problem.

1886-1911, more than 400,000 Japanese set out to American lands. Citizens called for an end, resulting in the Gentleman's Agreement of 1907:

The U.S. wouldn't harass its Japanese and Japan would restrict emigration. Image
Immigration from Japan was cut down to virtually nothing from 1924 to 1952, creating a "missing generation" of people and distinguishing the first-generation "Issei" from their American-born "Nisei" children. Image
By 1940, Hawaii had 160,000 or so Japanese residents and the U.S. proper (recall, Hawaii was not a state) had an additional roughly 120,000.

As you can see, the largest portion of them were in California, in both Census and interment camp-derived figures. Image
On December 7th, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, resulting in the deaths of 2,008 sailors, 109 Marines, 208 soldiers, and a further 68 civilians and ten others, along with the destruction of almost 200 aircraft, four battleships, and more. Image
With Japan's declaration of war, Issei transformed into enemy aliens on U.S. soil.

The first governmental response was for the FBI to start rounding up community leaders, resulting in the detention of 222 Italian, 1,221 German, and 1,460 Issei men that month. Image
The Ni'ihau Incident that happened after the bombing of Pearl Harbor also started to cement into American's minds the problem of enemy aliens.

Shigenori Nishikaichi crash landed his Zero after the attack and two Japanese island residents agreed to help him. Image
The Haradas (an Issei couple) and Ishimatsu Shintani helped Shigenori get his equipment + papers + torch his plane while kidnapping three native Hawaiians

The Hawaiians fought back. They killed Nishikaichi, Yoshio Harada killed himself, and Shintani and Yoshio's wife were caught Image
Around that time, FDR and Attorney General Biddle made statements calling for Americans to respect the rights of minorities including enemy aliens.

But shortly after that on February 19, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, allowing the military to set up exclusion zones. Image
The EO didn't specify anything for Japanese Americans, but it didn't have to, because Japan was busy frightening American civilians and military personnel.

On February 23rd, Japan bombed an oil field near Santa Barbara. Image
From November 1944 to April 1945, the Japanese had been launching Fu-Go balloon bombs that ended up dropping incendiary munitions in California and fourteen other states.

The Japanese also attacked a baker's dozen U.S. ships off the California coast. Image
Americans were so afraid of a Japanese invasion that they inflicted damage on themselves in the "Battle of Los Angeles."

The fear was rightful: The Japanese had subs 20 miles from California on December 24, 1941 and California only had sixteen modern airplanes protecting it! Image
Leveraging the powers granted by the EO, the military split the West Coast into two military areas and began distributing signs encouraging Japanese people to go East. Image
The voluntary migration scheme failed and the War Relocation Authority was set up to administer ten camps scattered across the U.S., for 110,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast

These relocated people had to get out quickly, selling possessions at "fire sale" prices Image
It's from this background that the analysis begins:

Arellano-Bover used Census, Japanese-American Research Project, and War Relocation Authority data to identify interned Japanese Americans so data on their socioeconomic outcomes could be put to use. Image
If we look at home ownership after the war, we see that the interned Japanese were definitely negatively impacted:

In the period 1946-52, they had significantly lower homeownership rates than Japanese Americans who weren't interned.

But look at 1953 to the '60s. Recovery? Image
Homeownership is about an asset. If we look at income data, we actually see that the Japanese who would go on to be interned had lower incomes than the non-interned Japanese in 1940, and equal incomes by 1950-60.

So the internment... raised incomes?Image
The answer to this seems to be "Yes."

Not only did the Japanese who were interned recover, they caught up despite starting further behind the Japanese who weren't interned.

This result is actually very robust!Image
So we have to ask Why?

Let's check attitudes towards work.

Bupkes. The interned and non-interned Japanese don't differ in work attitudes, so they couldn't get ahead that way.Image
What about attachment to Japan and Japanese culture?

Sansei (third-generation Japanese) were just as likely to have Japanese-speaking grandparents and citizenship/Americanness-wise, if anything, the interned were a bit less American.

This probably isn't it either. Image
Here's the meat:

In 1940, Japanese on the West Coast were disproportionately likely to be farmers and unskilled laborers, whereas the Japanese who migrated East and were thus less likely to be interned worked more often in skilled occupations. Image
This migration-related occupational stratification must not have been very selective by ability, because the interned/non-interned converged.

They also converged, in part, because the interned used the experience to move and change jobs. Image
The camps had more socioeconomic diversity than the places internees came from, so they were exposed to a diversity of opportunities and their family ties binding them to certain occupations were broken.

There were frictions the camps help them to overcome!
It was common to hear stories about internees entering poor and vowing to make it big when they got out, like this pictured one.

And that's what they did: interned Japanese Americans overcame the experience and wound up, miraculously, better off for it. Image
If you're interested in learning more about this amazing example of human resilience in the face of discriminatory adversity, go read the paper, here: cambridge.org/core/journals/…

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More from @cremieuxrecueil

Jul 2
I've seen people mentioning that Europe's heat-related death issue is larger than American gun violence—true!

But people neglect saying how many heat-related deaths America has.

Approximately 1% of what Europe does even though America is hotter and Americans are less healthy! Image
Those factors mean Americans are more at-risk for heat-related deaths, even after accounting for Europe being a little older than America.

So let's be clear:

Europeans die from heat at relatively high rates; Americans survive it with technology. Image
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What technology?

It's the terraforming technology of air conditioning.

Install A/C and the heat-related deaths will mostly disappear, if Europe can keep their grid operational. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 2
What happens when scholars get canceled?

They end up publishing fewer papers and they receive fewer citations.

In other words, scientific productivity falls🧵 Image
Tons of scholars have been cancelled in recent years.

That is, they've received professional backlash for expressing views that people deem "controversial, unpopular, or misaligned with prevailing norms." Image
Cancellations happen outside of academia, but it's very bad in it.

Large portions of the academy dislike the freedom of speech. Many of those free speech opponents have high agency and the clout to cause material harm to people they dislike = particularly bad cancel culture. Image
Read 13 tweets
Jun 28
You must pick one:

Double the productivity of the bottom 20% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Double the productivity of the bottom 40% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Double the productivity of the bottom 60% or double the productivity of the top 1%:
Read 7 tweets
Jun 27
Phenotyping is the vast, minimally-explored frontier in genome-wide association studies.

Important thread🧵

Briefly, phenotyping is how you measure people's traits. Measure poorly, get bad results; measure well, get good results.

Example? Janky knees. Image
The janky knee example refers to osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, which occurs when the cartilage between bones is worn down, so bones start rubbing against each other.

This ends up being very painful. Image
Everyone with this condition isn't necessarily diagnosed with it.

This is especially true for men, who tend to just ignore this (and many other conditions) more often than women do.

This is, in a word, annoying, because it means that if you study it, sampling is likely biased. Image
Read 35 tweets
Jun 25
ADHD is a condition that's suffered from diagnostic drift: it's been defined more leniently over time, so more people are getting diagnosed.

One way to see this is to look at the benefits of taking ADHD medication. As prescription rates increased, the benefits have declined. Image
Another way to understand diagnostic drift is to look at the factors that promote it.

For example, school accountability laws lead to more diagnoses and, as a result, more psychoactive drug prescriptions.

Schools are pressured by law into making this happen. Image
An even more direct way to understand ADHD's diagnostic drift is to look at what types of diagnoses happen over time.

The increase has been more about non-severe ADHD than clinical ADHD. In other words, people with less and lesser symptoms are getting diagnosed. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 24
I have a story to break.

Columbia is still practicing racially discriminatory admissions in defiance of the Supreme Court's ruling in SFFA v. Harvard.

Newly-leaked data shows they still prefer less-qualified Blacks and Hispanics over more-qualified Asians🧵Image
Columbia has made a big show of "complying" with SFFA v. Harvard by noting that their 2024 batch of admits involved slightly less discrimination:

Fewer Black and Hispanic students, more Asian students.

That's what should happen, because Asian students tend to perform better.Image
But, with this leaked admissions data, we can see that race still predicts admissions.

With fair admissions, race should not have a significant effect, and it should not be directionally consistent.

And yet, in this data, it's clear Columbia still discriminates against Asians. Image
Read 14 tweets

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