We always never made it to WWII in U.S. history class. Always got bogged down in junk like the Stamp Act and the Teapot Scandal.
To World Wars with Germany on the "wrong side" did stamp out, a lot voluntarily, most of German-Americans old world culture. My great-grandparents stopped speaking German. All of my grandparents were born bi-lingual, but World War II ended what World War I started. The Lutheran church stopped using German in services during World War II. Canal St. in Houston was German St. until World War I. The road signs on U.S. 290 for New Berlin, TX were taken down during World War II. Washington Cemetary used to be the German cementary in Houston. There was a lot of suspicion of Americans of German ancestry in the World Wars but it was a lot easier for them to blend into American society. Did they have it as bad as Americans of Japanese decent, hell no. Sadly it all came down to outward appearance once again. Beauty is only skin deep, but it is also the difference between just getting looked at funny and being placed in an internment camp.
You know, everybody who went to see Titanic had to have a pretty good idea how it was going to end, but people still went. It was the top grossing film ever at the time, and may still be.
Yeah, Americans renamed sauerkraut as fast as liberty fries. It doesn't seem right when people have to give up or hide their culture, peaceably or not. It's that quick response, to not be affiliated with the enemy, that gave the word Jap its derrogatory significance at the time. Many Asian or Japanese Americans I know aren't offended about Jap being used to freely. It's probably more of a historical pit stop, if anything. What bugs me whenever that period is brought up is that Korematsu vs. US was never overturned. You could have any future president decide that one group of Americans are hindering the war and a month later your neighbor of that color is gone. The system would be tied up years and years relying on that precedent while thousands of families are relocated to camps. Sounds extreme or outdated, but it happened.
Have you considered "Japananese?" Nazi wasn't a derogatory in itself since the National Socialist party was known as the Nazi party even in Germany. It wasn't derogatory term except for referring to the enemy political party and not an ethnicity. "Jap" was a shorthand slang term with negative connotations along with "Nip" as short for "Niponese" or 'Chink' for "Chinese" and are all offensize because they derogatory term at a whole ethnicity. "Ni^^er" I believe comes from "Negro" reffering to dark coloration of Africans. While one might say that terms shouldn't be offensive because they come from slang shorthand the historical context is important. "Brit" or "Scot" don't have historical derogatory connotations.
I remember reading about this recently and the Korematsu conviction was overturned in 1984 http://www.aaba-bay.com/aaba/showpage.asp?code=korematsutribute2005 I'm not sure if this means that original case precedent could be applied again but from what I gather any official attempt to imprison people just on the basis of ethnicity would be very difficult to legally undertake.
It depends on how the portray the people. For example, a couple of years ago there was a movie called "Der Untergang" and it was about the fall of hitler. It was an ok movie, altough critics complained that Hitler was to Friendly and humain in this movie. Which is not true, in this movie he was friendly ONCE, his secratary cried and he comforted her. The problem is that a lot of people do not want to see that Hitler was a human, they want to see him as an idiotic Demon kind of creature. And they want to think it could not happen again. he was an idiot, who did terrible things, but he was a human, and these things could happen again. If they show a movie from the other stand points they do have to show the friendly and human side of the people. It that case i would defenitly want to see this movie.
