When it comes to ownership and property rights, the confidence, comfort and security that our society provides us is often times taken for granted. We may look to our Bill of Rights, additional amendments within the U.S. Constitution, case law, and believe all is well. But something happened in the spring of 1942 that, if examined closely, should shake us to our core.
We tend to think that the confiscation or the plunder of private property happens elsewhere. Surely this kind of thing doesn’t happen in the United States of America, at least not in the modern era—but it can, and it did.
Historian Dr. Larry Arnn has said that “Good history presents an accurate picture of what happened in the past with a sympathy for those who lived before us”. While keeping this thought and attitude in mind, we can look at what happened on the American Pacific coast during the Second World War and apply our understanding of how Bitcoin may help solve the threat of it happening again in our present time.
Executive Order 9066
Trauma, fear and rage followed the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Things were going very badly for American forces in the Pacific Theater. Great suffering would soon be endured by American prisoners of war in the Philippines, and by American civilians living in and around the capital of Manila.
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 designating “military areas” of the continental United States and to exclude from those zones anyone perceived as a threat. The style of expression was innocuous enough, but its target was the population of Japanese descent living in the western coastal areas of the United States.
Japanese issei immigrants had not been allowed to own property themselves or be citizens, but their native born children, the nisei, could do so while being citizens by default.
Forced Sale, Abandonment and Plunder
With President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, and after being given notice, Japanese-American citizens, their parents and grandparents were given one week’s time to leave their businesses and homes, bringing whatever they could carry with them and nothing more. Arriving by train, temporary assembly centers received them. The Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, California, would be one of those receiving centers with the horse stables serving as makeshift living quarters until permanent facilities, such as the Manzanar War Relocation Center, were available.
“We were allowed to bring whatever we could carry,” Susumo Satow recalled. “That’s it.” Everything else was to be left behind. “It was the middle of the harvest,” he remembered, “but still we had to abandon it and leave. And so we made arrangements with our friends. ‘Hey, come and pick the strawberries because they’re ready to be marketed.’ And so I imagine they did that.” They did—and kept the profits. The Satows were more fortunate than many: they owned at least some of the land they farmed—purchased in young Susumo’s name, since his elders were not citizens—and so hoped to have something to return to when the war was over. Many others lost everything, forced to sell off homes, shops, furnishings, even the clothes they couldn’t carry with them, to white buyers happy to snap them up for next to nothing. The Satows’ refrigerator went for three dollars; the family Buick fetched just twenty-five.”
Ward, Geoffrey C. “Chapter 1/A Necessary War.” Essay. In The War: An Intimate History 1941-1945, 35–35. New York, New York: Knopf, 2007.
Such was the time, situation, and circumstances for this market during these forced sales. The ownership of high value was forcibly transferred by way of unnaturally low prices in a market no longer free.
No loud outcry or protest was heard from the American public. “It’s the war”, it was probably reasoned. But these people, apart from those foreign nationals who had originally immigrated and not allowed to be citizens by law, were born American citizens. They were marginalized, their property devalued, stripped from them through sales under duress; and then they were bodily relocated to facilities where they could be concentrated and monitored.
Relevance to The Present
A precedent was set then with the potential to be a pattern followed today. The overwhelming fear and trauma of the unknown can move a population to ignore the natural rights, civil rights, or human rights of others who do not conform or comply with directives, especially when those directives come in the form of health and safety.
Today, though we may wish for justice and restitution for damages to the value of lost businesses, layoffs from jobs, etc., inflicted by the worldwide lock-downs, these things rarely come to pass in a satisfying way. After all, wealth restored to anyone at the expense of the collective is value ultimately plundered through direct taxation or plundered indirectly by way of inflation of our fiat currency supply. Genuine justice, not “social justice”, requires great care and sincerity—-we don’t want to see anything remotely as ugly as portable guillotines clattering over cobblestone streets for purposes of misplaced vengeance.
While we endeavor to create new value in our economic recovery, we have something better in which to secure and store that value—Bitcoin, held in self-custody.
It’s a technology which comes to the aid and rescue of all those whose dignity and property are under threat, no matter where they are in the world. Utilizing our energy and allocating our time, with purpose, is our priority. Now is the time to learn about Bitcoin. Use it wisely.