I don’t do forums anymore, because I already have lots of ways to waste time. But back when I did – which roughly coincides with the time when I was a bored cubicle rat with Internet access – for a long time I went by the handle John DeWitt. Seemed like a good choice, it was the nom de plume of a minor Antifederalist writer, and I was a minor antifederalist writer who…needed a nom de plume. Meta, no?
Anyway I gave it up a few years before I moved to the desert for a number of reasons, principal among them being a correction to very poor fact-checking. I hadn’t known at the time I adopted the name that there was a far more generally famous John DeWitt, a “hero” general who in a rational universe would have ended up against a wall.
This was brought to mind by an email this morning from somebody who knew me back at the TCF forum, who wished to point out that there’s a ship sort-of named after my old alter ego.
I remember a piece about a Japanese pilot shot down over Pearl Harbor. He managed to swim to a plantation island, and convinced a native of Japanese descent to help him get a gun. The pilot was finally taken down (while shooting) by another guy there.
This, in context with known native-born, Japanese-descent spies, and the rightful fear of Japan, led me to at least not condemn the internments.
A country that wants to survive sometimes has to do the distasteful.