Fifth Columnists

I am reading Brian Garfield's The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians (1969), and I found a most interesting item on page 8:

Japanese Intelligence was not so good as it might have been, because no Japanese spies in Alaska had communicated with Tokyo for months.  The eight or ten spies had been interned in the States, along with hundreds of innocent Nisei.

Garfield gives no source for this claim, and it is what I consider too popular of a history -- only some items are footnoted.  The fact that Garfield gives a rather exact number "eight or ten spies" does make me suspect that he had some authoritative source for this, perhaps speaking off the record because the information was still classified at the time.  Otherwise I suspect that this would have "some" or similar vague statement about Japanese spies in Alaska.

Michelle Malkin put herself in harm's way several years ago pointing out that information declassified in the 1990s showed that the U.S. government knew that there were some Japanese spies among the Americans of Japanese ancestry in the U.S.  At least, Japanese diplomats referred to them working in defense plants in dispatches back home, and the U.S. had broken the Japanese diplomatic code before the war.

The number was doubtless tiny, compared to the 100,000 or more Japanese citizens or American citizens of Japanese ancestry who were interned as a security risk.  It would have been better if the U.S. government had put more energy into identifying those who were disloyal, instead of locking up everyone -- the vast majority of whom proved their loyalty in spite of this mistreatment.  (Many proved their loyalty in the ultimate way, in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.)

It is also true that there were other motivations for the internment, including a long history of racism driven by unfair practices of Japanese farmers (such as hard work and intense agricultural practices brought from Japan), and more immediate hatred because of Pearl Harbor.  It is possible that these other motivations were actually the larger motivation, especially by the time the internment actually took place.  But to pretend that there was no national security concerns that played a part in the decision is just dishonest.

UPDATE: unfair practices "such as hard work and intense agricultural practices" is sarcasm.  Have we really so fully reached the Obamanation that I have to be explicit about this?  Oh what a tragedy.

My Does It Take A Long Time To Format a 500 GB Hard Disk

I am busy on it right now.  Of course, at least partly this is because I am formatting it in preparation for cloning my current hard disk over a USB connection, so that is certainly part of the slowness.

Flaming Turkey Wings!

I remember this commercial in the 1980s as a post-Thanksgiving ad, but I was surprised to see that Pizza Hut used it in the United Kingdom as a post-Christmas promotion.  I did not realize that they ate turkey in Britain at Christmas.

Horses on Ice: How Smart Are They?

I have a question for my readers who are familiar with horses. 

I understand that horses are reluctant to walk on ice, for the same reason that humans are: it's slippery, and they are in danger of slipping.  Are they smart enough to recognize ice from its appearance?  If you were riding horses in a studio on a surface that looked like ice, but was not (think green screen background on which a frozen-over river has been projected with ice and snow simulated in the foreground), would they be so afraid of the appearance that they would be reluctant to walk across it?  Or do they only respond to actually slipping on ice?

Alliteration Never Sounded So Silly

It isn't often that local news from my region makes it to the Drudge Report, but it is, like most crime in Boise, interesting because of its weirdness, not its frequency.  From the November 22, 2012 AP account of the man being charged with having broken into the Boise Zoo, attempted to steal a monkey, then beat it death after the monkey bit him:

His father, Jerry Watkins, said he can't believe his son entered the zoo wanting to do the monkey harm.

"He's not a malicious monkey murderer," Watkins said. "I'm thinking the monkey attacked him and he just tried to defend himself. I don't think he ever intended to kill it; he's just not that kind of guy."

Perhaps more significant in understanding what happened:

[Ada County Assistant Prosecutor] Alidjani had argued that the bail shouldn't be reduced because Watkins has a history of drug and drunken driving arrests and probation violations....

Watkins broke into the zoo after a night of grief-fueled drinking, Reedy said: An aunt had recently died, and Watkins' grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer only days before. So he went into Boise for a night out with friends and family.

I mean, if you had a rough time, wouldn't you try to break into a zoo and steal a monkey?

Obamacare Already Costing People Jobs

You already knew that some employers were either putting off hiring because of the increased cost of providing health care for their employees because of Obamacare, or shrinking back to less than 50 employees so that would not be subject to its mandates.  This article from the November 19, 2012 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that part-time employees of the Community College of Allegheny County are being cut back to less than 30 hours per week.  The reason is simple: employees who work 30 or more hours per week must be provided health insurance because of Obamacare -- and the college cannot afford to do this.  So it is cutting employee hours to a level where the college is not required to provide health insurance:

"It's kind of a double whammy for us because we are facing a legal requirement [under the new law] to get health care and if the college is reducing our hours, we don't have the money to pay for it," said Adam Davis, an adjunct professor who has taught biology at CCAC since 2005.

Yup.  Obamacare requires workers to buy health insurance if they are not otherwise covered -- and now the college has an incentive to cut their hours back even more.  I know that some of my fellow adjuncts are already uninsured because coverage for a family comes to about $1000 a month -- or considerably higher than what most have for house payments -- and of course teaching college pays very badly.  The article explains that adjuncts at the Community College of Allegheny County will be cut back from 12 semester hours to 10 semester hours to get below the 30 hours per week requirement. 

This alone is a joke; any adjunct who teaches 12 semester hours and only works 30 hours per week is either incredibly brilliant, not doing his job very well, or is otherwise pretty unusual.  To teach 12 semester hours means that you spend 12 hours per week in class, and quite typically 20 hours per week (on average) grading papers.

I do not want to sound mean, but there are consequences when you vote Obama, and those consequences are about to hit a lot of adjuncts there very hard.  I would be surprised if this does not happen at lots of colleges around the country.

Today's "Cleaning Out the Refrigerator" Word of the Day

Guacamoldy: The avocado dip that has sat too long.