Why Doesn't FDR Get Blamed For Japanese (Et Al.) Internment?
I read someone pointing this out a couple of months ago. It'd just never occurred to me before. I mean...shouldn't he be?
(Unless, of course, internment was excusable...though...not to say I wouldn't have been just as crazy under those conditions...but...I'm skeptical that case can be made.)
posted by Winston Smith at
10:08 PM
3 Comments:
I think he does get blamed, and that internment of Japanese Americans is generally considered to be a blotch on an otherwise heroic record. It's just that whole New Deal and saving the world from the Nazis thing counts for a lot.
Those interested in providing FDR with excuses - not justifications - can point to the generalized panic of the moment, and to the fact that FDR did not initiate the internment policy. Even those inclined to be generous however have to admit that he was much too acquiescent to the Western generals and governors who really did drive internment. Those officials were pretty obviously driven by racism and some fundamental misunderstandings about Japanese culture, not a real assessment of security risk. After all, if Japanese immigrants and native-born Japanese Americans could not be trusted to walk around ordinary parts of California, why was no attempt made at internment in the East? Or in Hawaii, the only part of US territory where there were sufficient number of Japanese people to be a military factor? Why were Japanese Americans recruited to fight in Italy, and to act as interrogators and intelligence officers in the Pacific?
Historically, I'd liken this to US Grant's infamous Jewish exclusion order: An unjust policy motivated by bigotry in the guise of security, assented to by someone who should have known better and usually did. But then Grant lived long enough to apologize, and FDR didn't.
Thanks for this, Anon.
Pretty much everytime I bring up my mother’s internment, people confuse it with the Japanese internment here in America, and that internment is universally condemned by any leftie when talking about it, although FDR doesn’t come up IME.
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