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By
Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans,
by Greg Robinson. Harvard University Press, 2001, 336 pages.
Homegrown Himmler by Bruce Ramsey
In the eyes of most historians, Franklin Roosevelt bore
little responsibility for the wartime internment of the Japanese Americans. Greg
Robinson, assistant professor of history at the University of Quebec, argues in
this book that most historians are wrong.
| | Bruce
Ramsey is a journalist living in Seattle. |
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Roosevelt wasn't much interested in the Japanese Americans, he writes. But
that does not absolve him of responsibility. He signed the detention order. He
knew what the policy was. And, writes Robinson, Roosevelt showed "an astounding
casualness about the policy and an indifference to its effect."
The federal government was of two minds about citizens of Japanese descent. In
1940 the FBI had reported that the Hawaiian Japanese, citizens and non-citizens,
were overwhelmingly loyal. So had a White House intelligence unit. On the other
side, Frank Knox, the War Republican FDR chose as secretary of the Navy, argued
that the Japanese in Hawaii could not be trusted and should be put in camps.
Henry Stimson, the former Taft and Hoover official FDR appointed as secretary of
war, wanted all Japanese, in Hawaii and on the Pacific coast, put in camps —
a step that Attorney General Francis Biddle said was illegal.
On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering the
removal of the West Coast Japanese. The Democratic-controlled Congress quickly
backed up the order with legislation. Ethnic Japanese were ordered removed from
Washington, Oregon, and California. Of the 112,000 people affected, 70 percent
were citizens.
In his review of documents, Robinson finds that this order was "not based
strictly on military considerations." The military was also of two minds. Gen.
Mark Clark and Adm. Harold Stark, speaking for the top brass, reported that
internment was not necessary. The military commander of the West Coast, Gen. John
DeWitt, thought it was. Roosevelt took the latter view, agreeing with
Stimson.
More than 100,000 ethnic Japanese lived in Hawaii. The Japanese there were
about 35 percent of the population. It was a much greater proportion than on the
West Coast, and it meant that a far greater proportion of whites in Hawaii knew
Japanese and trusted them.
Robinson says that while Roosevelt "had played a largely passive role in the
decision to evacuate the West Coast Japanese," he "actively campaigned for mass
removal in Hawaii." FDR argued in a memo to Knox, "I do not worry about the
constitutional question — first, because of my recent order, and second,
because Hawaii is under martial law." But the military commander of Hawaii, Delos
Emmons, opposed internment. He didn't think it was necessary. There were
logistical problems of moving 100,000 Hawaiian Japanese to places like Idaho and
Nevada, and political problems, too. Eventually, Roosevelt gave it
up. |
| Of the 112,000 people
"relocated" to the camps, 70 percent were citizens.
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Back on the mainland, camps were made of wooden barracks surrounded by fences
and guards, and placed in thinly populated areas, mostly in the desert.
Roosevelt's first administrator was Dwight Eisenhower's brother Milton, who took
the job with the idea that the Japanese would be resettled. When he discovered
that the intention was to keep them confined, he resigned, writing that most of
them were loyal.
The camps were run by civilians. The agency in charge, the War Relocation
Authority, was patterned after a New Deal agency, the Resettlement
Administration. Roosevelt's left-wing vice president, Henry Wallace, who had been
secretary of agriculture during the 1930s, asked to use Japanese-American labor
to reclaim the desert and create "model agricultural communities," and nominated
one of his own deputies to have the job. That was one farm program that never
materialized.
Internment reflected the fears of most Americans, and amplified them. The fact
of internment seemed to confirm that Japanese were not to be trusted. If they
were so innocent, why had they been locked up? Pressure arose from several
quarters, including the War Relocation Authority itself, for Roosevelt to say
publicly that most Japanese were loyal. John McCloy, assistant secretary of war
and an "architect of the internment," Robinson says, strongly supported such a
statement. Roosevelt ignored these appeals for months. Finally, on February 1,
1943, he issued such a statement.
This statement, Robinson says, is held up by Roosevelt's supporters as proof
that the president's thoughts were good and pure. "In fact," writes Robinson,
"Roosevelt approved verbatim a text written by others and had little to do with
it."
| Roosevelt played a
largely passive role in the decision to evacuate the West Coast Japanese, and he
actively campaigned for mass removal in Hawaii. |
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As the tide of war turned, so did the thinking of some who had championed
internment. McCloy was an early supporter of an army regiment of Japanese
Americans, which became the 442nd Combat Team. Stimson agreed; he argued that
"the Japanese problem in this country after the war would admit of a far easier
solution if voluntary enlistment were permitted." Roosevelt agreed to the unit,
but for a different reason: he thought it would be good propaganda.
The extraordinary bravery of the 442nd, which fought in Italy, undermined the
rationale for the internment. So did the rollback of Japan's forces in the
Pacific. In 1944, several of the New Deal liberals, including Interior Secretary
Harold Ickes and Under-secretary Abe Fortas, began pushing for the end of
internment. Knox died, and Stimson, also a Republican, called for an end to the
policy. Later that year, the Supreme Court was to rule on the internment in the
case of Korematsu v. United States, and Attorney General Biddle believed
the government would lose.
"Once the consensus on ending exclusion was cemented," Robinson writes, "the
chief problem was stage-managing the request to win Roosevelt's approval."
Stimson went to Roosevelt. His response was to suggest that Stimson call the
governor of California, Earl Warren, and get Warren's approval. Warren would
later become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and be known as a liberal, but
in 1942 he had been elected in California largely on his enthusiasm for interning
the Japanese. Why would Warren offer to let them out? Besides, he was a candidate
that year for the Republican nomination for president — that is, to run
against FDR — so it was not likely that he would accept responsibility for
bringing back the "Japs."
Nor would Roosevelt. He put off the matter until after the 1944 election. It
was in December, on the eve of the Korematsu decision (which the
government, ironically, won) that the decision was made to end the internment.
Even then, the decision was ascribed not to Roosevelt but to Stimson.
Having read Stimson's diary, Robinson concludes that the secretary of war did,
in fact, have "a racist streak" about the Japanese. But he cared about the
Constitution, and was worried, in his words, about "blowing a tremendous hole" in
it. Roosevelt didn't. "The internment," Robinson concludes, "was not
fundamentally inconsistent" with Roosevelt's "overall political philosophy and
world view."
Robinson has written a concise, focused, and well-researched volume. Those who
celebrate the demolition of the FDR myth will have wished for more vitriol, and
perhaps a few fireworks. But the facts are here, and even Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr., admits in the cover blurb that "it was not FDR's finest hour."
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