Racism (as well as anti-Semitism) were endemic to America of the 1940s. FDR was no different than his countrymen when it came to the Japanese. Let's face it, the Pacific campaign was a race war for both sides) and was fought that way from private to commander-in-chief.

"A few years ago, I was at the Library of Congress researching my book By Order of the President, about Franklin Roosevelt�s role in the wartime removal."

Interesting.

Back in the early 90s, I saw a large, student created display about the internment at Wichita State University. It was pretty interesting exhibit, but I couldn't help but notice that it never -- not once -- mentioned the name 'Franklin Delano Roosevelt'. In fact, if you had viewed the exhibit without any prior knowledge of World War II, you would have come to the conclusion that the US Army decided on its own to conduct the internment.

After that, I kept an eye out and noticed that particular phenomenon popping up again and again. Some of the worst offenders were history professors. During one class lecture, I made a professor visibly wince by asking about Roosevelt's role in the internment.

Don't forget Earl Warren.

My understanding was that FDR was complacent in authorizing the internment, but that the pressure to do so came from the general hysteria after Pearl Harbor. I have not read anything that indicates FDR had any racial animus. Earl Warren was certainly an advocate. J Edgar Hoover was against it - he said his FBI already knew of anyone who was an enemy.

No matter how long it takes, the left will take care of their own. Did you see the "Documentary" on FDR that ran on public television last spring?

Throughout was repeated the incantation, "FDR kept us in the dark, so he could bring us into the light." That might not be the exact words, but it's pretty close.

My head about exploded and I feared my husband would have a stroke.

How about racism against whites all over this good earth? whites are in fact a total minority on this good earth.

remember pearl harbor, but that was when this was a nation and not a race idea, oh well how many jap troops killed how many old white woman? young white kids? and raped how many?, over 20,000 whites were killed by japs in world war two, inside jap interment camps, only 3 japs were killed inside u.s camps, jap troops raped many woman old and young woman some as young as 10 years old, murdered many little white kids shot to death helpless people, so long live the great American troops who freed the world from jap nazism or yellow nazism, eat me! jap loving nazis pigs. go tell your gods left and right you love monkeys.

What the hell?

If one can lock citizens up based on ethnicity, why not religion or class? The New Dealers and Earl Warren may have known exactly what precedent they were attempting to set with the internment of Japanese Americans.

Fred-

Calm down. Have some sushi.

War is hell. All kinds of bad things happen in a war.

The internment was reasonable under the circumstances. We need no more regret it than to regret our ending of the war. Can we not see that this very discussion emboldens our enemies to imagine that they will be allowed to operate a fifth column in a future conflict?

What is to be regretted is the false perception of pacifism, isolationism and weakness that plunged us into war and ever threatens to do so again.

Easy folks, he's just channeling FDR.

Lou:

Why weren't German-Americans and Italo-Americans interned?

Uh, they were

Just beaners:

"German Latin Americans"

Heck, most of the Right would intern them today.

OJ
That's been covered before. As the Gov says German sympathaziers were interned. FDR acted reasonably and humanely to reduce a significant threat of sabotage on the west coast. As far as threat to the Japanese-Americans themselves, much of that was from Chinese Americans who were quite familiar with the Japanese behavior in occupying China.

OJ, they were.

Also, in Malaya, while the British were well-fortified against attack from the sea, the Japanese Imperial Army came rapidly and unexpectedly down the peninusula, with critical assistance from Japanese map makers and spies who had been living in Malaya for some time.

Since isolationism was objectively pro-Nazi (to paraphrase Orwell) I'm surprised that Lindbergh and his America Firsters weren't sent to camps.

Most of the country opposed going to war in Europe. The government would have fallen if FDR had tried.

h:

Japan sympathizers weren't.

Of course enemy nationals of all stripes are subject to internment, and were in fact interned.

The point about the ethnic Japanese is that war makes this sort of thing necessary. Imagine a Japanese commander wading ashore at San Diego, and addressing Japanese and Japanese-American civilians as MacArthur spoke to the people of the Phillipines, "Rise and strike!"

It seems facetious, because it never came to that. That is not the point. Rather, it is that just the potential of such a thing happening had military significance. We must never forget that the seeds of 9-11 were sown in the failure to call in the AC-130's at Mogasdeshu. Bin Laden told us this very thing.

Our opponents in the present conflict have no chance--not even Japan's chance. The danger is that may dream that they do. Weepy recriminations over the WWII internments facilitate their self-delusion and make the hell of was more likely

Looks like Bart has adopted a new moniker.

Lou:

No, it seems foolish because the Japanese-Americans were Americans.

Well at least we're in agreement that isolationism was objectively pro-Nazi.

Anon:

And intervention was openly pro-Bolshevik. But non-intervention would have destroyed both.

The difference between isolationism and non-intervention being?

None.

So you are in favor of non-intervention, AND

claim there is no difference between isolationism and non-intervention, AND

agree that isolationism is objectively pro-Nazi, THEREFORE

you admit to being objectively pro-Nazi?

Anon:

No. I'm an interventionist.

You have repeatedly voiced your wish that America had stayed out of WWII, leaving Europe and Old World Christianity to the tender mercies of the atheistic Nazis and Communists.

So how could you possibly be an "interventionist"? To quote from the "Princess Bride", I don't think that word means what you think it means.

No, I've repeatedly said that we should either have gone to war against both Nazism and Communism or, preferably, sold both Hitler and Stalin weapons so they could pummel each other into submission. The worst option open to us was favoring one ism over the other--we took it.

Then you disagree with Abraham Lincoln's dictum, "one war at a time".

In fact we did use one to pummel the other into submission. Most of the Wehrmacht died on the Eastern front. We gave the Russians the material to do so via Lend Lease. In return for all their blood and sacrifice the Russians got eastern Europe and the Balkans, regions of no strategic value. We got the real prize, the industrial countries of western Europe, for a fraction of the cost.

Then we defeated Communism in turn during the Cold War by adhereing to Sun Tzu's wisdom that "supreme excellence in the art of war lies in winning without having to fight". Containment worked, end of story.

We did exactly what you wanted, only we wisely did it sequentially instead of foolishly all at once.

Yes, the point was that the Red Army needed to be destroyed with the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

Lincoln was murdered, so it's hard to blame him, but all the Civil War did was replace slavery with Jim Crow. It was no benefit to blacks.

Can you provide an historical example of two such large armies achieving simultaneous destruction of each other? I can't. And if you can't,such a possibilty must remain in the realm of fantasy.

As for Lincoln, you either missed the point entirely or responded yet again with a deliberately dishonest and misleading non sequitur. His "one war at a time" was a response to his more hot-headed cabinet members (like Seward) who wanted to go to war with Britain over the Trent Affair while the Union was engaged in a life or death struggle witht he Confederacy.

Lincoln's wisdom was true then, it was true in the 1940s and is true today. Taking on more than one war at a time is why Germany lost both world wars.

Yes, the French, Brits, Germans in WWI.

Britain was not a slave state so that would have been two wars. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were identical, so it was all one war. We managed to make it last until the late 80s by our incompetence.

How can you call defeating the USSR without the loss of a single American life "incompetent"? Reagan, in defiance of all the critics on the Left, achieved Sun Tzu's definition of "supremem excellence in the art of war".

I'm still waiting for your historical example of two large armies simultaneously self destructing.

We lost tens of thousands in combat and 45 million to Roe, both of which were functions of the sixty year war against the isms. Reagan did well to end the war but it was too late for our own good and didn't help the 100 million we stood by and watch communism murder.

WWI.

Roe v Wade is a result of not attacking Communism simultaneously with Nazism? Please elaborate (now this should be interesting).

After the war both sides had nukes, so unless you wanted a body count in the billions, there was little we could do about the millions murdered by Communism. Most of thee were murdered by Mao. The PRC didn't even exist until the late 1940s. What kind of crystal ball do you expect American policy makers to have?

Explain how both sides simultaneously destroyed each other in WWI. If not for American intervention, Germany would have won. The Kaiser Battles of 1918 showed the German army was capable of launching devastating offenses even after 4 years of trench warfare. Maybe the French were near collapse (especially after the mutinies following the disasterous Nivelle offensive in 1917), but the Germans still had the capability and the will to win. And without the Yanks first holding the line and then leading the counter-offensive, the Germans would have won.

The liberal epoch would have ended in the 40s had we finished off the Soviets. Mao wouldn't have taken power or we could have nuked him when he did.

The Germans weren't going anywhere and couldn't have governed if they won. All it took was a shove and governments began toppling because of the futility of the war.

The liberal epoch would have ended in the 40s had we finished off the Soviets.

How were we going to do that? More importantly, how were we going to get the American people to agree to launching an unprovoked and dastardly sneeak attack on a country that (at the time) posed no threat to us?

Mao wouldn't have taken power or we could have nuked him when he did.

Mao beat Chaing on his own without Soviet help and against Stalin's advice. The corrupt and incompetent KMT would have been beaten by a troop of cub scouts. The situation in Europe had no effect on the outcome of the civil war in China. As for nuking the Chinese, wasn't the point of your "plan" to avoid the deaths of a 100 million people?

Unless of course you contend that it is OK for America to kill 100 million but not OK for the Communists to do so.

The Germans weren't going anywhere and couldn't have governed if they won. All it took was a shove and governments began toppling because of the futility of the war.

I'm afraid you are revealing your ignorance of military history once again. The Germans (led by their new "storm troops") would have cracked open the Allied line in 1918 and headed to Paris if it weren't for the Americans. The French were bled white by this time and incapable of effectively countering these attacks.

Germany in WWI had not intention of ruling Western Europe. In this war their aims were much more modest. Annexation of Luxemberg and half of Belgium, a demiltiarization of northern France and massive reparations were their war aims in the west. In the east, they showed they could achieve much greater aims with the Treaty of Brest-Livotsk imposed on the defeated Russians (annexation of russian part of Poland and the Baltic States, and economic control of the Ukrain).

You're spouting nonsense and are largely ignorant of military history.

daniel:

same as we got them to go fight the Nazis, don't ask.

yes, it's okay for us to kill people in a war rather than allow their government to kill them.

yes, that's what a 'win" in the Nazi/Soviet conflict would have looked like too.

same as we got them to go fight the Nazis, don't ask.

But I will ask. And BTW, who do you consider to be more evil, FDR or Hitler? I'm curious because while you rant and rave about FDR I've yet to hear you criticize Hitler or his policies.

yes, it's okay for us to kill people in a war rather than allow their government to kill them.

Why?

yes, that's what a 'win" in the Nazi/Soviet conflict would have looked like too.

(sigh) There you go again OJ with yet another deliberately dishonest and misleading non sequitur. So what does this statement have to do with German war aims in WWI?

daniel:

Hitler was evil. Stalin was evil. FDR was stupid. He demonstrated that stupidity by replacing one evil with the other and claiming victory.

Because the ends are just in one case and not the other.

As you point out it didn't matter what the German war aims were in WWI because its "victory" would have had almost no effect on Europe. Ditto the "winner" of the Hitler/Stalin war.

So how did "stupid" FDR trick Hitler into going to war with us?

"The ends justify the means"? I never knew you were a Marxist.

I never said any such thing. I said German war aims in WWI were relatively modest compared to the later Nazi war aims. A triumphant Germany after 1918 would have dominated Europe politically, economically, and diplomatically. That is a major effect on Europe.

He declared war on Germany and Hitler followed suit.

Marxist ends are unjustified. Ours are justified.

The Germany that lost twice has dominated Europe.

How did FDR officially and formally declare war on Germany?

Is that what you would say to all those dead. And what do you think God would say to you in response at your Final Judgement?

What does this statement have to do with anything we are discussing? You can't say Germany could never have dominated Europe and then turn around and say it does.

Are you bi-polar or suffer from something similar?

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/2003/09/same_as_it_ever_was_2.html

God never minded killing folks for their own good.

Germany dominates Europe--it can't control the entire population of European. Neither could the Soviets.

Not bipolar, I've just thought about such things rather than reflexively regurgitating Panglossian New Dealer pabulum. Odd you despise Catholic orthodoxy but are prisoner to liberal historical orthodoxy.

Then let God nuke the Chinese.

Your talking out of both sides of your mouth. By this new definition, Nazi germany or the Soviet Union could have "dominated" Europe indefinitely. Again you contradict yourself.

Not a prisonor, I just don't look good in a tinfoil hat. Whether its Fleming or Von Daniken I try to avoid loons with axes to grind. They make poor historians.

we serve God, never better than when killing communists

The Soviets did dominate it thanks to us. Now the Krauts do.

FDR has been dead for over half a century. Communism has been dead for nearly two decades. Its time to get on with your life. Time to stop obsessing over a dead past that can't ever be changed by imagining alternate histories that can never come true. Time to stop hating gays, communists, hippies, feminists, and new dealers.

You can't have many more years left, why waste them on your weird, obssessive hatreds and revenge fantasies?

Because we shouldn't repeat the same mistakes FDR and Truman made and pointing them out bothers pedantic jackasses.