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New releases from Hawaii authors.By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com
"By Order of the President -- FDR and the Internment of Japanese-Americans," by Greg Robinson (Harvard University Press, $27.95)It's always dangerous to step into someone else's shoes in another time and place, just to question his motives, but Canadian historian Robinson has pored over Franklin Roosevelt's private and public papers to get a handle on one of the perplexing mysteries of World War II: Why would a man with such high standing with American blacks, Jews and other minorities so "casually" sign Executive Order 9066, relocating Japanese-American citizens in violation of the Constitution?
Robinson shows the background of 9066 and the personal infighting that took place -- 9066 was no snap decision -- and documents that such "concentration camps" were long planned. Canada, by the way, relocated Canadian Japanese from the Pacific provinces within a month of the outbreak of war. His conclusion: FDR "deserves censure for not providing moral and constitutional leadership ... he repeatedly subverted the rights of those of Japanese descent." Robinson ends the book by highlighting how appalled President Harry S. Truman was about the way Japanese Americans were treated. One of Truman's first post-war acts was to invite nisei veterans of the 442nd to the White House.
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