Failures of the Presidents by Thomas J Craughwell

Author:Thomas J Craughwell
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Published: 2008-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

NATIONAL REGRET

A movement for redress gathered force in the late 1960s and early 1970s and gradually, belatedly, won some concessions from the government. In 1976, President Gerald Ford rescinded Executive Order 9066 and issued a formal apology to Japanese Americans. Federal courts vacated opinions that had upheld the constitutionality of the internment. In 1988, Congress passed a bill authorizing a tax-free payment of $20,000 payable to some 60,000 survivors of the camps. In 1990, the reparations checks were sent along with a letter of apology on White House stationery signed by President George H. W. Bush. The letter conveys a sense of the nation’s guilt and awkwardness half a century after the roundups began:

A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.

In enacting a law calling for restitution and offering a sincere apology, your fellow Americans have, in a very real sense, renewed their traditional commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice. You and your family have our best wishes for the future.

During the 1980s, while searching for official records to assist the redress movement, researcher Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga came across a document showing that in 1942 the federal government had deliberately suppressed official reports from before the incarcerations began that found no evidence of disloyalty among the population about to be rounded up. And in all the years since, not a single case of sabotage or espionage by Japanese Americans was ever proved.

California Attorney General Warren wrote in his memoirs that he had been wrong to push for internment of Japanese Americans. “I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it,” Warren wrote. “Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken. It was wrong to act so impulsively … even though we had a good motive.”

Attorney General Biddle later wrote in his memoir, In Brief Authority, “I do not think [Roosevelt] was much concerned with the gravity or the implications of this step … What must be done to defend the country must be done … Nor do I think that the constitutional difficulty plagued him—the Constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime president.”

The political consequences of the internments for the Roosevelt administration were slight to nil. The nation’s attention was wholly centered on the war, and there was little sympathy for the rights of Japanese Americans. Roosevelt died in April 1945, just months before the end of the war, and he was succeeded by Harry S. Truman, who had his own Japanese remorse following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. But like the atomic bombing, in which much greater

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