Watching FDR on the History Channel

[CatWoman]

your opinion: was the internment of Japanese Americans really necessary?

Eleanor went off on FDR for doing that. She said it was un American and stupid.

[monmouth]

1. I just tuned in and yes I think Eleanor was right, and often thought

she was probably smarter than him most of the time. BTW, did I hear my fav Doris Kearns Goodwin narrating??

[CatWoman]

2. Doris isn't the narrator

she is one of the expert consultants :)

I love her, too.

Along with Michael Beschloss :loveya:

[Captain Hilts]

16. In her book No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns missed a MAJOR source...

that would have changed the tenor of the first part of the book. It's a memoir by Norman Littell, who was Assist. Attorney General. He also was a friend of the Roosevelts' daughter. In this book - which is taken from his correspondence of the day - he notes that FDR was a complete shit to Eleanor after her brother died. Kearns notes that when ER came to tell FDR that her brother had died - at Walter Reed of violent hemoraging - I can't spell it - that splattered her and the walls. FDR was really sweet to her. He promised to clear his schedule and go to the funeral with her. The day of the funeral, he COMPLETELY FORGOT about it and went off with Princess Martha instead, leaving ER at the funeral, alone.

FDR just wore people out.

[GOPisEvil]

3. I do not believe it was necessary.

I understand the feeling that made some feel it was necessary, however, it is no different than the profiling of Muslims after 9/11.

Eleanor was right. Just as she was right about her stance on race.

I think FDR had 3 major blunders: Court packing, doing nothing on race, Japanese internment.

[CatWoman]

4. I can't believe the living conditions they endured

:hi:

families restricted to living in one room in 115 degree heat, with no indoor toilet :scared:

[GOPisEvil]

7. Simply appalling.

We treated German POWs better.

However, on balance, FDR had a very successful presidency. As with us all, we're complex people.

Except Bush, he's a fucking simpleton. :hi:

[CatWoman]

8. now

why would you want to disparage simpletons? :)

[GOPisEvil]

9. Simpletons have their place.

The White House is not among them. :)

[dflprincess]

5. It was racism and a way to grab the land and other assets

of Japanese Americans on the west coast who were the only ones interned en masse. If it had had anything to do with national security Japanese Americans living anywhere in the U.S. would have been interned along with with German and Italian Americans.

[Captain Hilts]

19. The DID intern Italians and wanted to intern Germans.

Because Germans had been in North America since about 1700, and were geographically dispersed, Francis Biddle said it was impossible to figure out which Germans might collaberate and which would not.

Broadway star Enzio Pinza was imprisoned during the war.

So, no, it actually wasn't based on racism.

[dflprincess]

31. Do you have a link?

I did a quick Google search and could not find anything about Enzio Pinza being interned. From what I found, he apparently was still appearing with the Metropolitan Opera in 1942.

I'm sure there were some Italians and Germans interned, but I don't believe there was the systematic forced location that citizens of Japanese descent on the West Coast endured.

[izquierdista]

23. Ever hear of the 1942 riots?

The race riots in Los Angeles where scores of Japanese-Americans were killed by rampaging mobs of vengeful whites? I didn't think so.

And before you flame me, how many "towel-heads" were killed by rampaging Americans the week after 9/11?

[gravity]

6. No

Maybe you can argue that Japanese with direct ties to Imperial Japan could be justified in the camps, but there is no justification for putting American citizens in them.

[fla nocount]

10. FDR had a pen, the country had an Eleanor.

They were a team, but Eleanor shaped our world today, by brow-beating a centrist in her world, yesterday. It's a debt we can never repay except by carrying on with the vision.

[Captain Hilts]

13. And no one here gave a shit when I posted the 60th Anniv. of the Univ Delcaration of Human Rts...

here the other day.

It's a Big Deal everywhere but in this country.

President Obama should get the Seante to ratify it, finally.

[fla nocount]

26. Mookie, I give a shit.

BO seems to be a rather shallow piece of work but that doesn't mean we have to give up no matter the amount of effort expended in getting him elected, it's a start not an end. His presidency will be as fleeting as a baby's breath in our efforts to effect "change."

We've made great strides in the 8 hundred years since the Magna Carta, it seems that's the pace of fundamental change when your leaders are for hire.

[Captain Hilts]

29. I get all these e-mails from the FDR library. But NONE about the 60th anniversary...

of the Delcaration. When I lived in Moscow, I bought a copy from a street vendor. The dissidents said it meant a lot to them in the early 70s.

Thanks for giving a shit. The FDR Library doesn't even care.

Keep the faith!

[Warpy]

11. At the time they said Roosevelt was 90% Eleanor

and 10% mush. I think they were right. She was on the right side of every thing and when he crossed her he had cause to regret it.

His conduct during the anti lynching legislation push was abominable, too.

[Captain Hilts]

15. The anti-lynching thing really stinks, doesn't it?

[Captain Hilts]

21. Harry Truman was once asked why he didn't trash James Roosevelt, the eldest son...

more thoroughly in his memoir considering how James had not supported Truman in '48.

Truman said he didn't "because that boy's mother is one of the greatest people who ever lived."

Harry wasn't one to throw praise around either. He also always emphasized "she was a 'Roosevelt' BEFORE she married one."

[anonymous171]

24. He had to maintain his coalition.

Without it, he would not have been able to push through his reforms.

[Captain Hilts]

12. You've got to read this, Catwoman...

it's an awesome magazine article from 1943 by Eleanor:

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/articles/challengetoamerican.cfm

I can well understand the bitterness of people who have lost loved ones at the hands of the Japanese military authorities, and we know that the totalitarian philosophy, whether it is in Nazi Germany or in Japan, is one of cruelty and brutality. It is not hard to understand why people living here in hourly anxiety for those they love have difficulty in viewing our Japanese problem objectively, but for the honor of our country, the rest of us must do so.

A decision has been reached to divide the disloyal and disturbing Japanese from the others in the War Relocation centers. One center will be established for the disloyal and will be more heavily guarded and more restricted than those in which these Japanese have been in the past. This separation is taking place now.

We have in all 127,000 Japanese or Japanese-Americans in the United States. Of these, 112,000 lived on the West Coast. Originally, they were much needed on ranches and on large truck and fruit farms, but, as they came in greater numbers, people began to discover that they were competitors in the labor field.

This happened because, in one part of our country, they were feared as competitors, and the rest of our country knew them so little and cared so little about them that they did not even think about the principle that we in this country believe in: that of equal rights for all human beings.

FDR: Hey! This show is about us!
ER: It's about YOU, darling...
FDR: No - that's you, right there! That's a pretty good picture of you, Babs!
ER: Well, I don't know...

[CatWoman]

17. thank you, Mookie

:hi:

[Captain Hilts]

14. Italians were also rounded up. Including Enzio Pinza, the Broadway star.

FDR wanted to round up Germans, but Francis Biddle told him it was impossible to track Germans because they'd been here since 1650.

[CatWoman]

18. damn

I had no idea!!!

He really went ballistic, didn't he? :wow:

[Faygo Kid]

20. I met and spent a few days with Fred Korematsu and his wife in 1996.

He was a true American hero. Cool guy, too. Long story, but it involved Korematsu v. U.S., and a dedication about Michigan Justice Frank Murphy's impassioned dissent against the internment.

[Octafish]

22. John McCloy (Mr. Establishment and Warren Commission) memo...

...indicated it wasn't to stop espionage -- there was little to speak of -- it was to help control white citizens.

http://hnn.us/articles/15673.html

[Captain Hilts]

25. Hey - here's a half hour video interview with ER by Mike Wallace

It's FASCINATING!

http://solstice.ischool.utexas.edu/tmwi/index.php/Eleanor_Roosevelt

[rockymountaindem]

27. Of course not

It's a huge black mark on our nation's history.

[margotb822]

28. Great show...watched all four hours

Learned a lot about FDR.

[blue_onyx]

30. It was not necessary

But it just shows you, even the best presidents have made some horrible mistakes.

[question everything]

32. No, it was not. And it was not the only thing that FDR did that he should not have

like trying to stack the Supreme Court, like not bombing the Nazi trains going to the concentration camps like even running for a fourth term.

Yet, I could not help thinking on how Bush, in 2004 swayed many voters that, just with FDR, we keep the president during time of war. Yeah, trying to compare himself to FDR.

[UTUSN]

33. Despite the show's occasional snarky comments about his "vindictiveness" & such, they

can't deny the monumental personage he was. But they try.

[Captain Hilts]

36. Someone once said to Eleanor that FDR was "the most self-centered man..."

he'd ever met. Eleanor said, "yeah, well, you kind of have to be if you want to be president."

[anonymous171]

34. I loved that. Showed that FDR was not a progressive saint.

But a wheeling dealing democratic politician, who used his skills to force through real progressive change.

[Captain Hilts]

35. When he sold out to Hearst on the World Court to get the nomination...

and Eleanor and a good chunk of his staff wouldn't speak to him for days.

Obama's turns on FISA, financing, the DC gun ban, etc. reminded me of that.

[bobbolink]

37. "If you harm them, you must harm me. " Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr

When the War Relocation Authority decided to resettle Japanese-Americans from the West Coast in a camp at Amache near Granada, Carr went against popular anti-Japanese sentiment by urging Coloradans to welcome the evacuees. In a speech defending the rights of the displaced Japanese-Americans, Carr said:

If you harm them, you must harm me. I was brought up in a small town where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred. I grew to despise it because it threatened the happiness of you and you and you.

Carr's urgings for racial tolerance and for protection of the basic rights of the Japanese-Americans are generally thought to have cost him his political career, including his ambition for election to the United States Senate. He narrowly lost the 1942 Senate election to incumbent Democratic Senator Edwin C. Johnson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Lawrence_Carr