Book report - #1

The United States has a long history of violating human rights. In By Order of the President Greg Robinson explores the deplorable decision of Franklin D. Roosevelt to intern Japanese-Americans, living on the west coast, in concentration camps. The trauma suffered by the Japanese in the United States during Would War II is greatly overlooked. Robinson leaves no stone unturned in his striking book about FDR and the internment.

Much of the cause of Japanese internment can be attributed to a deep resentment for Japanese-American success on the west coast. The Japanese were hard workers and were successful at cultivating arid west coast land. Many white Americans resented this.

African Americans were not the only ones that had to suffer the injustices of separate but equal laws. Government officials were uneasy about Japanese assimilation into other races and used these laws, throughout the west coast, to separate the Japanese from others. Other anti-Japanese laws prohibited Japanese-Americans to own land, or to file for citizenship. Tensions between the Japanese and United States governments were strong due to laws such as these and the ever present ambitions of the United States and Japan in the Pacific. In 1936, the United States’ first espionage of Japanese-Americans on the west coast began. Although suspicions were high, FBI reports indicated that the majority of local Japanese were American in their principles and loyalty to the United States (62).

“In December 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, America’s principal navel base in the pacific, bringing the United Stated into World War II. Several weeks later, in January 1942, a group of U.S. Army officers, anxious over a possible Japanese invasion of the West Coast and encouraged by California politicians and nativists interest groups eager to drive out the ‘Japs’ and seize their property, began to press for the removal from the coastal areas of all people of Japanese ancestry” (3). By the end of December the Justice Department prepared a detailed list of “contraband” items for enemy aliens (75). The FBI in accordance to these lists conducted unconstitutional searches in West Coast Issei homes and confiscated a number of items. On January fourteenth the Canadian government issued an order to remove all male Japanese men the age of eighteen to forty five from British Colombia. Soon after, on February nineteenth, FDR, spurred by anti-Japanese sentiment from the west coast and his military advisors, issued executive order 9066 authorizing the military to designate military areas which any or all persons may be expelled (123). By June, 1942, more than one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans had been evacuated.

The evacuees were transported from makeshift assembly centers to ten permanent relocation camps. Each camp held between ten and eleven thousand people, and was administered by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). The mass evacuation violated the constitutional right of due process, equal protection of the law, and habeas corpus ordinarily afforded citizens (175). Robinson explains that the Japanese-American community was divided into three groups. First generation immigrants were known as Issie. The second generation, the Issie’s American born children, were known as Nessie. Among the Nessie were a group of American born citizens who were raised and educated in Japan called Kibei. Robinson notes that all three groups were interned (4). It is estimated that the Japanese-American community, due to the internment, lost sixty seven to one hundred and sixteen million dollars of property in 1945. Robinson clarifies that the estimate in “2001 dollars” would be close to five hundred million (144). After the evacuation in June of 1942, Roosevelt pushed for Nessie enrollment into the military. Several prominent Nessie battalions were formed. The Japanese-American 100th Infantry Battalion and 422d Regimental Combat Team were among the Army's most decorated units.

There were several notable Supreme Court decisions made in favor of the internment and exclusion. The Supreme Court did little to defend the civil liberties of the Japanese-Americans and ruled against all cases brought before them regarding the Nessie’s civil rights. In early 1942 a student named Gordon Hirabayashi declined to register for the evacuation, claming it violated his rights as an American citizen. A young Nessie, named Fred Koremastu, had refused to evacuate the west coast, and was arrested for violating the exclusion orders. He challenged his arrest as a violation of his citizen’s rights in 1944 (209). On December 18, 1944 the court ruled against him six to three. The Supreme Court has never officially overruled its Hirabayashi and Korematsu judgments.

In April 12, 1945 Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia. The internment had not yet ended. 18,000 people remained at Tule Lake and 55,000 internees were confined in the eight remaining camps. Robinson explains that, “In February 18, 1945 the WRA had announced its intention of closing all camps other than Tule Lake within a year, but many internees refused to be relocated amid the hostile and potentially dangerous conditions prevailing outside” (250). The war started to draw to a close and anti-Japanese-American tensions eased. By December 1945 all the relocation centers were closed and the Tule Lake detention center closed in March 1946.

Demands from the Japanese-American community led Congress in the 1980’s to establish a special Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment to review the internment program. The commission found that the internment was unjust and unnecessary. Robinson takes an excerpt from the commission reports: “ ‘Executive order 9066 was not justified by military necessity, and its decisions that followed from it…the broad historical causes that shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria, and failure of political leadership’ ” (251). At the same time, teams of lawyers worked to overturn famous Supreme Court convictions against Fred Koremastu, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Minoru Yasui. There was a unanimous decision to vacate the convictions of the three defendants. In 1988, Congress voted for a formal apology along with $1.25 billion in reparation to surviving internment victims.

By Order of the President was a difficult read for me. The book was fairly short with only about two hundred and fifty pages of text, but was so condensed with facts that reading was quite an unpleasant task. Robinson took an extremely dynamic situation and put it to page skillfully, but in the process lost my interest. The novel was filled with what could be called an array of “A list” government officials and military leaders. Past, present, and future presidents all take the stage in this story. I believe that if the novel was written as more of a narrative, then I would have enjoyed it more. I would recommend the book to someone else but only to someone who enjoys history. I do not believe that the average person my age would take the time to read Mr. Robinson’s work.

In By Order of the President Robinson quotes a Nessie speaking of FDR, “‘A worldly person, he was not; a constitutional president, he was not; a strong willed president, he was not. All of these shortcomings are exhibited in his decision to sign Executive Order 9066’” (255). FDR made little effort to assist the Japanese-Americans before and after their internment. To me, FDR’s actions are indicative of the American way.

Works Cited

Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Massachusetts, Harvard University Press: 2001