- Moderator
- #101
It's the same then as it is today. Politicians stand aside when an issue is being handled by the courts. It's a weenie maneuver, but they figure why take a stand when they can defer the whole issue to the Supreme Court? There were 3 separate challenges brought by Japanese victims of internment.Republicans shamelessly kept silent.How were they in on an executive order? This was your party, not mine. You can't escape responsibility for what your hero FDR did.And the Republicans opposed it? Or, were they in on it to0?
Just looking at current events - executive orders can cause quite a spew of reaction from the opposing party (Obama's immigration EO for example). Where is the Republican spew on the internment of the Japanese?
Except for Ralph Lawrence Carr.
There was opposition to it - mostly from Christian ministers, liberal academics and students.
The Tolan Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives took testimony in four West Coast cities in late February and early March 1942--after Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 had been issued but before the nature of its implementation became dear--about how to handle the "problem" of Japanese Americans. When the committee arrived in Seattle on 28 February, faculty and students at the University of Washington mobilized to oppose mass removal from the West Coast. Sociology Department Chair Jesse F. Steiner stated that government acceptance of mass evacuation of U.S. citizens amounted to bowing to race prejudice and compared such removal to "the treatment of minorities by the totalitarian governments in Europe and Asia." UW students Curtis Aller and Hildur Coon, to applause from fellow students in the hearing room, challenged the nativist rhetoric that Japanese Americans could never assimilate to American conditions. The 250 Nisei on campus were, above all, Americans, they testified, and very much involved in campus life. Further, evacuation would destroy the loyalty of the Japanese American community.(9)
There was a huge amount of anti-Asian racism in the public driving it too. Just a really really horrible period in our history. I hope we never repeat it with other groups of Americans.