This Just In — This, too, was a date that should live in infamy. On this day in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt, arguably America’s most beloved (certainly most elected) president, signed an executive order that was among the most shameful, egregious acts of racism in the history of the nation. That’s saying something.
And yet, Roosevelt is remembered as a president who, despite being born into a wealthy and powerful family, was a man who understood the common person. When he died suddenly in April of 1945, stories of men and women weeping opening in reaction was common.
”Did you know the president?” a man was asked. “No, but he knew me,” the story goes.
The giant of progressivism who used all the levers of the federal government to help its citizens survive the greatest, deepest economic catastrophe is U.S. History, the visionary champion of expanding the sheer value of government through the establishment of the Social Security system, the caring leader who bravely summoned a nation’s courage that we had nothing to fear but fear itself … that guy is the guy who signed Executive Order 9066.
Our national memory disassociates these facts from each other, but both things are true.
Executive Order 9066 authorized the United States military to designate “military areas” throughout the country to be used for the relocation and detention of more than 120,000 civilians of Japanese descent without charge or due process. Two-thirds of them were citizens.
This order was rescinded in 1944 and later officially terminated … in 1976 by Gerald Ford as an acknowledgement of civil rights violations. Reparations were paid under President Reagan’s administration.
America’s collective memory no doubt discounts this action by noting that it came less than three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The country was in the grip of fear itself. Our nation’s military vulnerability was severe.
As Rachel Maddow has documented most elegantly in her podcast “Burn Order,” the Roosevelt Administration did detailed research into whether or not U.S. residents of Japanese descent (both citizen and non-citizen) were a security threat. They found that these hard working immigrants and first generation Americans were among the country’s most patriotic residents.
They had this intelligence in February 1942 and FDR signed that order anyway. That story and its coverup are the subject of “Burn Order” which I recommend to you, if only for this reason: It is the roadmap for the movement to resist our current president from doing exactly the same thing. Today. Now. Currently.
Yes, really.
As the 47th president has sought to open detention centers for tens of thousands of people who have been abducted by ICE agents and often taken out of the state in which they were living, primarily to short circuit their civil rights. There have been scores of commercial warehouses all over the U.S. that the federal government is trying to purchase and re-purpose for this use — black site prisons.
Over and over again, local municipalities have resisted this effort – denying permits, holding public hearings and discovering that once citizens know about this intended purpose, they will protest against it and push back hard against those ho support it.
If you thought building a Buck-ee’s in Orange County was controversial, try to wrap your head around something like this … something that will bring people out in the bitter cold in Idaho to say NO — not here.
When you know the story of EO 9066 and the devastating effect it had on Japanese Americans, it’s impossible to think of FDR in the same way, but at least he had a huge record of holding the country together from fireside chats to bold, progressive policies to balance his legacy for historians.
The current guy has none of that and the record is clear that he has no reluctance in scooping up families and children and disappearing them into warehouses providing shocking, inhumane living conditions with no expiration date. He’s already done this to more than 70,000 people. He would do all of this while simultaneously building a gaudy golden ballroom that no one wants.
The resistance to these things matters. It works. Our most essential act of resistance, VOTING, is underway right now. Turn out. Vote. Show up and collect your sticker.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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