Why FDR created Japanese internment camps 

I have always wondered about this. FDR is typically held up as a champion of progressivism. Black Americans largely shifted voting trends in federal voting to vote for him as a democrat. He used significant government intervention to steer national economics. Yet, he is responsible for interment camps, the foundations for Redlining policy, non-support for anti-lynching laws, attempted court packing, limiting freedom of the press.

While FDR was nowhere near the racist authoritarian Woodrow Wilson was, he had typical Democrat attitudes towards civil rights. The National Firearms Act was an indication, as was his tolerance of the South and segregation in the military. It was casual racism, plus demagogueing the election in general.

By the way, Americans of Japanese descent.

One of the most disgusting things from the internment is that Earl Warren, who was governor of California at the time, was later a "liberal" Chief (In)Justice of the US Supreme Court. I find his hypocrisy to be astounding. Those "interned" were never adequately compensated for the loss of their property and livelihoods. On the other hand, the governor of Colorado, Ralph Carr, lost his political career over his stance on the issue. There was definitely some hysteria and racism involved in the decision, and many benefitted economically from acquiring land owned by Japanese Americans at 'fire sale' prices. That aspect is somewhat reminiscent of "Witch" Trials.

One small correction for the title: FDR created American internment camps.

The only thing I want to say about the Japanese internment camps is that I'm glad that George Takei didn't hold a grudge!

The Nikkei were scapegoated by FDR as a way to duck the growing pressure to look into his attempts to "maneuver" the Japanese to attack American interests. He wanted them to attack the Philippines, as an excuse to go into the war to help his British friends, and did more damage to the Pacific Fleet in 1941 than the Imperial Japanese Navy did. There was also strong political and economic impetus to destroy the Japanese Americans on the West Coast. The primary reason that there was no mass incarceration in Hawai'i is because it was obviously not practical. Only those who were specifically found to have a valid reason for concern were put on Sand Island. The excuses for Executive Order 9066 were to move "potential saboteurs" away from military installations and such resources as aquaducts and the power grids feeding the major cities of the West Coast. So . . .they built the Manazanar concentration camp across the highway from a military airbase, with part of the LA Aquaduct as the southern border of the camp, and next to high-tension lines powering LA. As far as "saboteurs," consider that they tore infants out of the arms of their foster families, to place them in the world's first prison created for children, and even forced US military personnel of Japanese descent out of the West Coast states.

I’m really disappointed that this video is titled “Why FDR Created The Japanese Internment Camps” but there is no mention of the Ni’ihau Incident. While I don’t find it to be an adequate justification for the internment, it’s a massively important part of why it happened.

FDR had the same racist attitudes towards the Japanese that the Japanese had towards Europeans. Back then, just about every group/ethnicity/race had racist attitudes towards other groups/ethnicities/races. In fact, most still do to some degree. It’s been that way for pretty much all of human history. But listening to this discussion, you’d think Europeans have a monopoly on racism. Visit Asian countries and you’ll soon find out just what most think of Europeans-and that won’t be nearly as bad as what they think of non Europeans!

When J. Edgar Hoover is the voice of reason...... Jeez.

Not likely the FBI would have been put in charge of the internment camps. The FBI has never been put in charge of prisons or any other custodial facilities as far as I know.

On July 23, 1941, five months prior to Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt put his signature on an operation plan for the firebombing of Tokyo and Osaka via American volunteers armed with American weapons stationed in China and was in the process of moving assets to China apparently for this end when Pearl Harbor occured. You can find the document at the national archives. Also there's the Mccollum memorandum which lists various aggressive actions to be taken against Japan in line with point 6 of the memorandum: "It is to the interest of the United States to eliminate Japan's threat in the Pacific at the earliest opportunity by taking prompt and aggressive action against Japan" before stating plainly "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war".

Didn't Nippon have internment and POW camps of its own? When was the last time you compared photos of both classes of inmates?

There at the end when he says you can watch the full episode here or something else. Here there are no shortcuts or links where he’s pointing.

In the 1930s Japanese laws forbad foreigners from owning land in Nippon. See, better yet, read "Our Man in Tokyo"

*_NET IMPACT OF THIS INTERNMENT, and, putting aside its obvious unconstitutionality, a question for the readers:_* is there a book, report, or otherwise regarding what this internment, in terms of its stated purposes, ACTUALLY accomplished? Regarding the overall war effort, did it have any net positive? E.g., did it STOP Japanese agents from committing criminal acts? Etc?

USS California Band showed relation between codes and music at Pearl Harbor HYPO. Their adeptness deciphering IJN25 led to them stumbling upon Japanese high command discussing organized USA sabotage. If FDR gave up that knowledge, he’d be revealing we knew JN25 and JN25B. Instead he cut this plan off with questionable illegal internment.

They should have left the Japanese in the general population during WW2. The American people can handle that type of thing better than the government ever could

When one looks at the similarities in our propaganda, war mobilization, Executive rhetoric... the mere fact that FDR stopped short of the same damning "Final" outcome, should be of little comfort to Americans.

Because he was an authoritarian dictator?

“Persons”, when used by corporate government actors, means LEGAL FICTIONS, AKA people who identify as “legal citizens” one way or another. As an American National, nonresident, alien to the UNITED STATES, I am not a “person”, but rather a MAN. This may sound crazy but it’s real. Look it up in Black’s Law Dictionary, especially pre-4th edition. “Persons” are NOT “people.”

The bulk of the interment camps were for Japanese Americans but little know history not talked about, there was also Italian American and German American interment camps.

Why was FDR "racist" towards Japanese-Americans (aside from burlesque jokes)? Maybe because so many Japanese-Americans openly maintained allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. When there's a war on, you have no inherent right to proclaim dedication to the enemy. Japanese-Americans were neither indifferent nor clearly committed solely to American success in the war.

Every time I hear about Japanese internment camps I think of George Takei recounting his time in one as a child not understanding what was going on enough to have a probkem with it.

Typical dem.

Doodoo @1:15

Before watching perspective: The internment camps were horrible but an understandable step due to the contingencies of what was going on. Hell, the internment camps probably saved a lot of American lives, Americans who happened to have slanted eyes. Now that being said, they were 100% illegal and had FDR survived leaving office he should have written articles of impeachment on himself. After watch perspective: The same, with more racism. Honestly, I don't care that FDR was a racist. Of course he was a racist, he was a Democrat. However, that doesn't change the fact that keeping them away from the other racists saved a lot of lives. It doesn't change the fact that Japanese culture lent itself well to spycraft. It doesn't make it any more illegal than before.

BTW if you think China has the power to tell chinese what to do even if they are outside the country with the tiktok ban, if you think that Japanese emporer had the ability to tell Japanese what to do even when they leave Japan, what sort of power does the USA have when the USA forces USA citizens to pay taxes on their earnings overseas? The USA has taxing and business and influence over USA businesses and business owners when they operate in different countries, so the USA has the same muscles to flex. You didn't think that someone could be pro internment camp and libertarian, but here we are. I just used a pro internment argument to push for less regulation and less taxes and influence.

Made sense at the time.

I think its easy for us to look at the situation now knowing that the japanese invasion had a time limit, and they could not possibly win- let alone get to the mainland to attack america in any sort of winning the way kind of way, just terror attacks. They'd seen evidence of Japanese immigrants who would happily help the homeland and they just couldn't risk it when they didn't know if they'd win the war on the ocean. Looking at it now of course even if 1k japanese people took over a town, or held up congress not much would change in the war effort, history happened. But these historians who look back on events to look down on people are just sliding deeper into their own asses, we have many more facts than they did back then, it wasn't the best solution but compared to any other solution besides do nothing and hope for the best, it was the only other reasonable option. Maybe we can debate life at the camp could've been easier- it could been closer to main cities and let the japanese live on the side of a major city and just disconnect it from the war effort.. but again.. knowing what we do now those options look better than they were.

Necessity with homosocialisation.

FDR was somewhat of a mendacious shyster, but he sure was on the "right side of History".

Why does David Beito sound like Nick Gillespie?

As I understand it part of the reason a decision was made to inter people of Japanese ancestry stems from an incident on the island of Ni'ihau in the Hawaiian islands. A Japanese pilot crash landed on the island and was assisted by some Japanese farmers on the island to the point of an Hawaiian being shot from the pilots pistol.

Don't forget about what happened on Niihau --- That may have influenced the decision too

Do I disagree with internment camps? Yes. Was the USA sending soldiers and the majority of her GDP to Asia and Europe just to get blown up? Yes. Did Japan wait for two cities full of civilians to be liquidated before they decided maybe the war was better off agreeing to USA terms which were unconditional surrender? Yes. Since you are all the experts, I need you to tell me how many people died from the firebombings, the A bombings, and now I need you to tell me how many people and civilians would die if the emporer told his civilian population to fight until the last person, and never surrender. How many Japanese civilians would have died if the USA landed 1,000,000 usa soldiers on Japans mainland? What FDR did was a net net win for humanity. Was there racist crap? Well so were the founders, while they were abolitionist-ic. When the beautiful amazing wonderful, not at all racist northern states decided to enforce abolition on the southern states, did they kindly ask. "Hello there fellow citizen... Can you please give up your wealth because I want to enforce my value system on you?" The south fired the first shots, but Japan fired the first shots on the USA in ww2. Did japan force the USA into ww2? No, it was the clash on imperialist values, and we were going to have to fight japan whether they bombed pearl harbor or not.

Come on, are you really that naive? They wanted their land. They stole the most beautiful farm land in the world. They are doing the same thing now with the fires

Rare L for FDR

Oh no, Reason is turning into the new VICE. 😮

For fucks sake, keep your voice at the same volume!

My father took his Navy training at San Diego and shared a story of a couple of Japanese men being shot climbing the water tower of the base with poison, intending to kill as many men at the base as possible. The story did not get published in the papers because they didn't want to encourage copy-cats. I have never seen a story compiling the number of sabotage attempts by German or Japanese citizens during the war which were never publicized. Should Japanese citizens have been put into internment camps is up for debate - whether there was NO reason to do so is not up for debate.

How brave of two guys in the 2020's to wag their fingers in condemnation at an action taken nearly 100 years ago by a President whose Country had just been sneak attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt certainly had the backing of most Americans in the immediate aftermath of the attack which killed 2400 American Military personnel and more than 60 civilians who lived in Honolulu. Nobody knew at the time how loyal and even patriotic Japanese Americans would eventually show themselves to be. It was an overreaction and a mistake to round up people of Japanese descent on the west coast and intern them. However, to blame FDR without context is wrong and an example of Monday morning quarterbacking that reeks of virtue signaling.

To inter Japanese.

Any mention of the Japanese Interment should include mention of a huge "Why": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident#:~:text=The%20Ni%CA%BBihau%20incident%20occurred%20on,the%20attack%20on%20Pearl%20Harbor.