book commentary
“In Defense of Internment: a Betrayal of Conservative Values”
By Daniel G. Jennings
I never thought I would see a book that attacks Ronald Reagan and defends Franklin D. Roosevelt as a main selection of the Conservative Book Club. Yet that is exactly what Michelle Malkin does in her latest tome, “In Defense of Interment: the Case for Racial Profiling in World War Two and the War on Terror.” (Washington DC, Regnery Publishing Inc. 2004)
In this amateur and intellectually dishonest attempt at historical revisionism Malkin defends FDR’s unconstitutional World War II decision to force Japanese Americans from their homes and place them in what FDR himself called concentration camps. At the same time, she attacks Ronald Reagan for signing a 1988 federal law that paid innocent Japanese Americans restitution for the losses they incurred during World War II.
Although Malkin is supposedly a conservative columnist this book reads like a liberal defense of Franklin D. Roosevelt and big government rather than a conservative work. Malkin’s thesis is that during World War II FDR had special knowledge gained from reading classified intelligence reports based on coded messages sent by the Japanese government in the 1940s and that this special knowledge justified FDR’s decision to order the military to place all Japanese Americans (the majority of whom were US citizens) living on the West Coast in prison camps with no trial. Malkin’s thesis which runs counter to the accepted view of most historians* which is that FDR’s actions were unjustified. Malkin elaborates her case by stating that there is evidence that some Japanese spies were operating in the US in 1941 which is true.
Yet nowhere does she state how these intelligence reports justified the Roosevelt administration’s policy of forcing every Japanese American including women, children, infants, the elderly, invalids, and decorated Japanese American veterans of World War I to leave the West Coast. Was there a secret report that stated that the Imperial Japanese government was going to use Japanese American children, invalids and infants to attack the United States in World War II? How did the existence of a few Japanese spies justify FDR’s rash act? Yes Japanese messages intercepted by American code breakers pointed to the existence of Japanese spy rings in the US, yet on the ground investigations by the FBI and other agency proved those spies were little threat to national security. Roosevelt apparently didn’t even ask legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover if internment was necessary he simply issued an order for it. Hoover himself no champion of civil rights felt FDR went too far in the evacuation. FDR failed to clarify the intelligence reports by checking with the agents in the field, if he had he would have learned that there were few Japanese spies and no need for internment.
Malkin refuses to evaluate FDR’s action by any sort of ethical standard which would say that placing children, invalids and the elderly in prison camps without trial is wrong. Or to ask the important question, why didn’t FDR place all Italian and German Americans on the coasts in concentration camps? After all German submarines operating off the east coast did far more damage to our World War Two war effort than Japanese forces and there were large German communities along the east coast and many German Americans who sympathized with Hitler. Could the fact that there were millions of German and Italian American voters in 1941 but only a handful of Japanese American voters affected FDR’s thinking on national security issues?
Malkin defends FDR’s blatant abuse of authority and trampling of the rights of ordinary Americans as justified because it was done in the name of national security. She praises World War II era Americans for blindly accepting FDR’s leadership and seems to call upon Americans today to do the same. Malkin is saying that government is always right and its leaders can do no wrong. That’s the most unconservative thing I’ve read in years.
Her attack on Reagan is also bothersome, Malkin attacks Reagan because Reagan treated the Japanese Americans with the compassion, common sense and humanity FDR failed to show. In 1988, Reagan was about to veto the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which gave reparations to Japanese Americans, on the advice of national security technocrats when then New Jersey Governor Thomas Kearn asked the Gipper to remember his personal experience of handing a medal to a Japanese American family in 1945 who couldn’t bury their son killed in the war in the cemetery of their California hometown. Reagan remembering the suffering caused by the internment signed the act because he saw the human cost of big government.
Malkin defends FDR for using the power of big government to trample the rights of average people, and condemns Reagan for showing compassion to the victims of big government. In other words she is behaving like the arrogant liberals conservatives love to attack: revising history to support her cause, and mindlessly defending the actions of a leader she admires.
We must also ask ourselves are people like Michelle Malkin true conservatives or simply worshippers of the power of big government trying to cloak their arrogant agenda in comic book patriotism?
* This is the conclusion made by Stetson Conn, official historian of the US Army in The United States Army in World War II: The Western Hemisphere: Guarding the United States and Its Outposts” (Washington, DC, Department of the Army 1964) an official history of the US Army’s operations in North America during World War II. It was also the conclusion of the US government’s official Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians which concluded its work in 1982. See Personal Justice Denied Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1982.
By Daniel G. Jennings
I never thought I would see a book that attacks Ronald Reagan and defends Franklin D. Roosevelt as a main selection of the Conservative Book Club. Yet that is exactly what Michelle Malkin does in her latest tome, “In Defense of Interment: the Case for Racial Profiling in World War Two and the War on Terror.” (Washington DC, Regnery Publishing Inc. 2004)
In this amateur and intellectually dishonest attempt at historical revisionism Malkin defends FDR’s unconstitutional World War II decision to force Japanese Americans from their homes and place them in what FDR himself called concentration camps. At the same time, she attacks Ronald Reagan for signing a 1988 federal law that paid innocent Japanese Americans restitution for the losses they incurred during World War II.
Although Malkin is supposedly a conservative columnist this book reads like a liberal defense of Franklin D. Roosevelt and big government rather than a conservative work. Malkin’s thesis is that during World War II FDR had special knowledge gained from reading classified intelligence reports based on coded messages sent by the Japanese government in the 1940s and that this special knowledge justified FDR’s decision to order the military to place all Japanese Americans (the majority of whom were US citizens) living on the West Coast in prison camps with no trial. Malkin’s thesis which runs counter to the accepted view of most historians* which is that FDR’s actions were unjustified. Malkin elaborates her case by stating that there is evidence that some Japanese spies were operating in the US in 1941 which is true.
Yet nowhere does she state how these intelligence reports justified the Roosevelt administration’s policy of forcing every Japanese American including women, children, infants, the elderly, invalids, and decorated Japanese American veterans of World War I to leave the West Coast. Was there a secret report that stated that the Imperial Japanese government was going to use Japanese American children, invalids and infants to attack the United States in World War II? How did the existence of a few Japanese spies justify FDR’s rash act? Yes Japanese messages intercepted by American code breakers pointed to the existence of Japanese spy rings in the US, yet on the ground investigations by the FBI and other agency proved those spies were little threat to national security. Roosevelt apparently didn’t even ask legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover if internment was necessary he simply issued an order for it. Hoover himself no champion of civil rights felt FDR went too far in the evacuation. FDR failed to clarify the intelligence reports by checking with the agents in the field, if he had he would have learned that there were few Japanese spies and no need for internment.
Malkin refuses to evaluate FDR’s action by any sort of ethical standard which would say that placing children, invalids and the elderly in prison camps without trial is wrong. Or to ask the important question, why didn’t FDR place all Italian and German Americans on the coasts in concentration camps? After all German submarines operating off the east coast did far more damage to our World War Two war effort than Japanese forces and there were large German communities along the east coast and many German Americans who sympathized with Hitler. Could the fact that there were millions of German and Italian American voters in 1941 but only a handful of Japanese American voters affected FDR’s thinking on national security issues?
Malkin defends FDR’s blatant abuse of authority and trampling of the rights of ordinary Americans as justified because it was done in the name of national security. She praises World War II era Americans for blindly accepting FDR’s leadership and seems to call upon Americans today to do the same. Malkin is saying that government is always right and its leaders can do no wrong. That’s the most unconservative thing I’ve read in years.
Her attack on Reagan is also bothersome, Malkin attacks Reagan because Reagan treated the Japanese Americans with the compassion, common sense and humanity FDR failed to show. In 1988, Reagan was about to veto the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which gave reparations to Japanese Americans, on the advice of national security technocrats when then New Jersey Governor Thomas Kearn asked the Gipper to remember his personal experience of handing a medal to a Japanese American family in 1945 who couldn’t bury their son killed in the war in the cemetery of their California hometown. Reagan remembering the suffering caused by the internment signed the act because he saw the human cost of big government.
Malkin defends FDR for using the power of big government to trample the rights of average people, and condemns Reagan for showing compassion to the victims of big government. In other words she is behaving like the arrogant liberals conservatives love to attack: revising history to support her cause, and mindlessly defending the actions of a leader she admires.
We must also ask ourselves are people like Michelle Malkin true conservatives or simply worshippers of the power of big government trying to cloak their arrogant agenda in comic book patriotism?
* This is the conclusion made by Stetson Conn, official historian of the US Army in The United States Army in World War II: The Western Hemisphere: Guarding the United States and Its Outposts” (Washington, DC, Department of the Army 1964) an official history of the US Army’s operations in North America during World War II. It was also the conclusion of the US government’s official Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians which concluded its work in 1982. See Personal Justice Denied Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, 1982.
