Franklin Delano Roosevelt's family is furious that Donald Trump is invoking mass Japanese-American incarceration during World War II to justify the GOP presidential hopeful's proposed ban on Muslim travel to the U.S.
The interment camps, which FDR authorized, imprisoned American citizens during the war. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed an act formally apologizing for the incarceration and offering reparations to the victims.
Trump has said his racist plan to keep Muslims out of the country is "no different than FDR." But the former president's granddaughter Anna Eleanor Roosevelt said Thursday that she was shocked that the dark time in our nation's history was being revived as an example of what a president should do.
In a Thursday release via the Roosevelt Institute, Anna forcefully rebutted Trump's plan, writing that the "internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II is a sad part of our history and, as a part of my grandfather’s administration, a terrible political decision driven by fear."
Japanese Americans, who were loyal citizens and who served bravely in the U.S. military, were scarred not only by the physical deprivation of internment but by the denial of the dignity and respect of their own country. As a nation, internment weakened us all. It is a tragic reminder of what happens when we allow fear and hysteria to trump our values.
Historians and leaders across the political spectrum agree internment was a grievous mistake and a violation of basic human rights. It detracts from the amazing efforts by my grandfather to rescue our economy and build the foundation of America’s great middle class. My grandmother, Eleanor, spoke out publicly against the policy immediately and during its implementation. Internment was wrong then and any effort to discriminate against a group of people based on their race or religion is wrong today.
In other words, one awful policy doesn't justify another.
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