I heard a positive news story recently that ties together several of my past blog posts. San Diego State University gave honorary degrees to Japanese American students who were forced to leave school in 1942 due to being sent to an internment camp [1]
As I read about the story further, I learned something shocking about this embarrassing episode in U.S. history: It was Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) who signed Executive Order 9066 that created the internment camps! This info made me think of a few of my posts from last year where I tried to answer the question: was FDR's New Deal good or bad for the country? My source of information were interviews with some of my octogenarian friends[2][3]
To save you the trouble, the results were:
The New Deal was great, putting people to work and literally saving lives, unless you were a small business owner who had to pay more than your fair share or a rancher/farmer who felt a man needs to fend for himself.
I don't think I need to do another survey to see if people agree that the internment camps were bad. This is where my post Wheat and Tares comes in. We all have good (Wheat) and bad (Tares) in our conduct and character. With another election coming up, I wish the candidates (and critics) would acknowledge this and quit the character assassinations.
Also, I wonder how many Americans called FDR a racist for what he did. I think we've come along way as a country since then.
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