| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Greg Robinson. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2001. Pp. 322. $27.95.

In this book, Greg Robinson reexamines one of the most controversial incidents in American history: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's decision to relocate more than 100,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, to internment camps for the duration of World War II. This is a particularly timely study, given the on-going debate regarding the United States government's handling of suspected terrorists after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The Japanese internment has been the subject of a number of previous scholarly studies and remains a divisive topic today. In 1988, five years after a Congressionally sponsored commission issued a report questioning whether the internment had been justified, Congress and President Ronald Reagan agreed on legislation authorizing an official apology and monetary payment to those who had been interned. Despite the extensive scrutiny of this controversial period, however, Robinson argues that scholars have not sufficiently examined Roosevelt's role in formulating and implementing the internment policy. Previous studies sought to explain FDR's decision primarily as a pragmatic reaction to political pressure from military and political leaders on the West Coast who feared pro-Japanese fifth-column activities, as well as powerful nativist groups motivated by racial prejudice and economic self-interest. While acknowledging the importance of these factors, Robinson argues that standard accounts typically underplay two important factors underlying Roosevelt's decision: his own view of Japanese Americans as immutably foreign, and the weaknesses of his hands-on, competitive administrative management style.

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