Should Truman have prosecuted officials in FDR's administration

[cali]

who carried out orders to create prison camps and detain and incarcerate American citizens without due process? Did the Constitution demand those prosecutions?

[asdjrocky]

1. Cali-

Years later we had to pay the Japanese Americans that were interned in those camps because it was wrong. I personally know two families in my home town who were affected by the internment. While the Constitution didn't demand prosecutions, the court and the people knew what was right and in the end, right won out.

I love reading your arguments but on this one, history says you are wrong. If they were tortured while being detained, then there may be a perfectly good cause for prosecution. Like when we prosecuted the Japanese for water boarding.

[cali]

2. I'm aware of the reparations and we certainly were wrong to incarcerate

Japanese Americans without any due process or cause. I'm not arguing differently. I'm asking if Truman had a duty to prosecute those who carried out this gross and unconstitutional injustice. Was Truman criminally complicit by not pursuing prosecution. It's not a perfect parallel to the torture orders, but it's closely related.

[Redbear]

5. The problem with your analogy is that the Supreme Court found it constitutional

One of the two most shameful US Supreme Court decisions in history (the other being Bush v. Gore).

Korematsu v. U.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

[tekisui]

8. One of the THREE most shameful.

Korematsu, Bush, and Scott v. Sanford which said that anyone of African ancestry could not become a citizen, even if they were born here.

[HamdenRice]

12. There's a reason Scott v. Sanford was called "the Dred Scott case"

and not "Scott v. Sanford." In fact, there's a story that as soon as the reporters saw how the Supreme Court captioned their opinion they day they released it, the reporters knew that Scott had lost.

Supreme Court cases involving people were always captioned using last names (like "Scott v. Sanford," which was how the case was captioned by the lawyers).

Among the only times you saw a case captioned something like "Dred Scott" was when a ship was involved -- a ship that was named after a person. These were cases brought "in rem" against property, not against the owner of the property. So an admiralty case might be captioned, "In re The Davey Jones", Davey Jones referring to a ship that was someone's property, but named after a real person, Davey Jones.

By captioning the case "Dred Scott" the court was saying that Scott was a piece of property, like a ship, not a person.

The case has been known as the Dred Scott decision rather than Scott v. Sanford for most of American history since.

[Redbear]

14. Thank you for your correction.

Dred Scott is indeed as bad as the other two.

[HamdenRice]

10. " the Supreme Court found it constitutional" -- yeah, and the DOJ found waterboarding legal

It's very analogous. Although the DOJ is not a court, it's opinions are binding on government employees.

[Redbear]

13. I don't think it is legally analogous at all.

An illegal act is not made legal by a DOJ opinion.

When the highest court in the land says something is NOT illegal, that officially precludes any prosecution for that act.

[HamdenRice]

15. "An illegal act is not made legal by a DOJ opinion"

But the actions of the DOJ or any other law enforcement agency can make a crime unprosecutable. Think of a routine murder case where the prosecutor wiretaps without a warrant, commits perjury and withholds evidence.

The killer is still guilty, but the case can't be tried.

Within the government a DOJ opinion can have the effect of preventing prosecution.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8347886&mesg_id=8347886

[jberryhill]

18. You are correct

It is not "made legal".

However, the defendant is handed an affirmative defense.

[Redbear]

20. An affirnative defense that may or may not succeed in a court of law

My guess is that a defense that says "I only waterboarded the guy after the DOJ sent me a memo saying waterboarding is not torture" would be hard to win a case with.

[jberryhill]

21. Actually, that's an easy win...

...because doing it "before" the DoJ memo would be problematic for the defendant.

[90-percent]

3. HE DID

The Truman Commission was set up to deal with war profiteers.

-90% Jimmy

[cali]

4. how is prosecuting war profiteers the same thing as prosecuting

members of the administration (that he was part of) for wrongful imprisonment in detention camps?

[90-percent]

6. it's not

my point is that Harry did a lot of good things. this was one of them.

And we sure could use something like that today!

-90% jimmy

[Captain Hilts]

16. I thought the Truman Committee was the one he headed while Senator.

It was as head of this committee he met with FDR to ask about the black hole of defense spending and FDR told him, "Harry, you have every right to know the answer to that question, but - trust me - you don't want to know." The Manhattan Project, obviously.

So, this was not a post-war thing.

[mmonk]

7. The Constitution did. It's pretty clear.

People adhering to it is another matter.

[Captain Hilts]

9. We should have reviewed the policy. Most certainly.

FDR wanted to round up the Germans also.

Check out this article by Eleanor Roosevelt from 1943.

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/articles/challengetoamerican.cfm

I can well understand the bitterness of people who have lost loved ones at the hands of the Japanese military authorities, and we know that the totalitarian philosophy, whether it is in Nazi Germany or in Japan, is one of cruelty and brutality. It is not hard to understand why people living here in hourly anxiety for those they love have difficulty in viewing our Japanese problem objectively, but for the honor of our country, the rest of us must do so.

We have in all 127,000 Japanese or Japanese-Americans in the United States. Of these, 112,000 lived on the West Coast. Originally, they were much needed on ranches and on large truck and fruit farms, but, as they came in greater numbers, people began to discover that they were competitors in the labor field.

The people of California began to be afraid of Japanese importation, so the Exclusion Act was passed in 1924. No people of the Oriental race could become citizens of the United States by naturalization, and no quota was given to the Oriental nations in the Pacific.

This happened because, in one part of our country, they were feared as competitors, and the rest of our country knew them so little and cared so little about them that they did not even think about the principle that we in this country believe in: that of equal rights for all human beings.

We granted no citizenship to Orientals, so now we have a group of people (some of whom have been here as long as fifty years) who have not been able to become citizens under our laws.

Understandable bitterness against the Japanese is aggravated by the old-time economic fear on the West Coast and the unreasoning racial feeling which certain people, through ignorance, have always had wherever they came in contact with people who were different from themselves.

[saiyanppl]

11. pwned

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Should Abraham Lincoln have been prosecuted for his crimes against the Constitution?

Assuming he hadn't been shot?

[jberryhill]

19. Hey Gang....

What did Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the "liberal" Warren Court, do during the war?

Bonus for those who stayed awake in class.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

22. TOYOSABURO KOREMATSU v. UNITED STATES, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)

[Hippo_Tron]

23. The fact that they weren't is more important than the fact that they should have

What people don't seem to get is that "national security" has trumped rule of law since the Adams Administration. If a government official gets caught breaking the law for personal gain the American people will call for heads. But so long as they can reasonably claim that what they were doing was well intentioned and in the interests of "national security", they will never see the inside of a prison cell.