While I found Eberhard E. Fuhr`s letter March 21 on the wartime internment of Europeans informative, I`m afraid he misunderstands the peculiarly racial application of President Roosevelt`s Executive Order 9066.
First of all, in time of war, adult enemy aliens are legally subject to warranted arrest, hearing and detention. E.O. 9066, however, was used to detain U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens without warranted arrest or hearing. Moreover, the order was applied almost exclusively to 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry.
In the 254 instances in which the order was applied to Americans not of Japanese ancestry, each received a hearing, was offered a choice of places to relocate, was not interned, and his family was unaffected. Finally, the application of E.O. 9066 was suspended for non-Japanese when U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle deemed it to be unconstitutional.
The massive, racially-based exclusion and detention of entire American communities in complete disregard for habeas corpus or most of the Bill of Rights was and is a profound and pervasive violation of the U.S. Constitution. The remedy of a check for $20,000 and a letter of apology to each surviving victim is only a token for their injuries. Unfortunately, the remedy hardly begins to repair the breach to our Constitution.
