| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study is to investigate the internment and detainment policies used by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush as methods for protecting the United States from attack during World War II and the War on Terror. This study comes from a desire to better understand Bush’s decision to use indefinite detainment as a tool in the War on Terror, and in looking for an historical precedent, Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans appeared to possess many similar characteristics. Therefore, through direct comparison and analysis of historical and legal sources, this research highlights major similarities and differences that existed between the two episodes.
Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 affected the lives of over 120,000 people and over 70,000 U.S. citizens. Decades of anti-Asian sentiment, the public hysteria that erupted following Pearl Harbor, and the racially-biased suspicions of disloyalty, all played a role in Roosevelt’s ultimate decision to give the Secretary of War the authority to evacuate and incarcerate the ethnic Japanese population on the West Coast. Similarly, Bush responded to the September 11 attacks by advocating the need for indefinite detainment of hundreds of terrorism suspects, both U.S. citizen and non citizen. He also issued the Military Order of November 13, 2001, which gave substantial power to the Secretary of Defense to detain, charge, and try suspects, but did not require that they be charged.
Through analysis of initial FBI arrests, public opinion trends, prisoner treatment, and Supreme Court cases, this research allows its readers to consider the thesis that Roosevelt’s and Bush’s actions represent a pattern of presidential decisions that might conflict with human and constitutional rights. | en |
