Judge from Day 101 on

FDR left a legacy of injustice

The distinguished presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was asked by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to compare President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office to those of the greatest president, in her view. The day before the 100th day, April 28, Ms. Goodwin did not hesitate. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt accomplished more than any president in U.S. history in his first 100 days, she observed.

Ah, FDR. As a recent high school graduate baby boomer, who was far less learned than the aforementioned historian, I pronounced FDR to be the greatest U.S. president during a robust conversation with my favorite uncle. Snorted Uncle Bill in his familiar authoritative tone: “He did not integrate the military.”

Roosevelt’s prodigious achievements during his earliest days in office are undeniable and well documented in contemporaneous news reports and historical accounts in books, scholarly journals and a variety of print and online media, as well as other sources. That he abided official racism as the nation’s commander in chief is what mattered to my high school dropout — but entrepreneurially successful — uncle, and it mattered to other American freedom lovers of his ilk. My grouchy mother’s brother served in an all-black segregated regiment in the closing months of World War II.

Apart from his early victories once assuming office, the 32nd president was the only one to be elected to — and nearly serve — four terms, after which the 22nd Amendment imposed the two-term limit on U.S. presidential service. Thus, even though Roosevelt could have integrated the uniformed services by executive order on day one in 1933, when he died in office 12 years later, the military remained segregated. That, in the minds of the Roosevelt detractors, is not the worst of it.

Among the many ways one might understand and categorize evil are acts of commission and those of omission. Examples of both pollute the record of Roosevelt. In wartime America, when the best and the brightest in spirit, mind and body were needed to preserve America and its allies, Asian-Americans, AfricanAmericans and Native Americans could tell us the aspects undeserving of preservation. In that regard, the president in the land of one nation under God served up a Kafkaesque World War II-experience to loyal Japanese-Americans — mostly U.S. citizens — that haunts its remaining survivors to this day. The president incarcerated lawabiding old men, women and children, even infants.

In the wake of the 1941 attack on America’s Pearl Harbor fleet by the imperial Air Force of Japan, Roosevelt decided to exact punishment stateside. As Germany’s Adolf Hitler was imprisoning innocent Jews in concentration camps in Europe, Roosevelt was incarcerating more than 110,000 innocent American Japanese throughout the United States and Hawaii. Executive Order 9066 — Mr. Trump is not the first president to issue an evil racist edict — was the vile instrument. And in the most egregious decision since the racist “separate/equal” blather in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court backed Roosevelt’s terrifying actions, which survived him by a year before the camps were closed.

In the obligatory brand of self-interest-borne magnanimity that enabled the discriminated-against Native American Navajo Code Talker Marines to help capture Iwo Jima and the black Tuskegee Airmen to help save Europe from Hitler, the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment served their ungrateful America in France, Italy and Germany. The heroes received more than 20 Medals of Honor and more than 9,000 Purple Hearts. It was the most decorated regiment of its size in the history of America’s wars. A final irony: The youngsters — some as young as 13 years old — were awarded eight Presidential Unit Citations pursuant to a different Roosevelt executive order than that which imprisoned them and their relatives.

No, Mr. Trump is no FDR, for which the latter’s targets of racism and their progeny are grateful. Still, neither president should be referred to as great. Wherever and whenever injustice prevails, greatness is not merely diminished; it is nonexistent.

Robert Hill is a Pittsburgh-based communications consultant (hillr012@gmail.com).

Roosevelt could have integrated the uniformed services by executive order on day one in 1933, but when he died in office 12 years later, the military remained segregated.