When Franklin D. Roosevelt made the terrible decision to uproot thousands of Japanese Americans and put them in internment camps for the duration of World War II, he did so entirely on the basis of rumors that Japanese Americans were planning to sabotage the war effort. There was no proof then or later to support this rumor. Indeed, the U.S. Army’s West Coast commander, General John DeWitt, admitted that the military had no evidence of sabotage or treason against a single Japanese American citizen. Still: “The very fact that no sabotage has taken place,” he said, “is a disturbing and
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