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In reply to the discussion: The good that came out of FDR does not out weigh the bad [View all]Bucky
(54,003 posts)While the mainland Nissei were being rounded up, the governor of Hawaii refused to round up all Japanese Americans in a place where Japan had actually attacked and which was certainly more vulnerable to 5th columnists... had there been any.
And if anything Gov. Joseph Poindexter was in a far weaker position than any other governor in the country because he was appointed to the job by FDR. And yet he refused to issue an island order to match FDR's round up. His argument was that it would cripple the economy since Japanese-American citizens were 1/3rd of the populous.
To be fair, he did round up several hundred, including community leaders and those with close affiliations with Japan. And Japanese visitors to Hawaii were arrested & interred. But most who were US citizens were eventually released and not held through the end of the war, as mainlanders were.