Word: roosevelted
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McCloy, a graduate of Harvard Law School, left his New York Law firm in 1941 to become assistant secretary of war under Roosevelt. As Allied forces began to move across Europe in 1944, Jewish leaders lobbied the War Department to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the Auschwitz concentration camp and the camp itself--a move that they believed would hamper the Nazi atrocities. It was to McCloy that Jewish leaders were told to address their petitions; McCloy answered that the bombing was not feasible...
...February 1942, eight weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt signed an executive order calling for the commitment of about 120,000 Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast to "relocation centers." At the time, the government cited military necessity for this action; a commission appointed by Congress to look into the matter two months ago concluded that prejudice and war-time hysteria were responsible for this dark chapter in American history...
...internment of Asian-Americans during World War II, the refusal to bomb the railroad tracks leading to German concentration camps, and the pardoning of Nazi war criminals' after the war, then McCloy is guilty of gross injustices. If, as the majority editorial argues, he was merely carrying out Roosevelt's orders, then McCloy was no more than an administrator and a bureaucrat. Even this in no way excuses him; those who protested at Nuremberg that they program...
...oversaw the internment program, but no historical evidence credits him with the idea. And Brinkley, in his Harper's article, credits McCloy for whatever shred of humanness the program may have had. The refusal to bomb Auschwitz was again in the hands of higher military personnel, and Roosevelt and Churchill themselves. An American review board initiated the commutation of Nazi sentences; McCloy mainly followed its instructions...
...response to these arguments, the protest letter from Hillel states that "McCloy served as more than a mere spokesman for the decisions of the Roosevelt administrations. His recommendations and suggested policies carried great weight, and it clearly-fell within his power to protest those policies he felt were improper." Such logic may be true, but if it is used to determine what historical figure merits honor, then few would pass. It would certainly disqualify Roosevelt and Churchill, and Earl Warren, who shaped the internment in California. The founding fathers, who could have banned slavery but instead helped strengthen it, would...