F.D.R. Record, Legacy*

Regarding “Reformers Find That F.D.R. Is a Tough Act to Follow,” April 12:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents. However, his greatness is sadly diminished by his decision, at the beginning of World War II, to put Japanese Americans into concentration camps. Like Thomas Jefferson, Roosevelt’s vision and compassion were not infinite, and did not enable him to rise above his own racism, and the racism of his era. In World War II and the Cold War, both imagined and real threats to freedom led to the persecution of minorities, and attacks on the freedom of dissent, usually in the name of “patriotism.”

Roosevelt and Jefferson were leaders of heroic proportions. Our reverence for them should be tempered by our knowledge of their weaknesses. What would America be like now if Roosevelt had led the way toward racial justice?

HOWARD MASS

Hacienda Heights

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Why is it that the following questions never received an answer:

-- Why did F.D.R. block the entrance of Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe into the U.S.?

-- Why was the German ship with 1,800 Jewish refugees turned back when approaching the coast of Florida by an American gunboat?

-- Why were the rail tracks leading to the gas chambers never bombed, despite the fact that an industrial compound 30 kilometers away was bombed to pieces? -- Why was my own father, standing in line at the American Consulate in Hitler’s Germany, told that he could not get a visa because “the quota was full”?

ALFRED HABER

Beverly Hills

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Nowhere in your otherwise excellent article do you mention the positive influence of his extraordinary wife, Eleanor. Without her, he would have been merely another effective politician. With her, he became one of our greatest presidents.

ALTON L. SAFFORD

Wrightwood

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Some thoughts on Roosevelt and the Republicans: homeless people need homes. Jobless people need jobs. Hopeless people need hope. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, successful or not, attempted to address those problems. The only things the Republicans are addressing are Roosevelt’s programs. Meanwhile, the problems remain.

DAVID POTORTI

Los Angeles