Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, giving the military power to remove people of Japanese descent from places deemed critical to domestic security. The military then decided to move the Japanese to many internment camps around the United States. The majority of Japanese lived on the west coast, so the army tried to move them farther inland, so they couldn't get help from the Japanese. Many Japanese Americans complied, regardless if they were citizens of the United States or not. However, one Japanese man, Fred Korematsu, refused to leave his home behind and go to one of the internment camps.
Fred Korematsu tried to hide from the military, but eventually, in 1942, the FBI found him and arrested him. He was put on trial for failing to report to a place to determine his relocation. Korematsu was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, where his attorneys argued that Executive Order 9066 violated Fred Korematsu’s 5th amendment rights. The court ruled that Korematsu was convicted of violating military orders, and given a five year prison sentence. The case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals, and they gave him the same decision. Korematsu then asked the Supreme Court to hear his case.
In 1944, Korematsu came before the Supreme Court to decide if his rights as a Japanese American had been violated due to Roosevelt’s executive order. Ultimately, in a 6-3 ruling, the court found that the relocation was a military necessity, and did not violate Korematsu’s rights. With this, the hope of Japanese Americans not going to internment camps vanished. The court was divided, arguing that Korematsu didn’t do anything wrong to deserve this punishment. However, the prevailing idea was that it would be impossible to determine a citizen’s allegiance to Japan or the United States, so it was necessary that they relocate all citizens to prevent a potential disaster.
While the court ruled it was constitutional back then, our Supreme Court very recently commented on how the decision was unconstitutional. After Trump v. Hawaii, a case involving travel bans of countries with a large muslim population, was deemed constitutional, Justice Sotomayor said that this case had a striking resemblance to the Korematsu case. Chief Justice John Roberts commented that the two cases shouldn’t be compared. He also added that the “[Korematsu Case] was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and — to be clear — 'has no place in law under the Constitution’”. It is good to see that we can look back and realize the mistakes that were made involving the rights of Japanese citizens.
Sources:
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/323us214
https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/landmark_korematsu.html
http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/facts-and-case-summary-korematsu-v-us
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/26/supreme-court-overturns-korematsu-673846
I thought this blog post was very well written.It is interesting to me that the court called it a "military necessity" because they couldn't know who would be on the Japanese side. Although not as bad as the death camps and concentration camps in Europe the idea of interning the Japanese is very similar. In both cases people felt threatened by a groups of people and decided the best thing they could do was oppress them and send them away.
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