Korematsu vs. United States – Flashcards

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order forcing many West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans into internment camps.

whoever shall enter, remain in, leave, or commit any act in any military area or military zone prescribed, under the authority of an Executive order of the President, by the Secretary of War, or by any military commander designated by the Secretary of War, contrary to the restrictions applicable to any such area or zone or contrary to the order of the Secretary of War or any such military commander, shall, if it appears that he knew or should have known of the existence and extent of the restrictions or order and that his act was in violation thereof, be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be liable to a fine of not to exceed $5,000 or to imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, for each offense.

In Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, we sustained a conviction obtained for violation of the curfew order. The Hirabayashi conviction and this one thus rest on the same 1942 Congressional Act and the same basic executive and military orders, all of which orders were aimed at the twin dangers of espionage and sabotage.

"As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without trial or hearing. I would like to see the government admit they were wrong and do something about it, so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color." —Fred Korematsu (1983), on his decision to again challenge his conviction 40 years later

Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American, relocated and claimed to be Mexican-American to avoid being interned, but was later arrested and convicted of violating an executive order. Korematsu challenged his conviction in the courts saying that Congress, the President, and the military authorities did not have the power to issue the relocation orders and that he was being discriminated against based on his race. The government argued that the evacuation was necessary to protect the country and the federal appeals court agreed. Korematsu appealed this decision and the case came before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court agreed with government and stated that the need to protect the country was a greater priority than the individual rights of the Japanese and Japanese Americans.

Fred Korematsu Japanese American living in San Leandro, California

Federal Court Decision Korematsu took his case to the federal court, ruled against him; appealed and took case to the Supreme Court on the basis that Order 9066 violated the 14th and 5th Amendments

Executive Order 9066 Issued by FDR, relocated Japanese, Italian, and German Americans into internment camps

Time Period 1944; 3 years after Pearl Harbor

Supreme Court Decision Ruled 6-3 against Korematsu and upheld that the order was constitutional and legal; overturned decades later and was given a medal by President Bill Clinton.

"all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien" from a designated coastal area stretching from Washington State to southern Arizona, and hastily set up internment camps to hold the Japanese Americans for the duration of the war.

In the second half of his dissent, however, Jackson admitted that ultimately, in times of war, the military would likely maintain the power to arrest citizens -- and that, possessing no executive power, there was little the judicial branch could do to stop it.

Justice Owen Roberts also dissented in the case, arguing that a relocation center "was a euphemism for prison,"

However, a report issued by Congress in 1983 declared that the decision had been "overruled in the court of history," and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 contained a formal apology -- as well as provisions for monetary reparations -- to the Japanese Americans interned during the war.

President Bill Clinton awarded Fred Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Significantly, not until the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger (dealing with the affirmative action policy at the University of Michigan Law School) did the Court again approve an instance of racial discrimination against the application of Black's "rigid scrutiny" standard

Fred Korematsu was a Japanese American living in California who, after being ordered into a Japanese internment camp, refused to leave his city. Korematsu claimed that the Executive Order violated his personal rights as specified by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This Amendment in the Bill of Rights states that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law". Korematsu argued that he was being deprived of his right to live freely without the appropriate legal process. This due process of the law clause has been found in previous court cases to restrict the type of control that the Government is permitted to exercise over citizens.

The Supreme Court found, based on the precedent of Hirabayashi v. United States, that the Government Order was not based on racial prejudice, but based on the fear of an incident similar to Pearl Harbor.

These dissents compared the treatment of Japanese Americans to the policies of Nazi Germany and claimed that the Order was based entirely on racial discrimination rather than military necessity. Justice Frank Murphy's dissent called the decision the "legalization of racism".

Korematsu's argument for his refusal to relocate to a Japanese internment camp was based on a violation of both the Fifth Amendment and a writ of habeas corpus.

On December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court announced one of its most controversial decisions ever. The Korematsu decision is still controversial, since it allowed the federal government to detain a person based on their race during a wartime situation.

The Korematsu case ranked with the Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions as the worst ever made by the Court.

During the 1999 ceremony, Clinton said, "In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls--Plessy, Brown, Parks. To that distinguished list today we add the name of Fred Korematsu."

"One of the worst aspects of American history is that at times of crisis we compromise our most basic constitutional rights, and only in hindsight do we recognize that it didn't make us safer," said Erwin Chemerinsky, from the University of California Irvine.

And in 1983, federal courts had also overturned the original convictions of Hirabayashi and Korematsu

In 1988, Congress issued a formal apology for the suffering and loss of property the internment order had caused, and in 1989 authorized reparations of $20,000 to each of the approximately 60,000 survivors of the internment camps.

to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded."

subsequently was applied to most of the Japanese American population on the West Coast.

On May 3, Exclusion Order Number 34 was issued, under which 23-year-old Fred Korematsu and his family were to be relocated. Although his family followed the order, Fred failed to submit to relocation. He was arrested on May 30 and eventually was taken to Tanforan Relocation Center in San Bruno, south of San Francisco. He was convicted of having violated military order and received a sentence of five years' probation. He and his family were subsequently relocated to Topaz Internment Camp in Utah.

Korematsu appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which upheld the conviction and the exclusion order.

Dissenting from the majority were Owen Roberts, Frank Murphy, and Robert H. Jackson. Jackson's dissent is particularly critical

Korematsu was born to a Japanese-American family that owned a flower nursery. After World War II broke out, Japanese living in Pacific states were subject to curfews, and later sent to internment camps. Korematsu refused to go to an internment camp. In 1942 he was arrested and sent to a camp. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1944 on the grounds of military necessity

Post pearl harbor there was a lot of hostilty between

Fred Korematsu, an American citizen, challenged the government's right to remove him from his home and imprison him as a potential threat to national security simply because he was Japanese American.

The case will stimulate group discussion on racism, then and now.

Be careful what you wish for. The Supreme Court's November 10 announcement that it will review two cases challenging the detention, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of foreign nationals as "enemy combatants" surprised many.

But getting the Court to grant review and winning the cases are two very different matters. The Supreme Court's past record does not inspire confidence. In times of crisis, the Court has almost always deferred to government claims of national security, no matter how unfounded--most infamously, in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

And in 1950 the Court ruled that federal courts lacked jurisdiction to review the convictions of German "enemy aliens" tried and sentenced abroad for war crimes--a decision the lower courts found determinative in the Guantanamo cases.

With all that's known about WWII, "Of Civil Wrongs & Rights: The Fred Koematsu Story" proves there's still more to learn. Most people today admit it was wrong to round up and rob thousands of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, but this well-told tale of one young man's legal fight against the clearly unconstitutional move makes fascinating new fare for court TV, history channels and many other cable venues.

The supposedly liberal bench caved in to military pressure -- leaving laws on the books, pic success, fully argues, that could still threaten liberty in a time of crisis. Korematsu eventually got a small legal victory, and a hug from President Clinton, but the straightforward, smoothly made "Civil Wrongs" doesn't have a totally happy ending.

In 1988, the final full year of his second White House term, Ronald Reagan apologized to the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who'd been confined to internment camps during World War II, of which there were 10 around the nation, and of which Manzanar is the most notorious.

Three days before I went to Manzanar, President Donald Trump had ordered a halt on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. He did so via executive order, numbered 13769. Manzanar was created via Executive Order 9066, which will turn 75 years old on February 19. The order did not mention the Japanese, but its intention was very clear.

I ask the question I've come to answer: Isn't Trump taking us to a place as asinine and profoundly un-American as Manzanar? Will we someday have to build a museum to Syrian refugees at the international terminals of LAX and JFK airports?

Manzanar was not a concentration camp or a jail, though what it was is hard to say--"internment camp" doesn't quite convey the injustice of confining American citizens without due process.

Trump mentioned camps or bans during his campaign