Mr. Beat presents
Supreme Court Briefs
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941
December 7, 1941...yeah
Japan drops bombs on an American naval base, killing more than 2400 Americans, and injuring 1000 more.
In response, the United States declares war on Japan, officially entering World War II.
Increasingly, Americans viewed anyone of Japanese heritage suspiciously.
Japanese Americans had already faced racism and discrimination in the country for nearly 100 years.
After the Pearl Harbor attack, that racism and discrimination went to the next freaking level, as many thought Japanese Americans might be more loyal to Japan than the United States, sharing military secrets with them and stuff or trying to sabotage the war effort.
Despite there being no evidence whatsoever that this was happening, Japanese American persecution increased.
People bought Jap-hunting licenses.
Life Magazine published an article illustrating how to tell the difference between a Japanese person and Chinese person by the shape their nose and height.
In California, the racism and paranoia seemed to be worse.
A barber shop there advertised “free shaves for Japs” with a disclaimer that read “not responsible for accidents.”
A funeral parlor advertised “I’d rather do business with a Jap than an American.”
Several people called for removing all Japanese Americans from western states and forcing them to live in concentration camps somewhere else.
President Franklin Roosevelt, who had a record of being racist against the Japanese, agreed with this idea.
He signed Executive Order 9066.
It ordered the roundup of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent to 1 of 10 concentration camps, called officially “relocation centers.”
It also said Japanese Americans weren’t allowed to be in California at all, as well as much of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, unless they were in one of the camps, of course.
Fred Korematsu was one of the Japanese Americans who said the heck with Executive Order 9066.
He stayed in California.
He had a girlfriend who was not Japanese American there he didn’t want to leave, and just thought Roosevelt’s order was wrong.
So after his entire family left for one of the camps, he stayed behind, became a welder, and tried not to stand out too much.
He changed his name and got a fake ID.
Later, he even tried to have plastic surgery on his eyes to look less Japanese.
The plastic surgeon who worked on him didn’t do the procedure but took his money anyway.
Shortly after this, someone reported him and he was arrested.
After his arrest, he never saw his girlfriend again, by the way.
Eventually, Korematsu found himself in federal prison.
The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, reached out to him there and offered to represent him in court.
Korematsu said heck yeah. Together, they argued that Executive Order 9066 went against the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Korematsu’s loyalty to the United States was never in question.
Still, in federal court in San Francisco, he was convicted, given five years of probation, and sent to a concentration camp in Utah.
He appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, who agreed with the lower court.
He then appealed again, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, hearing arguments in October 1944, with the war still raging on.
During arguments, the Court considered a similar case from the previous year called Hirabayashi v. United States.
That one upheld Executive Order 9066.
The Court announced its decision on December 18, 1944. It sided with the United States. But this one was certainly controversial. It was 6-3.
The Court argued that Executive Order 9066 was justified in order to keep the country safe.
They said the need to protect Americans from espionage was more important than individual rights.
Justice Hugo Black wrote the opinion, but today most say the opinion is pretty flawed.
He wrote, “Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire.”
Actually, no. That is false. He also wrote,
“There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some (Japanese Americans), the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and the time was short.”
You’re 0 for 2, Hugo. At that time, there was no evidence of that, either.
Justice Felix Frankfurter chimed in that the Constitution gave the President and Congress these war powers.
The three justices who dissented all wrote separate opinions.
Justice Frank Murphy passionately argued that the decision was basically the legalization of racism, and that this racial discrimination went against everything the United States stood for.
“All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States.
They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution." Dang, you tell ‘em Frank.
On January 2, 1945, President Roosevelt cancelled Executive Order 9066.
The camps were shut down, and many Japanese Americans returned home to find their belongings missing or destroyed.
Fred Korematsu returned home, and did not speak publicly about the case for decades.
Flash forward to the 1980s. By this time most Americans agreed that what the government did to Japanese Americans during World War II was messed up.
In 1983, Korematsu’s original conviction was finally overturned.
In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which formally apologized to the Japanese Americans affected and awarded payments of $20,000 to each camp survivor, about $43,000 in today’s money.
Korematsu did speak out in his later years.
He died in 2005. In 2009, a non-profit civil liberties organization called the Fred T. Korematsu Institute was founded.
It’s currently ran by Fred’s daughter, Karen Korematsu.
Korematsu v. United States is often considered one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in American history.
Today the case, as well as the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, are both seen as major tragedies.
On June 26, 2018, in the case Trump v. Hawaii, a case which upheld the President’s restriction of travel in the United States by people from several countries, the Supreme Court finally FINALLY officially overruled the Korematsu decision.
I'll see you for the next Supreme Court case, jury!
Yeah, that was really freaking sad. On a lighter note, did you know I have a Twitter?
That’s how I knew you guys wanted me to cover this case.
You should follow me on Twitter for esoteric Tweets like this one, which I tweeted on June 25th, 2018.
Today I ate half a pound of black beans in a sterile room. I was joined by 19 complete strangers, all doing the same thing.
We said nothing to each other. In fact, we didn't even look at each other as we devoured our beans.
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