Korematsu V. United States

Korematsu v. United States

AFTER JAPAN'S attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes on the Pacific Coast of the United States and sent to internment camps in the interior of the country. Most of them spent the duration of the war, until August 1945, confined in one of these camps, even though they were loyal U.S. citizens who had done nothing to harm their homeland, the United States.

One such U.S. citizen was Fred Korematsu, born and raised in Alameda County, California. He had never visited Japan and knew little or nothing about the Japanese way of life.

In June 1941, before the official U.S. declaration of war, Fred Korematsu had tried to enlist in the navy. Although the navy was actively recruiting men in anticipation of the U.S. entry into the war, the service did not allow Korematsu to enlist because of poor health. He then went to work in a shipyard as a welder. When the war began, he lost his job because of his Japanese heritage.

On May 9, 1942, General John L. DeWitt ordered all people of Japanese background or ancestry excluded from Military Area No. 1, the Pacific coastal region of the United States. This military order was authorized by an executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (issued on February 19) and an act of Congress (passed on March 21).

Hoping to move to Nevada with his fiancée, who was not of Japanese ancestry, Korematsu ignored the evacuation orders when they came. As a U.S. citizen, he felt the orders should not apply to him in any event. The FBI arrested Korematsu, and he was convicted of violating the orders of the commander of Military Area No. 1.

The Issue

The U.S. government justified the internment in two ways. The government claimed that American citizens of Japanese ancestry were more loyal to Japan than to their own country and would spy for Japan. Second, the government claimed that because Japan had attacked the U.S. territory of Hawaii, those Americans of Japanese ancestry might have helped Japan.

Korematsu claimed that military commanders, acting under authority granted by the President and Congress, had denied more than 75,000 U.S. citizens their constitutional rights of due process. The 5th Amendment says, "No person shall be. . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Had the government wrongly taken away the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans?

Opinion of the Court

The Court upheld the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the Pacific coastal region. The needs of national security in a time of crisis, it said, justified the exclusion orders. The war powers of the President and Congress, specified by the Constitution, provided the legal basis for the majority decision.

Justice Hugo Black admitted that the exclusion orders forced citizens of Japanese ancestry to endure severe hardships. "But hardships are a part of war," said Black, "and war is an aggregation of hardships." Justice Black maintained that the orders had not excluded Korematsu primarily for reasons of race but for reasons of military security. The majority ruling really did not say whether the relocation of Japanese Americans was constitutional. Rather, the Court sidestepped that touchy issue, emphasizing instead the national crisis caused by the war.

Dissent

Three justices -- Frank Murphy, Robert Jackson, and Owen Roberts -- disagreed with the majority. Justice Roberts thought it a plain "case of convicting a citizen as punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp solely because of his ancestry," without evidence concerning his loyalty to the United States.

Justice Murphy said that the exclusion orders violated the right of citizens to due process of law. Furthermore, Murphy protested that the decision of the Court's majority amounted to the "legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life." Murphy admitted that the argument citing military necessity carried weight, but he insisted that such a claim must "subject itself to the judicial process" to determine "whether the deprivation is reasonably related to a public danger that is so 'immediate, imminent, and impending.' "

Finally, Murphy concluded that "individuals must not be left impoverished in their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support."

Justice Jackson expressed grave concern about the future uses of the precedent set in this case. He wrote:

A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency.... But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution. . . the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedures and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.

Significance

The Korematsu ruling has never been revoked by law or Supreme Court ruling. In 1980, however, Congress reopened investigations into the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and created the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. After nearly three years of careful examination of the evidence, which included testimony from 750 witnesses, the commission issued a report on February 25, 1983. The report concluded: "A grave injustice was done to American citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry who, without individual review or any probative evidence against them, were excluded, removed, and detained by the United States during World War II."

In 1988, on the basis of the 1983 report, Congress officially recognized the "grave injustice" of the relocation and internment experience and offered payments of $20,000 as compensation to each person still living who had been detained in a relocation center.

John J. Patrick The Supreme Court of the United States: A Student Companion
12-01-2001