Korematsu v. United States was a controversial landmark decision ruling by the United States Supreme court. Fred Korematsu was a Japanese-American living in California, he was ordered to refuse to leave his city after the Japanese internment camp. After the World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066 and Congressional decree gave the military power to exclude citizens of Japanese descent from areas deemed critical to national defense and may be vulnerable to espionage. On May 3, 1942, Fred Korematsu stayed in California and violated the US Army Civilian Executive Order No. 34. This supreme court case has an importance of interpreting the constitution and the different perspective of interpreting the constitution based on a person’s own political background and beliefs. In 1942, about six months after the world war II of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested Fred Korematsu for violating the Executive order to failure to submit the relocation. Korematsu was eventually taken to the Tanforan Relocation Center in San Bruno. He was convicted of having violated the military order and was sentenced to a suspended sentence of five years. He and his family were …show more content…
The fifth amendment in the Bill of Rights states that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” (Title XVIII, Dec. 1791). Korematsu’s refusal to relocate to Japanese internment camp was based on a violation of the Fifth Amendment and personal protection orders. According to personal protection orders, a person should be able to avoid illegal detection, However, Fred Korematsu was denied this
In a 6 to 3 decision, the court ruled in favor of the United States government. Despite this Korematsu continued to fight this conviction throughout his life. His hard work eventually paid off. Fred Korematsu was not alone. There were other Japanese Americans who opposed the Executive Order.
United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943). In this case the President’s executive orders come into question as well, but instead of being based on the violation of the person not relocating, it is focused on the violation of a curfew. The court upheld that the executive order was, as well, necessary as a protective measure in a time of war. Because of this the president 's orders and the implementation of a curfew on Japanese Americans in wartime were decided to be constitutional. The court claims that “In determining validity of regulations imposing curfew on persons of Japanese ancestry in military area created under authority of Executive Order, the regulations, under the circumstances, were measures for purpose of safeguarding the military area, at time of threatened air raids and invasion by Japanese forces, from danger of sabotage and espionage.”
His case would eventually be taken to the Supreme Court. “His case before the Supreme Court, Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), was the first challenge to the government’s wartime curfew and expulsion of Japanese Americans. The Court ruled against him 9-0.” (Takami, Hirabayashi, Gordon K.) The Supreme Court justified the government’s relocation orders: “…by military necessity and allowable in a time of war.”
U.S. government shaped Japanese migration into its soil when it established gunboat imperialism. The United States forced Japan to trade goods with them, thus, Hawaii was established as a trading port. At the beginning of the Japanese’s first migrations, the United States had graciously invited them for cheap labor in plantations. After their labor agreements ended, many decided to reside in the United States. 2a.
Life after World War II After World War II, Korematsu remained silent about the internment incidents for around thirty years, neither telling his wife or daughter about this specific time. He felt as if he had played a negative role in that period, and therefore remained quiet. But in 1980, his old attorney found a box of hidden files that recorded that the Solicitor General of the US (the person who represented the US in Korematsu’s Supreme Court case) knew that President Roosevelt's Executive Order actually violated and segregated the Japanese and the Japanese American’s rights and the Constitution itself, and suppressed reports from both the FBI and the military that the Japanese and the Japanese Americans posed no risk to the national defense. He presented the files to President Jimmy Carter, who ordered a full investigation of the affected cases. Korematsu was later notified,of the
A man named Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American citizen, felt that his internment went against the United States Constitution. The Fourteenth
The case of Korematsu v. US, which was sparked by Executive Order 9066, remains a significant event in the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. This order, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, resulted in the forced relocation and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. The basis for the case was the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which was challenged on the grounds that it violated the civil rights of Japanese Americans. The historical context surrounding this argument was the fear and hysteria fueled by the attack on Pearl Harbor and widespread anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. This sentiment was unwarranted, as the Munson report states that Japanese immigrants
In September 1942, the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, ran an article titled “Americans In Concentration Camps,” which courageously noted that “Color seems to be the only reason why thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry are in concentration camps. Anyway, there are no Italian-American or German-American citizens in such camps.” (Greene) Fred Korematsu was a Japanese-American who refused to be put into a concentration camp, ignoring an Executive order by Franklin D. Roosevelt, went into hiding. In 1942, he was finally arrested.
In 1942, policy makers of the United States, faced with an increasingly daunting threat from the west made a fateful decision to confine 120 thousand Japanese American citizens in internment camps, displacing thousands of families and creating an anti-Japanese sentiment that would persist in America for years to come. Not only was this morally wrong, it was factually incorrect that the our fellow citizens the Japanese Americans were disloyal as demonstrated by their heroism as American soldiers in the European theater.
The idea of being viewed as the “Other” is prevalent in three court cases that arose when Roosevelt issued the Executive Order. In the case Yasui v. United States, Minoru Yasui, an American lawyer born in Oregon, tested the legitimacy of the executive order by staying out past curfew and turning himself into the police. When the notice came to evacuate, Yasui informed authorities he would not comply and appeared in front of the Supreme Court. He served one year in jail and was fined $5,000. Gordon Kyoshi Hirabayashi, a Japanese American born in Washington, openly defied internment.
Amendment 5 was not followed. Amendment 5 states that everyone gets a trial before getting put into containment. The Japanese Americans were not given a trial, therefore that is one example of the Executive order being unconstitutional. “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law…” ( Littel 287) What that means is that no one can deprived of their freedom,
This absurd ruling was not helping American citizens, but rather hurting our country’s people, as Japanese Americans were being held captive. To further prove this point, President Jimmy Carter appointed a committee in 1980 to study Japanese
The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII was not justified. After Pearl Harbor, many Americans were scared of the Japanese Americans because they could sabotage the U.S. military. To try and solve the fear President Franklin D Roosevelt told the army in Executive order 9066 to relocate all Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. They were relocated to detention centers in the desert. Many of them were in the detention centers for three years.
How would you feel if one day you were told to leave your whole life behind to live in captivity just because people halfway across the world did something wrong? This horror story was all too true for the thousands of Japanese Americans alive during World War II. Almost overnight, thousands of proud Japanese Americans living on the west coast were forced to leave their homes and give up the life they knew. The United States government was not justified in the creation of Japanese internment camps because it stripped law-abiding American citizens of their rights out of unjustified fear.
When he was captured, they put him in a prison of war camp. He lost his freedom because he was an enemy military and could have been a spy for America. In the excerpt “Camp Harmony,” the american government got the japanese that lived in America and put them in relocation camps. One reason for doing that was so