Constitutionality: Korematsu v. United StatesOn May 19th, two months after the passing of Executive Order 9066, the Military put into effect Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34. Fred Korematsu was a second-generation immigrant living in Oakland California when the order was enacted.At the age of 23, having been barred from employment because of his ancestry at a number of businesses and having physical disqualifications for the military, he went into hiding in order to avoid being interned. He went so far as to have facial surgery and use an alias to avoid custody until March 30th. Upon his arrest his case eventually worked its way to the Supreme Court. His was the third major case, following Hirabayashi v. United States and Yasui v, United States, both of which failed to render the imposed curfew in the camps officially unconstitutional.
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Verdict |
No official decision was reached until 1944, where in a six to three vote the court sided with the government. The Decision solely concerned the exclusion orders, stating:
"The provisions of other orders requiring persons of Japanese ancestry to report to assembly centers and providing for the detention of such persons in assembly and relocation centers were separate, and their validity is not in issue in this proceeding." Justice Hugo Black wrote thus concerning the accusations of racial discrimination: "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, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, and, finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders — as inevitably it must — determined that they should have the power to do just this." In 2011, the Supreme Court announced that the decision was in error, citing the known submission of false information by the government during the proceedings, (specifically concerning supposed Japanese sabotage attempts). |