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Korematsu Case Summary

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Korematsu v. United States: Fred Korematsu’s Case On February 19, 1942, during World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt passed the Executive Order 9066. This authorized the U.S. military to move thousands of Japanese citizens from places deemed crucial to national safety and possibly defenseless against infiltration. The military immediately used this power to issue a ban on all people, “immigrant and non- immigrant,” with Japanese lineage. Following this ban, captivity camps were set up to hold Japanese Americans, extending along the entire West Coast. In rebellion of this, a man named Fred Korematsu, an American born citizen with Japanese heredity, refused to comply with this law and vacate his residence to stay at a camp. He even made many attempts to hide his ancestry; he did this by undergoing cosmetic surgery on his eyelids and he adopted a fake identity where he claimed to be of Hispanic and Native background. In consequence to his failure to adhere to the migration order, he was detained on May 30, 1942, he spent two and half months behind bars, and after he paid a bail of $5,000 he was freed and directly sent to an encampment with his parents and sibling. When he was found guilty, he appealed and his case went to …show more content…

His case hinted that our basic civil rights should be second to discrimination, intolerance, and paranoia. Because of this, after the war ended Congress passed the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948, which gave a reimbursement to Japanese American citizens who had to move to a camp and lost their residences or establishments during the war. Additionally in 1988, Congress also sent all these families official apologies for the loss and distress, and later sent out compensations totaling $20,000 to the survivors of these incarceration camps. Then later in 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Fred Korematsu with the Presidential Medal of

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Executive Order 9066 (Feb. 19, 1942) Due to World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave permission to the confinement of “tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and residents from Japan.” This executive order gave the military the power to “ban any citizen from a 50-60 mile wide coastal area from Washington State to California.” This order also gave the military permission to transport these citizens to centers that they ran in California, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon.

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763 Words | 4 Pages

A man named Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American citizen, felt that his internment went against the United States Constitution. The Fourteenth

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After 3 years of life at internment camps, they were out. They return to their homes after all the time. Forty years later, 100,000 Japanese Americans get payed $20,000 as an apologize. Nowadays, Japanese Internment camps are very sad.

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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.”

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The lawsuit violated constitutional rights and suffered racial discrimination (U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against Fred Korematsu; Declares Denial of Civil Liberties Legal). His family were not very happy about his arrest and his decision to fight his case. Due to this, he ended up having nobody to talk to, feeling lonely and isolated. Trying to contact his girlfriend, Ida, but he sadly never saw her again. In October 1942, people in these camps were able to apply to leave if they had evidence of employment elsewhere, away from the west coast.

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Furthermore, the United States should do more to compensate the families of those impacted by internment because the recompense provided initially was minimal and should be considered an affront to the memory of the victims. Prior to World War II, the 127,000 Japanese-Americans along America’s west coast (Japanese American Relocation and Internment Camps) were considered just another immigrant group coming to America searching for a better life. However, with the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, this perception soon saw a drastic change. The attack on the US Naval base on December 7th, 1941 left many casualties in its wake.

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Jayna Marie Lorenzo May 23, 2023 Historiography Paper Professor Kevin Murphy Historiography Final: Japanese Internment “A date which will live in infamy,” announced President Roosevelt during a press conference after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Due to the military threat by the Japanese on the West Coast, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering for the incarceration of all people of Japanese descent. The Order forced about 120,000 Japanese Americans into relocation centers across the United States where they remained in captivity until the war ended.

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The Mariam- Webster Dictionary says that freedom is, “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” Freedom is a basic right of each American citizen; this right was taken from a large group of people in 1942, including a man named Sam Mihara. K. Sam Mihara lived peacefully in San Francisco with many other Japanese-Americans until the Pearl Harbour attack where they were removed from their homes and forced into secluded detention camps. Throughout the war, Japanese- Americans were moved, treated with disrespect, and then pressured into forgiving the government. The Japanese-Americans were forced into detention camps because the country of Japan was responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

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Some people thought this was a reasonable act and some, “believed that the government had a right “to establish military zones and to remove persons, either citizens or aliens, from such zones when their presence may endanger national security, even in absence of law”. (Elison and Yogi 431) Korematsu v. United States was a case where they wanted to determine if Fred Korematsu had violated Dewitt’s exclusion order. This case made the Japanese American give up everything they owned and move to camps. The government thought the Japanese American were going to be a problem. Tom Watanabe explains how he can remember, “The room was twenty by twenty.

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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.

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In this case, the petitioner, an American citizen of Japanese descent, is convicted in a federal district court for violating two conflicting orders, Presidential Executive Order 90066 and Order No. 34. According to Korematsu v. United States (1944) “The two conflicting orders, one which commanded him to stay and the other which commanded him to go, were nothing but a cleverly devised trap to accomplish the real purpose of the military authority, which was to lock him up in a concentration camp.” Therefore, the petitioner is trapped into not being able to do anything, and by choosing to do nothing, he is punished for it. In a similar manner, Ichiro is trapped in his own freedom, not knowing how to act now that he is a free man (physically) but is still seen as an enemy of the country no matter where he goes. Ichiro’s freedom is disturbed by the ideologies of his mother, who believes that Japan won the war and has this Sojourner mentality that the Japanese ships will come back for them and that they will return back to their

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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.

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“Delay invites great danger. Rapid and united effort by all of the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will insure a world victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of savagery and of barbarism.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt’s message to Congress about declaring war on Germany. When people hear World War II they immediately think of D-day, Germany, Pearl Harbor, etc. Think of the postwar era of World War II.

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In 1952, the Walter-McCarran Act was passed that allowed Japanese immigrants to become legal US citizens. Japanese Americans came to the United States in hope for a new life and opportunity for themselves and their families, willing to work hard for very low wages. President Roosevelt worried that these Japanese Americans were going to act as spies for the Japanese government and collect information from the American government to use against them. To prevent these issues from occurring Roosevelt decided to place more than 127,000 Japanese American people into internment camps during World War II. Although this was a reasonable concern for American lives, President Roosevelt had no proof that this was actually true.

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In 1948, the American Evacuation Claims Act was instituted. This Act by the United States government, gave $2500 dollars to each person who had lived in an internment camp. This was meant to be sign of saying they were sorry. Then in 1988, the Civil Liberties Act was given as a formal acknowledgment of the injustice suffered by many Japanese Americans.

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