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Korematsu V. California Case Study

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In the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The order was a “protection against espionage and against sabotage to national defense material, national defense premises, and national defense utilities.” The order also allowed for military commanders to define military areas at their discretion. Congress also passed a law in conjunction with the order to penalize anyone who violated the imposed restrictions. The restrictions included forced removal to assembly, relocation, and curfews. The relocation took those of Japanese descent to internment camps where they would live in barracks with no running water or ways of cooking. The only things they were allowed to bring were their basic personal belongings, many lost a heavy amount of money when they were given no choice but to …show more content…

He added that applying these restrictions to people only of Japanese descent was discrimination based on race and therefore prohibited by the constitution. Susan Serrano quotes Korematsu’s plea in the courtroom, “I would like to see the government admit that they were wrong and do something about it so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color.” In 1942, The District Court for the Northern District of California, in Korematsu v. California, found Korematsu guilty for remaining in the city of San Leandro, California, violating 18 U.S.C. § 97a. The District Court stated that Korematsu would be placed on probation for five years. Korematsu appealed the decision to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A year later in 1943, the Court of Appeals upheld Korematsu’s conviction, ruling in favor of the United States. The case was then appealed once more to be heard by the U.S. Supreme

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This decision was upheld by The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed. However, later the United Stated Supreme Court made a reversal and ruled that probable cause existed. This reversal lead to The US Supreme Court also making a reversal in their decision in the Spinelli case; it was determined that the” totality of the circumstances” should be considered when testing if probable cause,

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With these problems, it makes it very difficult for some Japanese to move. It became clear that expert testimony was needed; therefore, I spoke with an American citizen here in California, and I wanted to know how she felt about most Japanese-Americans being put in Internment Camps across the West Coast. “I think it is unfair that they are assuming that all Japanese-Americans are involved in the disaster, when many like us didn’t know what was happening.” This reported agreed with her quote and feels that they should make a

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The two Supreme Court cases Korematsu v. United States 1944 and Schenck v. United States 1919 are similar in how they deal with people who stood up for their rights and dealt with Constitutional Amendments but differ in their time periods and the amendments they deal with. Both of the cases took place during times of war, Schenck during World War I and Korematsu during World War II. Charles Schenck did not believe in the Conscription Act so he urged people to protest it through words and papers and when he was brought to court the main case issue was if his actions were protected by the First Amendment. Much like Schenck, Fred Korematsu did not agree with the Japanese Exclusion Act and refused to be removed from his home. When he was brought

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“The Supreme Court upheld the legality of the relocation order in Hirabayashi v. United States and Korematsu v. United States. Early in 1945, Japanese-American citizens of undisputed loyalty were allowed to return to the West Coast, but not until March 1946 was the last camp closed.” (History staff 2009). Internment Camps This was a very hard time to go through many families only had 48 hours to evacuate their house.

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With aspirations of dominance in South East Asia, the Imperial Japanese armed forces launched a surprise attack against the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 ("Pearl Harbor attack | History, map, & casualties," 2018). The attack killed 2300 servicemen, destroyed a significant portion of the U.S. Pacific Naval fleet, and prompted the United States to enter WWII ("Pearl Harbor attack | History, map, & casualties," 2018). In reaction to the Japanese attack, President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066 with the goal of curbing Japanese Espionage in America ("Japanese internment camps | Executive Order 9066," 2009). Signed into law on February 19, 1942, Executive order 9066 gave the military the power to ban

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The case began in 1967 and was heard in the Supreme Court of the United States.

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Not only did the suffer physically, but they suffered mentally and psychologically as well. Shock and fear spread to the Japanese-Americans as a direct result of the internment

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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.

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They had to pack all their things and Document D states “Evacuees were each allowed to bring only one duffel bag and two suitcases; all other possessions were to be sold or stored…be sold at a fair price; however, businesses, homes, cars, and other items were sold quickly.” Document D also shows stores that the Japanese Americans had to sell and the second picture shows all the Japanese Americans gathered with their luggage waiting to go on the bus to Manzanar internment camps. These pieces of evidence prove that the Japanese went through a lot with the process and concept of the internment camps. And after they got to the camps They also had to keep security so that there wouldn't be any problems. Document A shows a soldier with a gun standing outside the houses and by the looks of it, the image of the house appeared to be in a line formation and the houses looked very small and were surrounded by dirt.

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One of the judges named Hugo Black stated that, "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 they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily. " At that fact, there was no way the judges could’ve refused the order and decided to move forward with the rule given. Years after the incident, The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was

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Hirabayashi refused to register for evacuation and disobeyed the curfew where he was found guilty for both counts. The most famous case is Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American man born in Oakland, California. He received plastic surgery to change his

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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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In World War II under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt a document was signed that changed the lives of more than 120,000 people. This document was Executive Order 9066 which disclosed the orders of evacuating all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast (Lecture 12/1). This decision came to realization two months after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 1941. This event sparked paranoia with the President and the American people, because there were Japanese people living within the U.S. and they feared that the Japanese population would invaded America thinking that they were loyal to Japan. Due to the concern of the public, President Roosevelt was pressured to sign Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 (Lecture

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They only had a few days to get pack and sell their homes. They were allowed only one suitcase per person. There were ten internment camps throughout the United States that they were sent to. The camps were in desert areas that nobody else wanted to live in, but at a camp called Camp Harmony, it was cover with mud. “We sank ankle deep in to the gray, glutinous mud.”

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The others who resisted were sent to internment camps, which were overcrowded and had very poor conditions. This social injustice comes from actions stemming from Order-in-Council P.C.1486, which broke the Charter of Rights section 6, subsection (2), which states that “ Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right to move to and take up residence in any province; and to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province”. The exclusion of the Japanese along the West Coast was an obvious breach of their rights as Canadians who have lived there for decades. They forced them to move out of British Columbia and were dispatched into other parts of Canada in which living conditions were not suitable. Neither were they allowed to move out of those rural conditions because all their belongings were gone and they were just left with what the government forced them into.

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