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Was Fred Korematsu Justified?

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“If you have the feeling that something is wrong, don't be afraid to speak up ”(Fred Korematsu). In 1941 The Pearl Harbor was bombed, America was in fear. A year later, February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066 which brought out the internment camps for Japanese Americans. In 1944, Korematsu spoke up for his rights as a Japanese- American citizen and he fought against the government. Fred Korematsu took a stand against the United States government for his rights by resisting arrest and placement into internment camps, and these actions resulted in a huge court case where he was accused guilty, though Korematsu lost, he should have been justified to evade the executive order. During the time period, “Japanese planes …show more content…

However he was arrested on May 30,1942 when he was recognized as a “jap” (“ Fred Korematsu”). Therefore, Fred Korematsu was taken into the internment camps where he asked the military “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”(Supreme Court). As a result the court case was started to prevent any other races from being treated badly as well as to see if it was justified for the government to bring out this order. In doing so, Korematsu group of lawyers during the case stated “Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan.The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity and a citizen of California by 243*243 residence”(Google Scholar). Fred Korematsu was standing up for all the Japanese - american who were in the camps and suffered too much. Korematsu lawyers pleaded that “Korematsu has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the states where of he is a citizen, near the place he was born, and where all his life has lived” (Google Scholar)In addition the case was taken all the way to the supreme court where he was accused to be guilty for standing up for his right to not got to the internment camp. Korematsu pleaded not guilty but the court did not acknowledge his

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Laura Richart S. DioGuardi Criminal Law & Procedure 22 September 2016 CJ2300 Assignment 1: Case Brief Case: Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) Procedural History: Fred Korematsu was a Japanese- American who was sent to an internment camp following the enactment of Executive Order 9066 in 1942. This executive order required that all Japanese- Americans, some Italian- Americans, and some Jewish refugees be taken from their homes and placed in internment camps around the United States, with many being on the West Coast. This was in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor and was intended to prevent supposed espionage. Korematsu refused to transfer from the original camp in Manzanar, CA that he was placed in and was arrested and

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United States” it discusses a case where Fred Korematsu got arrested for not leaving his home in California. The reason he was asked to leave his house is because of the Executive Order 9066 which made all persons of Japanese Ancestry leave the west coast. He made this order because of the war between the US and Japan and the west coast is the closest place to Japan in America. People were very paranoid that the Japanese living on the west coast were spies and the US needed to do this avoid sabotage. The US knew that this was unconstitutional, but during wartime sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.

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Yuri Kochiyama is a Japanese-American civil rights activist, and author of “Then Came the War” in which she describes her experience in the detention camps while the war goes on. December 7th, is when Kochiyama life began to change from having the bombing in Pearl Harbor to having her father taken away by the FBI. All fishing men who were close to the coast were arrested and sent into detention camps that were located in Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota. Kochiyama’s father had just gotten out of surgery before he was arrested and from all the movement he’d been doing, he begun to get sick. Close to seeing death actually, until the authorities finally let him be hospitalized.

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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

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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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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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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

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Korematsu stood before Judge Marilyn Patel of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco and said “According to the Supreme Court decision regarding my case, being an American was not enough. I felt this decision was wrong and I still feel that way. As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without trial or hearing. 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”. After the overturning of his conviction, Mr. Korematsu remained a public advocate for civil rights and the protection of Japanese Americans’ liberties.

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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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Miné Okubo was sent to a camp in America because she was seen a threat to America because of Minés Japanese heritage. It didn't matter that she was an American citizen. Miné and Louie were sent to these camps to be isolated from the public and the guads tried to dehumanize them. They tried to dehumanize Miné and Louie in many ways but Miné and Louie resisted feeling invisible and survived. Japanese-Americans and prisoners of war were sent to camps

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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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On the date of Feb 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order. This executive order forced all Japanese American citizens, regardless of their loyalty to the country. It forced them to evacuate their homes and not just the Japanese Americans in a particular part of the country all Japanese Americans would be put into internment camps. At one point in time all of the camps combined held 120,000 Japanese Americans. This was all cause due to the fact that the Japanese Military at the time bombed Pearl Harbor an American Naval base in Hawaii.

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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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