Korematsu v. United States

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

After the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, sentiment against the Japanese—even against Japanese Americans—ran high. Despite the ongoing war in Europe and tensions with Japan, most Americans were shocked by the attack. Many could not believe that the Japanese were able to launch such a successful strike without warning, and some government officials and military leaders argued that Japan must have used spies and saboteurs to plan the attack. The combination of surprise and resentment toward Japan added to existing levels of intolerance and racism against Japanese Americans. In 1900, there were only about twenty-five thousand Japanese living in the United States, mostly in Hawaii and along the Pacific Coast. However, over the next two decades, more than one hundred thousand Japanese immigrants came to the mainland United States. Anti-immigrant sentiment toward new arrivals led to the 1924 Immigration Act, which banned people from non-European nations from moving to the United States. Nonetheless, the second-generation Japanese Americans, known as Nisei, and third-generation, or Sansei, had prospered as farmers, entrepreneurs, and professionals in the United States. They were US citizens and generally considered themselves as American as their neighbors and fellow citizens.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, permitting parts of the country to be declared military areas from which anyone could be excluded. As a result, authorities began to forcibly relocate people of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry or citizenship (these three countries being the main US enemies in the war). Approximately eleven thousand Germans and three thousand Italians had to move away from the Pacific Coast. However, Japanese Americans made up the largest number of those forced to relocate. Eventually some 112,000 Japanese Americans—both native born and immigrants, were put into internment camps. An estimated 70 percent of those interned were US citizens.

Those covered by the order were sent to one of ten internment camps in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The camps were in remote, often desolate areas, with few amenities or services. There were shortages of fuel and other commodities. The internees ran the day-to-day operations of the facilities, serving as cooks, service workers, and teachers. Those who worked were paid between $12 and $19 per month, at a time when the average wage in the United States was about $95 per month. The camps were guarded by units of the US Army.

One of those affected by the order was Fred Korematsu, an American-born descendant of Japanese immigrants who had grown up and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Health issues resulted in Korematsu's rejection from military service, but he was working in the defense industry when he became subject to the internment order. Because he did not want to be indefinitely separated from his Italian American girlfriend, Korematsu moved to a nearby town, changed his name, and underwent minor facial surgery in an effort to disguise himself as Mexican American. He was eventually arrested, convicted, paroled, and sent to a relocation camp in Utah.

Korematsu challenged his conviction, arguing that the exclusion order was unconstitutional because it authorized powers beyond those granted to Congress, the president, or the military and because it was applied on a racially discriminatory basis. He argued that the measure violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The clause forbids the government to deny citizens “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The government countered that the exclusion zones and the internment policy were necessary to prevent and counteract espionage and sabotage in a time of war. The government won in the lower courts, whereupon Korematsu appealed to the Supreme Court.

Korematsu v. United States, argued in October 1944, was one of a number of cases concerning Japanese internment that came before the Court after the enactment of Executive Order 9066. The Court had handed down its opinion in Hirabayashi v. United States on June 21 of the previous year, citing the demands of wartime as reasons for upholding the appellant's conviction for violating a curfew and failing to report to a detention center. Racial discrimination resulting from wartime legislation might be a necessary consequence of the need for national security. Faced with a similar set of facts in Korematsu, Black addresses the discrimination issue directly, stating unqualifiedly that all legal restrictions negatively affecting the rights of a racial group are inherently suspect and must be subject to “the most rigid scrutiny.” Having said as much, Black goes on to uphold Korematsu's conviction for the same reason put forth by the Court in Hirabayashi: the need to protect the American people outweighs the need to protect the rights of any individual or any racial group. Thus, since some Japanese Americans refused to swear loyalty to the United States, the military, which was charged with enforcing the intent of Executive Order 9066 but was unable to expediently segregate the loyal from the disloyal, was obliged to apply exclusion regulations to the whole group. Korematsu was excluded from the off-limits military area not because of his race, Black asserts, but because of the nation's being at war with the Japanese Empire. This argument exemplified the willingness of the Court to defer to the government on security matters.

The dissenting justices based their arguments on the racial implications of Executive Order 9066. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, requires that all citizens receive “equal protection” under the law. In other words, all citizens should be treated equally unless there is a compelling reason not to do so. Such reasons could be determined only through due process, and Justice Jackson argued that race or ethnic background was not a compelling reason to deny equal protection.

Korematsu is the only case in the history of the Supreme Court in which a restrictive law subjected to the “rigid scrutiny” test was deemed constitutional. It would be challenged in the future but remained in place throughout the twentieth century.