6/21/2023 0 Comments Korematsu v united states 1944![]() ![]() The February 1944 edition of the ACLU News (published the same month that Korematsu was filed at the Supreme Court) contains a small article on page 3 with the story of a “Mrs. Attorney’s attempts to dismiss the case to the Ninth Circuit’s ruling “upholding the constitutionality of the Military’s evacuation of all Japanese from the Pacific Coast” to the shameful Supreme Court ruling. Through the archive, we can track the journey of Korematsu’s case: from its District Court briefing to the appeal of the District Court ruling finding Korematsu guilty of violating the military’s evacuation orders to the U.S. He was “placed in the San Francisco county jail, and charged with remaining in a military area from which all Japanese had been ordered to evacuate.” According to the ACLU News, he “hoped to escape detection by having a plastic operation performed on the bridge of his nose and by changing his name.” But the FBI arrested him. Korematsu tried to escape his own forced removal by passing as white. Afterward, the military forcibly removed tens of thousands of people to “assembly centers”: remote, inland incarceration camps where people lived in brutal conditions under the surveillance of armed guards. Several weeks after Roosevelt issued his executive order, the military created an “exclusion zone” along the West Coast for people of Japanese ancestry. But the welders’ union cut short his participation when it “cancelled his membership because of his race.” It explains that, because Korematsu had been rejected from the draft due to stomach ulcers, he had been contributing to the World War II effort on the home front by working as a shipyard welder. “The San Francisco case involves 23-year-old Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, who failed to evacuate from San Leandro,” the article says. The first mention of the Korematsu case arrives in the July 1942 edition of the ACLU News, in an article that carries snapshots of the bigotry Korematsu fought against before his name became synonymous with one of the most unjust Supreme Court rulings in history. The ACLU News dedicates significant attention to every twist and turn in the case, conveying this affiliate’s devotion to its representation of Korematsu and the imperative question he forced the American judiciary to consider: Does the Constitution allow for the mass exclusion of people based on their race and ethnicity? It was the Korematsu case that almost broke the bond between this affiliate and ACLU National: Roger Baldwin, ACLU National’s executive director, pressured Besig to drop the case after National’s board issued a policy barring challenges to Roosevelt’s executive order in the belief that backroom diplomacy with government officials presented the best opportunity for advocacy. Together, they decided to challenge the constitutionality of the evacuation order. Ernest Besig, the long-serving executive director of ACLU NorCal, met with Fred Korematsu as he sat imprisoned in San Francisco for having refused to evacuate to a Japanese detention center. The Korematsu case looms large in this affiliate’s historical record because representatives of this organization brought that suit before the courts. Here, we take a closer look at its reporting on Roosevelt’s incarceration orders and related ACLU advocacy. Like any good historical record, it demands examination in light of the present day. United States (1944), the Supreme Court deferred blindly to the military’s claim that a person’s Japanese ancestry marked them as a potential national security threat, authorizing their mass exclusion from society.ĭocumentation of the Korematsu case arises throughout the archive of the ACLU News: the member newsletter of the ACLU of Northern California that has been in circulation since 1936, and that documents ACLU advocacy and its historical context. Eventually, its distorted logic was deemed acceptable by the highest court in our land. ![]() It took advantage of, and stoked, racist and xenophobic fervor. The order rubber-stamped blatant discrimination, ripping apart families, livelihoods, communities. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent in “relocation centers” across the western U.S. ![]() This blog is the first in a series that examines the archive’s contents. ![]() Thanks to a partnership between the ACLU of Northern California and the California Historical Society, every issue of the ACLU News has been digitized and is now available to read online. ![]()
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