Posted on 06/26/2018 1:56:40 PM PDT by NRx
The Supreme Court just quietly overturned a decision that upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as part of a ruling upholding President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban that primarily targets majority-Muslim countries.
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led the US government to force more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent into detention camps.
The decision overruled by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Korematsu v. United States, was centered around a man named Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American who refused to comply with the order. On December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court ruled it was a "military necessity" to detain people of Japanese descent during the war and argued the order was not based on race.
Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear he disagrees with this assessment in the majority opinion on Trump's travel ban.
"The forcible relocation of US citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority," Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
"Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and — to be clear — 'has no place in law under the Constitution,'" Roberts added.
This was partially in response to the dissenting opinion from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which contended the ruling on Trump's travel ban has "stark parallels" with the "reasoning" behind the decision made regarding Korematsu.
"Today, the Court takes the important step of finally overruling Korematsu," Sotomayor added. "This formal repudiation of a shameful precedent is laudable and long overdue. But it does not make the majority's decision here acceptable or right."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Considering the relocation and detention of citizens was not a matter before the court in the travel ban case I don’t see how they override it. Any comments to that effect are made in dicta and are not binding precedent.
“This ultimately may have influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II.” “
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Absolutely,but they still did not intern a large percentage of Japanese in Hawaii.
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Sotomayor is an activist through and through. She knows she is ignoring the law and doesn’t care when she rules on these sorts of cases.
Very few were interned at all. Most Japanese and citizens of Japanese decent were “relocated,” and only those within the “exclusion zone” of the West Coast were subject to that action. Anyone who could move to the interior of the country was free to do so. About 5,000 did. S. I. Hayakawa, who was Canadian by birth, taught at what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology throughout the war.
Of course, the vast majority had no ability to find housing thousands of miles from their homes and were forced into the relocation camps. It was wrong, and no doubt racism played a role, but the action has been mischaracterized by the left for decades. A few of those relocated were released to go study at colleges, for example. The camps weren’t like Auschwitz, but the left wants us to think they were.
Yeah, but you'll never hear any demoncrat admit it.
“I don’t see how they override it. Any comments to that effect are made in dicta and are not binding precedent.”
Interesting - maybe after it has been digested a bit, that will come out.
Japanese Americans or are you talking about the Japanese ?
If you believe that the Japanese military did not thoroughly destroy all evidence of war crimes prior to their surrender, I have this nice bridge I'd like to sell you.
All indicators that Japan was doomed to defeat was plain for all to see many many months before Fat Man, Little Boy and the surrender.
Just an unknown few.
At Alameda, CA, where the flying boats were based on the west coast, or in Hawaii, I can't recall, two Japanese saboteurs were caught sabotaging an airliner (which by then traveled the Pacific) in the middle of the night by the FBI, and quietly marched away and never mentioned in the press or elsewhere, and never heard from again.
It was definitely a different time, with not so easily riled politically correct enemies domestic...
Thank you for that perspective: very valuable.
Oh, wait… never mind...
Yep, and another DEMOCRAT President Firebombed and Nuked hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese Civilians.
The good news is, he didn’t separate the Children from their Families beforehand. The Democrats would have been really upset if he had.
Neither did the Japanese until the closing months of the war.
There was an internment camp about 20-30 miles from my hometown in SE Arkansas. I never heard one word about it until someone on FR mentioned it then I looked into it. That was the one Mr. Solo’s family was interned in.
The inmates had better living conditions than the people in the surrounding area: indoor plumbing, good heat, fresh water and good food. That was not acceptable.
Interment was probably for the protection of the Japanese from an enraged populace as much as to protect the nation.
#1. Agreed but Roberts was wrong on two points.
The decision was not based on “race” as “Japanese” and Japanese-American” in NOT A RACE. It is a description of people who come from a certain country, with a specific language and culture.
Also, these were not “concentration camps” in the sense of the original meaning of those words re the Nazis (and even the Communists who had them during WW2). They were “internment camps” but only for the Japanese/Americans who were interned from the West Coast. Most other Japanese/Americans, esp. on the East Coast were not bothered for the most part.
IT was a stupid military decision, backed by FDR and his stacked, racist Supreme Court that put these people in the camps.
J.Edgar Hoover opposed it as not necessary and a leader of the Immigration Department also opposed it. They were ignored by FDR, the Supremes and the military.
Yep - I guess they will try to claim that race and nationality are synonymous as their next ploy to stop travel bans - would be a great popcorn event....
I'm glad the current U.S. Supreme Court has repudiated a needless and overtly Tyrannical federal policy which effectively obliterated equal protection under the law on the basis of national descent and/or ethnicity—for U.S. citizens, not immigrants—and, hopefully, we will never experience such a thing again.
Except for Muslims, of course...</s?> What gives me pause is that those FReepers who think this was "OK" are advocating for such an expansive exercise of Federal prerogative (albeit in time of War) that it effectively grants government the power to detain, relocate, and confine American citizens without due process, on an essentially arbitrary basis.
I agree with the Supreme Court overturning this decision—because the Constitution can (and should) never be construed in such a way as to create a situation in which the Federal government possesses or exercises de facto plenary power in areas that are not part of the rights explicitly enumerated to it in the Constitution.
Obviously an exception might be justified for certain groups who present a "clear and present danger" to the nation—such as groups whose stated goal is the violent overthrow of the United States, and the consequent elimination of the Constitution, followed by the imposition of overt Tyranny—like Muslims, who wish to impose Sharia Law, for instance...
There was one a few miles north of Moab, Utah; too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moab,_Utah#Early_years
Any reason why this article is dated 2016?
Some of the concrete building floors are still in place by the side of the road...
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.71259,-109.6996446,152m/data=!3m1!1e3
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