Shame
By It’s not to my credit that it took the best April. Fool’s. joke. ever. to remind me, but Fred Korematsu has passed away. We should never forget that Korematsu was one of countless people whose most basic rights were taken for nothing more than their ethnic heritage. And nor is this something that American liberals have any reason to feel smug about; some of the greatest liberals of the 20th century–FDR, Earl Warren, Hugo Black, William O. Douglas–either perpetrated the crime or legitimated it. And if you haven’t already, make sure to read Eric Muller and Greg Robinson’s superb dissection of the justifications of racism offered just last year by the appalling Malkin.
“This exclusion of ‘all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien,’ from the Pacific Coast area on a plea of military necessity in the absence of martial law ought not to be approved. Such exclusion goes over ‘the very brink of constitutional power’ and falls into the ugly abyss of racism….
That this forced exclusion was the result in good measure of this erroneous assumption of racial guilt rather than bona fide military necessity is evidenced by the Commanding General’s Final Report on the evacuation from the Pacific Coast area. In it he refers to all individuals of Japanese descent as ‘subversive,’ as belonging to ‘an enemy race’ whose ‘racial strains are undiluted,’ and as constituting ‘over 112,000 potential enemies … at large today’ along the Pacific Coast. In support of this blanket condemnation of all persons of Japanese descent, however, no reliable evidence is cited to show that such individuals were generally disloyal,or had generally so conducted themselves in this area as to constitute a special menace to defense installations or war industries, or had otherwise by their behavior furnished reasonable ground for their exclusion as a group.
Justification for the exclusion is sought, instead, mainly upon questionable racial and sociological grounds not ordinarily within the realm of expert military judgment, supplemented by certain semi-military conclusions drawn from an unwarranted use of circumstantial evidence. “
–Frank Murphy, dissenting, Korematsu v. United States“
Much is said of the danger to liberty from the Army program for deporting and detaining these citizens of Japanese extraction. But a judicial construction of the due process clause that will sustain this order is a farm more subtle blow to liberty than the promulgation of the order itself. A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. Even during that period a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.”
–Robert Jackson, dissenting, Korematsu v. United States