On February 19th, 1942, during the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt issued executive order 9066 giving the United States military the power to ban American citizens of Japanese descent from areas they deemed necessary. Soon after that the U.S. military built internment camps for the people of Japanese decent to be held in for the duration of the war. Fred Korematsu, an American citizen of Japanese ancestry defied the executive order by refusing to leave is home in California, after being convicted he appealed in 1944 and his case reached the Supreme Court. A 6-3 majority upheld his conviction. The decision of the Supreme Court case of Korematsu vs. The United States goes against the constitutional commitment of equal, and
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"'Korematsu ... has been convicted of an act not commonly thought a crime,' he wrote. 'It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.' The nation's wartime security concerns, he contended, were not adequate to strip Korematsu and the other internees of their constitutionally protected civil rights." ."(Konkoly, PBS.org) Korematsu was not breaking the law or committing a felony and therefore even in times of war his civil rights should remain intact. Also even if these orders could be viewed as morally reasonable in the eyes of the military in order to protect the country, civilian courts should not be able to constitutionally help the military enforce the order, the military should act on them alone. "Justice Owen Roberts wrote in his dissent that this 'is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States.'" (infoplease.com) No U.S. citizen should ever be imprisoned because of their race or ancestry. During WWII the United States was at war with a number of other countries besides Japan, including Germany, and Italy. Yet at no time were Americans who dissented from those countries imprisoned for their race or ancestry. This makes the executive order clearly racist towards the Japanese
"'Korematsu ... has been convicted of an act not commonly thought a crime,' he wrote. 'It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.' The nation's wartime security concerns, he contended, were not adequate to strip Korematsu and the other internees of their constitutionally protected civil rights." ."(Konkoly, PBS.org) Korematsu was not breaking the law or committing a felony and therefore even in times of war his civil rights should remain intact. Also even if these orders could be viewed as morally reasonable in the eyes of the military in order to protect the country, civilian courts should not be able to constitutionally help the military enforce the order, the military should act on them alone. "Justice Owen Roberts wrote in his dissent that this 'is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States.'" (infoplease.com) No U.S. citizen should ever be imprisoned because of their race or ancestry. During WWII the United States was at war with a number of other countries besides Japan, including Germany, and Italy. Yet at no time were Americans who dissented from those countries imprisoned for their race or ancestry. This makes the executive order clearly racist towards the Japanese