KOREMATSU v. US.

HOW THIS COURT CASE CAME TO BE!

• "As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held
• In a prison or concentration camps without trial or hearing. I would like to see
• The government admit that they were wrong and do something about it, so this
• Will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color."
• - Fred Korematsu (1982).

WHAT HAPPENED???

• Okay, so when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, America
• was fearful of another attack. As a form of security, president
• Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a executive order that placed Japanese and
• Japanese American into interment camps. Fred Korematsu was a Japanese
• American, who had claimed to be Mexican American in order to avoid the camps

WHAT DID KOREMATSU DOOOOO??

• Fred Korematsu was arrested and accused of violation of the executive
• order. Korematsu was outraged and said that the President, Congress and military
• had no power to order relocation and claimed that they were discriminating
• against him. The Government retaliated, saying the internment camps were
• necessary. The federal appeals courts sided with the government.

CONTINUATION, MAH HOMIES?

• The case was brought to the Supreme Court and the court also sided with the
• government, saying the need to protect the country was greater than those of individual
• rights.

NO GIVING UP!

HUGO BLACK

• Justice Hugo Black delivered his opinion to the courts, saying that any member
• who is not originally of American decent is and will always be "suspect" and must
• be treated with the highest of security. He argued that the internment camps for
• the Japanese were not unconstitutional, but simply a necessary precaution.

ROBERT JACKSON

• Justice Robert Jackson sided with Fred Korematsu in the Supreme Court,
• observing that there was no internment camps or ill behavior being giving to those
• Americans who are of German or Italian decent, both of whom America was in a
• war with at the time. He ruled the treatment if the Japanese Americans to be
• unconstitutional. Owen Roberts backed Robert up, saying ethnicity shouldn't be looked at

MAJORITY RULED!

THE KOREMATSU CASE WORRIED MANY CITIZENS

CONGRESS TOOK AWAY THE INTERMENT CAMPS IN THE EARLY 1980'S

• They also issued a order form, stating that the military no longer have to power
• to make calls in such ordeals, such as the situation with the interment camps for the Japanese
• In 1988, Congress issued a formal apology for loss of lives, property and the suffering.
• There were 60,000 survivors, and in 1989, President Clinton presented Fred Korematsu
• with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Fred Korematsu's work had paid off, and he was now free

WORK CITED

• http://www.streetlaw.org/en/landmark/cases/korematsu_v_united_states
• http://www.dictionary/reference.com
• http://www.squirrelnet.com
• http://www.infoplease.com/us/supreme-court/cases/ar18.html
• My friends, Emiko and Ankio, whose grandfather was sent to an internment camp.