It is often said that Karma is a bitch. Well, she has returned with a vengeance on the American people for what the U.S. government and one general did to Japanese-Americans during World War II. The forced “lock-downs”, business closings, arrests for peaceable assembly and church worship by the COVID Gestapo are eerily similar to the Japanese-American “relocation” hysteria of WW II. While we are all painfully familiar with the Hitleresque measures imposed on us by True Believers during these last months (and who knows how many more?), most are only vaguely familiar with the mass imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Most white Americans probably felt forcibly removing Japanese-American citizens from the West Coast of the United States and “interning” them in “re-location” camps deeper into the interior was totally justified by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. So did the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court at the time. However, there were dissenting opinions – as there are today regarding this flu season – however gagged by the media.
There are so many parallels between Korematsu v. United States and COVID-19 “ policies” I won’t belabor them – trusting in your intelligence (and my emphatic editing) to see them. Maybe there is a Korematsu, a Justice Murphy, or a Justice Jackson out there who can put a stop to this putsch. .
Korematsu v. United States 323 U.S. 214
Mr. Justice Black delivered the opinion of the court.
The petitioner, an American citizen of Japanese descent, was convicted in a Federal District Court for remaining in San Leandro, California, a “Military Area”, contrary to Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the Commanding General of the Western Command, U.S. Army, [insert Department of Homeland Security, your state governor] which directed that after May 9, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry should be excluded from that area. No question was raised as to petitioner’s loyalty to the United States. …the importance of the constitutional question involved caused us to grant certiorari.
It should be noted, to begin with, that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group [nation’s entire population] are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional. It is to say that courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny. Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial [or political / economic] antagonism never can.
In the instant case, prosecution of the petitioner was begun by information charging violation of an Act of Congress, March 21, 1942, 56 Stat. 173, which provides that:
“Whoever shall enter, remain in, leave or commit any act in any military area or military zone prescribed, under the authority of an executive order of the President, or by the Secretary of War, or by any military commander designated by the secretary of war, contrary to the restrictions applicable to any such area or zone or contrary to the order of the secretary of war or any such military commander, shall, if it appears that he knew or should have known of the existence and extent of the restrictions or order and that his act was in violation thereof, be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be liable to a fine of not to exceed $5,000 or to imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, for each offense.”
Exclusion Order No. 14 which the petitioner knowingly and admittedly violated was one of a number of military orders and proclamations [policies], all of which were substantially based upon Executive Order No. 9066, 7 Fed. Reg. 1407. That order, issued after we were at war with Japan, declared that “the successful prosecution of the war with Japan [COVID] requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national defense material, national defense premises, and national-defense utilities…”
In Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, we sustained a conviction obtained for violation of a curfew order. The Hirabayashi conviction and this one thus rest on the same 1942 congressional act and the same basic executive and military orders, all of which were aimed at the twin dangers of espionage and sabotage [infection and death].
…we are unable to conclude that it was beyond the war power of Congress and the executive to exclude those of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast war area at the time they did. True, exclusion from the area in which one’s home is located is a far greater deprivation than constant confinement to the home from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Nothing short of apprehension by the proper military authorities of the gravest imminent danger to the public safety can constitutionally justify either.
Mr. Justice Murphy, dissenting.
It must be conceded that the military and naval situation in the spring of 1942 was such as to generate a real fear of invasion of the Pacific Coast, accompanied by fears of sabotage and espionage in that area. The military command was therefore justified in adopting all reasonable means necessary to combat these dangers. … But the exclusion, either temporarily or permanently, of all persons with Japanese blood in their veins has no such reasonable relation. And that relation is lacking because the exclusion order necessarily must rely for its reasonableness upon the assumption that all persons of Japanese ancestry may have a dangerous tendency to commit [infection] sabotage and espionage and to aid our Japanese enemy in other ways. It is difficult to believe that reason, logic, or experience could be marshaled in support of such an assumption.
That this forced exclusion was the result in good measure of this erroneous assumption of racial guilt (infection) rather than bona fide military (medical) 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 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 [medical evidence] furnished reasonable ground for their exclusion [lockdown, closure] as a group.
Justification for the exclusion [lockdown / shutdown] is sought, instead, mainly upon the questionable racial and sociological [political] grounds not ordinarily within the realm of expert military judgment, supplemented by certain semi-military conclusions drawn from an unwarranted use of circumstantial evidence. Individuals of Japanese ancestry are condemned because they are said to be “a large, unassimilated, tight-knit racial group, bound to an enemy nation by strong ties of race, culture, customs and religion.” They are claimed to be given to “emperor-worshiping ceremonies” and to “dual-citizenship.” Japanese language schools and allegedly pro-Japanese organizations are cited as evidence of possible group disloyalty, together with facts as to certain persons being educated and residing at length in Japan. It is intimated that many of these individuals deliberately resided “adjacent to strategic points,” thus enabling them to carry into execution a tremendous program of sabotage on a mass scale should any considerable number of them have been inclined to do so.”
The need for protective custody is also asserted. The report refers without identity to “numerous incidents of violence [infection]” as well as other admittedly unverified or cumulative incidents. …
The main reasons relied upon by those responsible for the forced evacuation [lockdown / shutdown], therefore, do not prove a reasonable relation between the group characteristics of Japanese-Americans and the dangers of invasion, sabotage, and espionage [infection, death]. The reasons, instead, appear to be largely an accumulation of much of the misinformation, half-truths, and insinuations that for years have been directed against Japanese Americans by people with racial and economic prejudices – the same people who have been among the foremost advocates of the evacuation [lockdown]. A military (medical) judgment based upon such racial and sociological (political) considerations is not entitled to the great weight ordinarily given the judgments based upon strictly military considerations. Especially this is so when every charge relative to race, religion, culture, geographical location, and legal and economic status [morphological history] has been substantially discredited by independent studies made by experts in these matters. …
No adequate reason is given for the failure to treat these Japanese Americans on an individual basis by holding investigations and hearings to separate the loyal from the disloyal, as was done in the case of persons of German and Italian ancestry (a hundred years of flu seasons). It is asserted merely that the loyalties of this group “were unknown and time was of the essence.” Yet nearly four months elapsed after Pearl Harbor before the first exclusion order was issued; nearly eight months went by until the last order was issued; and the last of these “subversive” persons was not actually removed until almost eleven months had elapsed. Leisure and deliberation (Politics) seem to have been more of the essence than the speed. And the fact that conditions were not such as to warrant a declaration of martial law adds strength to the belief that the factors of time and military (medical) necessity were not as urgent as they have been represented to be.
Moreover, there is no adequate proof that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military and naval intelligence services (states, CDC, local health officials) did not have the espionage and sabotage situation well in hand during this long period. Nor is there any denial of the fact that not one person of Japanese ancestry was accused or convicted of espionage or sabotage after Pearl Harbor while they were still free, a fact which is some evidence of the loyalty of the vast majority of these individuals and of the effectiveness of the established methods of combatting these evils. It seems incredible that under these circumstances it would have been impossible to hold loyalty hearings for the mere 112,000 persons involved – or at least for the 70,000 American citizens – especially when a large part of this number represented children and elderly men and women. Any inconvenience that may have accompanied an attempt to conform to procedural due process cannot be said to justify violations of constitutional rights of individuals.
I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must accordingly be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment and as entitled to all their rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
Mr. Justice Black dissenting.
Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from this matter involved here he is not law-abiding and well-disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consisted 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.
Even more unusual is the series of military orders which made this conduct a crime. They forbid such a one to remain, and they also forbid him to leave. ….
A citizen’s presence in the locality, however, was made a crime only if his parents were of Japanese birth. Had Korematsu been one of four – the others being, say, a German alien enemy, and Italian alien enemy, and a citizen of American-born ancestors convicted of treason but out on parole – only Korematsu’s presence would have violated the order. The difference between their innocence and his crime would result, not from anything he did, said, or thought different than they but only in that he was born of different racial stock.
Now, if any fundamental assumption underlies our system, it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable. Even if all of one’s antecedents had been convicted of treason, the Constitution forbids its penalties to be visited upon him, for it provides that “no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the person attained.” But here is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because the prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign. If Congress in peacetime legislation should enact such a criminal law, I should suppose this Court would refuse to enforce it.
But the “law” which this prisoner is convicted of disregarding is not found in an act of Congress but ina military order [arbitrary governor “policy” / “code’]. Neither the act of Congress nor the executive order of the President, nor both together, would afford a basis for this conviction. It rests on the orders of General DeWitt [Governor Ducey, etc.]. It is said that if the military commander had reasonable grounds for promulgating the orders, they are constitutional and become law, and the Court is required to enforce them. [OMG!] There are several reasons why I cannot subscribe to this doctrine.
…The armed services must protect a society, not merely its Constitution…..No court can require such a commander in such circumstances to act as a reasonable man. [LMAO!] But a commander in temporarily focusing the life of a community on defense is carrying out a military program; he is not making law in the sense the courts know the term.
But if we cannot confine military expedients by the Constitution, neither would I distort the Constitution to approve all that the military may deem expedient. That is what the Court appears to be doing, whether consciously or not. I cannot say, from any evidence before me, that the orders of General DeWitt were not reasonably expedient military precautions, nor could I say that they were. But even if they were permissible military [CDC] procedures, I deny that it follows that they are constitutional. If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say than any military [CDC] order will be constitutional and have done with it.
…once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principal of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting [or of isolating] 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 embeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.
A military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution. There it has regenerative power of its own image. Nothing better illustrates this danger than does the Court’s opinion in this case.
…a civil court cannot be made to enforce an order which violates constitutional limitations even if it is a reasonable exercise of military authority. The courts can exercise only the judicial power, can apply only the law, and must abide by the Constitution, or they cease to be civil courts and become instruments of military [CDC] policy.”
[And for those who think the U.S. military will defend American citizens against tyranny from their own government – think again. Who signs their paycheck?]
“Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.” – Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Charles Evan Hughes, A.L.A. Schecter, Poultry Corporation et al. v. United States, May 27, 1935 (known as the “Black Monday” of FDR’s “New Deal” ruling it a usurpation of separation of powers)
GOOGLE: “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” a legal brief presented from the findings of the German High Commission on COVID.
