Korematsu v. United States - Significance, Korematsu Dissenters Question Constitutionality Of Detentions, Japanese American Internment Camps, Further Readings

Korematsu v. United States - Significance

Korematsu is the only case in Supreme Court history in which the Court, using a strict test for possible racial discrimination, upheld a restriction on civil liberties. The case has since been severely criticized for sanctioning racism. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese Empire brought the United States into the Second World War by attacking the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killin…

Korematsu v. United States - Further Readings

Korematsu v. United States - Korematsu Dissenters Question Constitutionality Of Detentions

Justice Black declined to consider the question of legality or morality of the internment camps. The three dissenters--Justices Roberts, Murphy, and Jackson--vigorously attacked this refusal to confront what they regarded as the real issue in the case. Justice Roberts observed that, faced with "the dilemma that he dare not remain in his home, or voluntarily leave the area, without incurring crimin…

Korematsu v. United States - Japanese American Internment Camps

In the hysteria following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, federal authorities directed resident Japanese Americans to ten prisons, called internment camps, operated by the U.S. Justice Department. By July of 1942 more than 112,000 people of Japanese ancestry, approximately 70,000 of them American citizens, had been relocated to the camps where they lived for over two years. Camps …