As a child after WW II I remember our finding out that
Japanese Americans had been taken away from their homes and placed in internment
camps for “national security” reasons. Even then, young as I was, I wondered
why my family--aunts and uncles--immigrants from Germany, had not been taken away
from their homes.
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Proclamation
issued by the U.S. president September, 2017, placing entry restrictions on
people from mostly Muslim majority countries that government department reviews
concluded presented national security risks.
In 1944 the executive order to lock up Japanese Americans
had been based on one general’s report who gave the reason that “racial
characteristics” of Japanese Americans predisposed them to assist Japanese
forces and that it was impossible to distinguish loyal and disloyal members of
that racial group. The war department and navy intelligence disagreed, saying
things should be handled on an individual basis and not on a racial basis.
Nevertheless, over 100, 000
Japanese Americans were locked up. Japanese Americans fought the legality of
the executive order, particularly a Mr. Korematsu, all the way to the Supreme
Court, but he lost the case in 1944. In 1982, forty years after that executive
order had been issued, a lawyer found government documents in dusty boxes showing
there was no military reason to show Japanese Americans were a national
security threat. Mass detentions and persecutions based on ethnicity and “inability
to assimilate” were false to the core. The lawyer found Mr. Korematsu. He went
back to court. It took a long time, but in 2011, the Justice Department finally
made a confession of error in regard to the Japanese Internment camps
Today, the third version of the
Muslim ban, is carefully worded, to say there are national security concerns,
no bias; this time no religious bias. Have we not learned? Today, the bias is
not hidden in dusty boxes, but open in speeches and tweets. Nevertheless, it
has been disregarded by the Supreme Court. Thus the First Amendment of the
Constitution is disregarded.
As I child I noticed the discrepancy
between the way Japanese Americans and German (and Italian) Americans were treated
on the basis of the way they looked. Today
I am deeply concerned in the discrepancy between the way people are treated on
the basis of what they believe.
Justice Sotomayer yesterday read
the minority dissent out loud, citing the flawed 1944 Korematsu Supreme Court
case. “The United States of America is built on the Promise of religious
liberty,” she said. “The Establishment Clause guarantees religious neutrality.”
She added, “The Court’s decision today
fails to safeguard that fundamental principle.” This third version has “morphed
into a proclamation punitively based.” This new “window dressing cannot conceal
an unassailable fact. . . the strong perception that the Proclamation is
contaminated by the impermissible discriminatory animus against Islam and its
followers.” Sotomayer also said that the ban on Muslims entering the country now
“masquerades behind a façade of national security concerns.” The First
Amendment “embodies our nation’s deep commitment to religious plurality and
tolerance.”
Chief Justice Roberts renounced Justice
Sotomayer for citing the 1944 erroneously decided case. Before yesterday Korematsu’s individual
conviction had been overturned and he had received an apology from the Justice
Department but the ruling still technically stood. However yesterday Chief Justice
Roberts issued a one-line sentence finally overruling the Korematsu Supreme
Court ruling.
How ironic. I would like to believe that today’s
decisions could prevent us from repeating tragic mistakes from the past. Can
the concentration camps of my childhood really be gone? What about the belief
that some people cannot assimilate? Should they? And will we always try to keep
out others based on race, religion, ethnicity? What else? Accept executive orders
for national security reasons? Will we continue to disregard facts because of
our fears?
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