I Wondered Why My Family Members Had Not Been Taken Away From Their Homes

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?