Renewing the spirit of civil rights
By Holly Fujie
President, State Bar of California
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Fujie |
On Dec. 7, 1941, my grandfather, Koichi Suzuki, was removed from his home
by FBI agents. He, along with Japanese American leaders from throughout the
United States, were not allowed to return to their homes until after the end
of World War II. My grandfather left behind three motherless children under
the age of 16 with no other relatives in the country and no resources to support
themselves. Only through the kindness of neighbors were my 14-year-old mother
and her brother and sister able to survive until they, too, were forced by
Executive Order 9066 into "Relocation Centers" – first temporary quarters consisting
of a horse stall at Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno and then a permanent center
with armed sentries and guard towers in the desert at Topaz, Utah.
My grandfather was no subversive for his native Japan. He was the principal
of the Japanese language school in San Francisco. He was never charged with
any crime, and in fact he was asked, and agreed, to take on the job of teaching
the Japanese language to U.S. naval officers at the Navy's training facility
in Boulder, Colo. And yet he, his American-born children, as well as my U.S.
citizen future father – then a UC Berkeley accounting student– and his family,
together with 110,000 other US citizens and Japanese immigrants, were incarcerated
without accusation and without trial by the American government for years in
inhospitable circumstances and hostile environments. They lost their property,
their position in society and their liberty based upon racial hatred and wartime
hysteria. Neither Italian nor German nationals or their offspring were similarly
incarcerated during the war, although the United States was also at war with
their ancestors' homelands.
In the end, only 10 people were ever convicted of spying for Japan during
World War II – and they were all Caucasian.
Some Japanese Americans sought relief from these unfair actions in the courts.
Fred Korematsu is perhaps the best known, and his case (Korematsu v. United
States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)) was the first case in which the Supreme Court
applied the strict scrutiny standard to racial discrimination. It was also
one of only a very few cases in which the court has held that the government
met the standard. It held that the government's alleged need to protect against
espionage outweighed Fred Korematsu's individual rights and the rights of Americans
of Japanese descent.
Justice Frank Murphy filed an impassioned dissent, stating that the forced
relocation of Japanese "falls into the ugly abyss of racism." He compared the
reasoning used to support the evacuation to that of "the abhorrent and despicable
treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation
is now pledged to destroy," i.e., Nazi Germany. He ended his dissent by stating:
"I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination
in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatsoever 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 the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution."
Almost 40 years later, a team of California lawyers led by Dale Minami and
the Asian Law Caucus fought for and obtained from the U.S. District Court for
the Northern District of California – ironically by a judge of South Asian
ancestry, Judge Marilyn Patel – the reversal of Fred Korematsu's conviction
for refusing to be sent to a relocation center, as well as the convictions
of Minoru Yasui (Yasui v. United States, 320 U.S. 115 (1943)) and Gordon
Hirabayashi (320 U.S. 81 (1943)) for violations of curfews applied only to
those of Japanese ancestry, on writs of coram nobis. The court based its reversal
on the ground that "there is substantial support in the record that the government
deliberately omitted relevant information and provided misleading information
in papers before the court" that was critical to the Supreme Court's original
decision.
Specifically, the district court held that the government had suppressed information
that the purported military justification for the exclusion and internment
of Japanese Americans was, even according to Department of Justice officials
writing during the war, based upon "willful historical inaccuracies and intentional
falsehoods." In other words, the government had deliberately misled the court
in order to justify its actions.
Sixty-seven years after my grandfather was taken from his family, and 20 years
after surviving Japanese American internees were granted reparations to represent
their losses during the war, most Americans wonder how this could have happened
and imagine that it could not occur again in this country. Yet the danger of
wartime hysteria still exists, as evidenced by the actions that have been taken
recently in this country in the name of the "War on Terror." With the election
of President-elect Barack Obama, a lawyer well-versed in constitutional law,
and an African American who grew up in the era of civil rights struggles, the
country will undoubtedly be expecting a renewed emphasis on the preservation
of the human and civil rights of all people during his administration.
As a descendant of parents and grandparents imprisoned in "relocation centers" by
their own government, I look forward to this new spirit in the American government
with great anticipation, pride and hope.
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