The case involved Frank Korematsu, a Japanese American man, who was convicted for defying an order to report to an internment camp during World War II. The Supreme Court upheld the exclusion order, ruling that the government's need to protect national security outweighed individual rights. The majority said the exclusion of Japanese Americans was justified by the danger of espionage and sabotage. Three justices dissented, arguing the order was based solely on ancestry and without evidence of disloyalty. The ruling established that the government could exclude and forcibly relocate people based on race during wartime.

1. Noranit Narapanya, Alicia Wade, Melissa Vela, Gloria Vosu, Kelly Zhou<br />Case Name: Korematsu vs. United States<br />Case Date: December 18th, 1944<br />Chief Justice: Hugo Black<br />Details of Case: Prejudice against immigrants from Asia had been longstanding on the West Coast when World War II broke out following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Within a few weeks the demand spread that Japanese Americans, both naturalized citizens as well as those born in the United States, any of whom might be \"
saboteurs\"
or \"
spies,\"
be removed from the West Coast before the Japanese invaded. The fact that no proof existed that a single one of these people constituted a threat to the United States made no difference. In 1942, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the Secretary of War to designate parts of the country as \"
military areas\"
from which any and all persons might be excluded, and in which travel restrictions might be imposed. A few weeks later General John L. DeWitt, in charge of the Western Defense Command, designated the entire Pacific coast as a military area because of its susceptibility to attack. Curfews were established, and Japanese Americans were at first prohibited from leaving the area, and then from being in the area. The only way Japanese Americans could comply with these contradictory orders was to submit to evacuation to relocation centers in the interior. The relocation program, in which 110,000 men, women and children were sent to what were in essence prison camps, constituted the most serious invasion of individual rights by the federal government in the nation's history. The entire operation proceeded on the racist assumption that anyone of Japanese ancestry was a traitor. Frank Korematsu, a US-born man of Japanese descent, resided in San Leandro, California, a “Military Area”. He knowingly defied the order to be relocated to a relocation camp for Japanese Americans. Korematsu was arrested and convicted. Korematsu believed the act was unconstitutional. <br />Synopsis of Majority Opinion: The Supreme Court upheld the order excluding persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast war zone during World War II. Justice Hugo Black delivered the opinion of the Court. He began with the observation that legal restrictions on the rights of a single racial group will always be “suspect” and that “courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny.” However, they are not necessarily unconstitutional. The exclusion order imposed hardships “upon a large group of American citizens. But hardships are part of war. Compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.” <br />Synopsis of Dissenting Opinion: Three justices, Frank Murphy, Owen J. Roberts and Robert H. Jackson dissented. Justice Owen Roberts wrote in his dissent that this “is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States.” Justice Robert Jackson noted that comparable burdens were not imposed upon descendants of the other nationalities (German, Italian) with who the United States was also at war.<br />Constitutional Significance: The Supreme Court ruled that the United States government had the right to exclude and forcibly move people from designated areas based on their race. The decision was 6-3 that the need to protect the United States from espionage and other wartime acts was more important than Korematsu's individual rights. Even though Korematsu's conviction was eventually overturned in 1983, the Korematsu ruling concerning the creation of exclusion orders has never been overturned.<br />