Japanese American redress and court cases

The following article focuses on the movement to obtain redress for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and significant court cases that have shaped civil and human rights for Japanese Americans and other minorities. These cases have been the cause and/or catalyst to many changes in United States law. But mainly, they have resulted in adjusting the perception of Asian immigrants in the eyes of the American government.

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal and confinement of 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States. Some 5,500 men arrested by the FBI immediately after Pearl Harbor were already in Justice Department or Army custody, and 5,000 were able to "voluntarily" relocate outside the exclusion zone; the remaining Japanese Americans were "evacuated" from their homes and placed in isolated concentration camps over the spring of 1942. Two-thirds were U.S. citizens and half were under age 18.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the forced eviction, when Fred Korematsu's challenge to his conviction for violating an exclusion order was struck down (see below). The Court limited its decision to the validity of the orders to leave the West Coast military area, avoiding the issue of the incarceration of U.S. citizens.

...
Wikipedia