Just substituting ‘one injustice for another’

Japanese Americans see parallels between travel ban ruling and WWII internment.

For decades, Karen Korematsu has hoped and prayed that someday the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn its infamous 1944 decision upholding the mass incarceration of her father, Fred, and 120,000 others of Japanese descent during World War II.

But when the high court condemned that decision Tuesday, Korematsu was not overjoyed. She was disheartened.

“My heart sank,” she said. “I feel the court all over again dishonored my father and what he stood for. To me what the Supreme Court did was substitute one injustice for another.”

That’s because the court rejected the prior Korematsu ruling in a decision that upheld the Trump administration’s ban on visitors from five Muslim-majority nations as well as North Korea and some government officials from Venezuela. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited “stark parallels” between the travel ban decision and the Korematsu ruling. That didn’t sit well with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said, “Whatever rhetorical advantage the dissent may see in doing so, Korematsu has nothing to do with this case.”

Fred Korematsu, an Oakland native whose immigrant parents ran a nursery, was 23 when he was arrested in San Leandro for defying the mass incarceration orders issued after the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1941. He agreed to become a test case challenging the constitutionality of the orders, but the high court upheld them, citing military necessity.

In 1983, a federal court in San Francisco overturned Korematsu’s conviction after researchers found documents proving government misconduct — federal attorneys deliberately suppressed evidence of Japanese American innocence in arguing for the incarceration. But the high court decision has continued to stand.

For Kathy Masaoka, Tuesday’s ruling was particularly bittersweet. She began reaching out to Muslims after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks sparked Islamophobia that reminded her of the World War II racism that forced her family into concentration camps in Manzanar and Gila River, Ariz.

Since then, she and other Japanese American organizations have developed strong ties with Muslim groups, co-hosting iftars — the meal to break the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan — and joint pilgrimages to Manzanar. The two communities launched #VigilantLOVE, a Los Angeles coalition to support arts, healing and civil rights after the 2015 terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris.

“It’s like the court is trying to create a wedge between Japanese Americans and Muslims by saying the two cases are different but to us they are basically the same,” said Masaoka, cochair of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. “The Supreme Court failed Japanese Americans in [1944] and has failed the country again.”

Korematsu said her father would probably take no comfort in Tuesday’s decision.

He had always feared his case would be used to justify racial profiling, she said. She recalled standing in his San Leandro kitchen after Sept. 11, telling him the George W. Bush administration had just cited his case as a possible precedent to round up Muslims.

“My father was thoroughly disgusted,” she said.

“In 1944, it was about racial profiling and in 2018 it’s about racial and religious profiling,” Korematsu said. “I’m very upset and I think my daddy would have felt the same way.”