Discuss supreme court case Korematsu v. United States (1944) Essay

Discuss supreme court case Korematsu v. United States (1944) - Essay Example This was quite an irrational decision because there was no evidence that these individuals were a threat to the national security of US. Walter Lippmann a well renowned columnist stated that no individual is allowed to conduct business and no individual has a right to obtain residence during a war. During the month of February of 1942, the president of US, Roosevelt accepted and signed the Executive Order 9066 (Niiya, 1993, p.16). This order provided the secretary of war with the authority to recognize certain areas as war zones and due to this label the people living in that area may be removed and restrictions of travelling within that area were even applied. Later, the in charge of the Western Defense Command labeled the entire region of the Pacific Coast as area of military due to its higher probability of being attacked (Bangarth, 2008, p.22). This led to implementation of curfews after which Japanese Americans were initially restricted to leave the area and later evacuated from the region. Later these individuals were held in prison camps because it was believed that all Japanese Americans are traitors. These actions taken by the US government were challenged in the case of Korematsu v. United States (1944) and the outcome of this case was that although the justices of t his case accepted that it was necessary for the military to relocate the Japanese Americans and the court accepted the decision taken by the government to detain Korematsu (Polenberg, 2000, p.197). The court legalized the actions taken by the government because the court believed that the action was taken as US was at war with Japan and it was correct to believe that Japanese American could involve in sabotage. The decision taken by the court during this case was quite significant in nature as the decision clearly stated that the government of US had the right to take any action such as evacuating people from their areas on racial basis. The decision even clearly stated that wartime