Supreme Court denunciation of ruling upholding WWII internment bittersweet, Japanese Americans say

The following article by Teresa Watanabe was posted on the Los Angeles Times website June 26, 2018:

Fred Korematsu, whose legal challenge of the WWII internment orders was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944, at his family nursery (third from left). Credit: POV: Of Civil Wrongs and Rights

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 — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — 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. Continue reading “Supreme Court denunciation of ruling upholding WWII internment bittersweet, Japanese Americans say”