Question

The quote below comes from the Supreme Court ruling in Korematsu v. United States, handed down in 1944: "The properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures.... Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders—as inevitably it must—determined that they should have the power to do just this." Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0323_0214_ZO.html What security measures are being referred to in this case?

Answer 1

The security measures was the Executive Order 9066 that ordered Japanese Americans into interment camps during World War II regardless of their citizenship.

This happened in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Military areas were created on the West Coast and they became exclusion zones. The Japanese were seen as the country's biggest enemies and accused of espionage and warfare against the States. The Japanese, many of them American citizens, were taken away from their places of residence and forcibly put into interment camps, as the U.S. feared another attack and the country was seized by war histeria.

Fred Korematsu was a Japanese-American who opposed the 9066 order. He stated that the order was unconstitutional and violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. He lost his case.