Thank you your honors. May it please the court, my name is
Natasha Robson and I will give the opening statement for my client Fred
Korematsu.
Imagine your family.
Living the ordinary life that everyone else is living. No one comments
about your race, no one treats you any different than anyone else around
you. Then one day some people that are
of your same race make a bad decision that makes a devastating impact on the
country that you love and cherish. Next thing you know and order comes out
saying that you only have nine days to pack up all of your belongings and leave
the home that you grew up in to live in a camp.
After that things only get worse. You get put on a train. Not just a
regular train where you can sit and relax, but a cattle car used for livestock.
The toilets filled to the brim with other peoples waste. The floors dyed with
excrement and toilet paper. Having to spend the nights in a horse stall when
the train came to a sop for a night. Posters are up all over the place with a face that
is said to look like yours, and you were now labeled as a terrorist because of
the way you looked. How would you feel?
One moment life seems normal and perfect, the next, you are associated
as a killer
This is a case about equal rights and racial profiling.
Having the same rights and being treated as the American citizen without being
set apart from others because of how he looked was all that Fred Korematsu
wanted. It is true that Korematsu is of
Japanese descent. It is also true that Japanese soldiers bombed Pearl Harbor. Korematsu is a second generation Japanese born
in the United States making him a Nisei and an American Citizen. No claim was ever made that Korematsu wasn’t
loyal to his country and that he wasn’t a law abiding citizen. On February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt issued executive order
9066. This order allowed for military zones to be made along the west coast.
Anyone could be moved in and out of the military zones. The president of the
United States gave the secretary of war and military commanders the power to
carry out this order. When given this
privilege General Dewitt who was the head of the Western Defense Command,
decided to take matter into his own hands and issued civilian exclusion orders
which made families of Japanese descent leave their homes report to assembly centers
from whence they were transported to internment camps. And go to certain camps .
62% of the Japanese that ended up in these camps were American citizens who got
sent away to these internment camps without a trial. The fact that there were
American citizens in these camps breaks the 14th Amendment in the
U.S. Constitution. The 14th
amendment states “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law; not deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws” So the question that stands is, By exiling all persons whether they be
American citizens or not and of Japanese descent in internment camps, is that
not breaking the 14th amendment ?
Not only is this a clear violation of our Constitution, but we will
prove today that it wasn’t justified by a compelling government interest.
To prove our point we will bring forth 5 witnesses
J Edgar Hoover who will explain to you
that having internment camps is un-necessary because the spies had already been
captured.
Francis Biddle
who will explain that even though he finally agreed to pass Executive Order
9066, his agreement came from internal and external pressure, and that he
greatly regrets his decision.
Fred Korematsu who
will say that he was only defending his rights as an American Citizen.
Curtis B, Munson
who will be testifying that that the Japanese are loyal and the threats come
from the unprotected infrastructures on the west coast and not from the
Japanese.
Ralf Lazo who
will be explaining that the camps that the Japanese were held in were not in
good condition.
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