On this day, March 30, 1942, 227 residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington, were rounded up.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Thu Mar 30, 2023, 07:00 AM - Edit history (1)

Mon Jan 30, 2023: On this day, January 30, 1919, Fred Korematsu was born.

Wed Mar 30, 2022: On this day, March 30, 1942, 227 residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington, were rounded up.

Local News

A1 Revisited: The Seattle Times’ coverage of the 1942 removal of 227 Bainbridge residents left a harmful legacy

March 27, 2022 at 6:00 am Updated March 27, 2022 at 5:21 pm



1 of 6 | Crowds jam Seattle’s Marion Street pedestrian overpass to witness the U.S. Army’s mass removal of all Japanese American residents of Bainbridge Island on March 30, 1942. Soldiers had led them onto the ferry, and in Seattle they were put on a train bound for California. The Times did not publish this picture then. (The Associated Press)

By Naomi Ishisaka
Seattle Times columnist

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.

Sometimes the only way forward is to look back.

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the first removals of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast. Starting with 227 residents of Bainbridge Island on March 30, 1942, women, men and children were forced to leave their jobs, schools, homes and the lives they knew for an uncertain future. By the end, 120,000 Japanese Americans — two-thirds of them U.S. citizens — would be incarcerated in desolate camps in remote regions primarily in the Western interior during World War II.

Today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 and the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans is widely seen as one of the country’s grossest violations of civil liberties. But in the years leading up to it, the U.S. media’s anti-Japanese fear mongering, racism and war hysteria created a rationale for the suspension of civil rights that was accepted by the public.

A rare number of media outlets — most notably the Bainbridge Island Review — took a principled stand against incarceration. Others, including The Seattle Times, did not. Eight decades later, Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen called that decision a “low point” in the paper’s history.

Today we launch a project called A1 Revisited, scrutinizing our coverage of historic moments — starting with the day Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from Bainbridge — to begin to be accountable for the impact of past mistakes on our region.

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[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson's dissent in Korematsu v. United States

Wed Mar 30, 2022: Jackson and Korematsu v. United States

Robert H. Jackson



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Jackson and Korematsu v. United States

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, there was great suspicion surrounding Japanese-Americans, particularly those residing on the West Coast of the United States. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, giving the War Department permission to declare some zones "military zones" in which they could prohibit certain people from accessing prescribed areas. With this executive order, the War Department was able to declare that all United States citizens of Japanese ancestry were prohibited from areas in California that were deemed unsafe for Japanese-American habitation for national security purposes, and it forced them into internment camps.

Fred Korematsu, born to Japanese parents on American soil, believed that this was an unconstitutional infringement on an individual's civil liberty. The question that came before the Supreme Court was whether the Executive and Legislative branches went beyond their war powers by depriving citizens of rights with no criminal basis.

Jackson's dissent

The Supreme Court decided that the President and Congress did not stretch their war powers too far by choosing national security over an individual's rights in a time of war. Justice Hugo Black wrote the majority opinion for this case, and Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion. The opening paragraph of Jackson's dissent illustrated his view of the case:

Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity, and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here, he is not law-abiding and well- disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.

Jackson warned of the danger that this great allowance of executive power presented, through the War Department's ability to deprive individuals of their rights in favor of national security in time of war:

But if we cannot confine military expedients by the Constitution, neither would I distort the Constitution to approve all that the military may deem expedient. That is what the Court appears to be doing, whether consciously or not. I cannot say, from any evidence before me, that the orders of General DeWitt were not reasonably expedient military precautions, nor could I say that they were. But even if they were permissible military procedures, I deny that it follows that they are constitutional. If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say that any military order will be constitutional, and have done with it.

Jackson was not concerned in evaluating the validity of DeWitt's claim that the internment of Japanese citizens on the West Coast was necessary for national security purposes, but whether this would set a precedent of war-time racial discrimination that would be used to strip individual liberties.

But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principles of racial discrimination in criminal procedure, and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking, and expands it to new purposes.

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[Docreed2003]

2. What an incredible dissent! Could have just as easily been written today

Ty mahatmakanejeeves

[wnylib]

3. Justice Jackson was also the Chief Justice presiding over

the Nuremberg trials of Nazis for war crimes. He was a native of western NY.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. On this day, March 30, 1954, Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson suffered a massive heart attack

Death and legacy

On March 30, 1954, Jackson suffered a massive heart attack. He was confined to the hospital until May 17 when he returned to the Court. He remained functioning in his position as Justice until October 4, 1954. On Saturday, October 9, 1954, Jackson had another heart attack. At 11:45 a.m. he died at age 62.

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