Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/320/81
Timestamp: 2014-03-08 21:51:17
Document Index: 555982798

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 239', '§ 346', '§ 2169', '§ 703', '§ 213', '§ 61', '§ 10581', '§ 5702', '§ 3']

KIYOSHI HIRABAYASHI v. UNITED STATES. | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews KIYOSHI HIRABAYASHI v. UNITED STATES.
320 U.S. 81 (63 S.Ct. 1375, 87 L.Ed. 1774)
Argued: May 10, 11, 1943.
[HTML] Messrs. Frank L. Walters, of Seattle, Wash., and Harold Evans, of Philadelphia, Pa., for Hirabayashi.
Argument of Counsel from page 82 intentionally omitted
On appeal the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit certified to us questions of law upon which it desired instructions for the decision of the case. See § 239 of the Judicial Code as amended, 28 U.S.C. 346, 28 U.S.C.A. § 346. Acting under the authority conferred upon us by that section we ordered that the entire record be certified to this Court so that we might proceed to a decision of the matter in controversy in the same manner as if it had been brought here by appeal. 63 S.Ct. 860, 87 L.Ed -. Since the sentences of three months each imposed by the district court on the two counts were ordered to run concurrently, it will be unnecessary to consider questions raised with respect to the first count if we find that the conviction on the second count, for violation of the curfew order, must be sustained. Brooks v. United States, 267 U.S. 432, 441, 45 S.Ct. 345, 347, 69 L.Ed. 699, 37 A.L.R. 1407; Gorin v. United States, 312 U.S. 19, 33, 61 S.Ct. 429, 436, 85 L.Ed. 488.
Executive Order No. 9066, promulgated in time of war for the declared purpose of prosecuting the war by protecting national defense resources from sabotage and espionage, and the Act of March 21, 1942, ratifying and confirming the Executive Order, were each an exercise of the power to wage war conferred on the Congress and on the President, as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, by Articles I and II of the Constitution. See Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 25, 26, 63 S.Ct. 2, 9, 10, 87 L.Ed. -. We have no occasion to consider whether the President, acting alone, could lawfully have made the curfew order in question, or have authorized others to make it. For the President's action has the support of the Act of Congress, and we are immediately concerned with the question whether it is within the constitutional power of the national government, through the joint action of Congress and the Executive, to impose this restriction as an emergency war measure. The exercise of that power here involves no question of martial law or trial by military tribunal. Cf. Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 18 L.Ed. 281; Ex parte Quirin, supra. Appellant has been tried and convicted in the civil courts and has been subjected to penalties prescribed by Congress for the acts committed.
The war power of the national government is 'the power to wage war successfully'. See Charles Evans Hughes, War Powers Under the Constitution, 42 A.B.A.Rep. 232, 238. It extends to every matter and activity so related to war as substantially to affect its conduct and progress. The power is not restricted to the winning of victories in the field and the repulse of enemy forces. It embraces every phase of the national defense, including the protection of war materials and the members of the armed forces from injury and from the dangers which attend the rise, prosecution and progress of war. Prize Cases, supra; Miller v. United States, 11 Wall. 268, 303, 314, 20 L.Ed. 135; Stewart v. Kahn, 11 Wall. 493, 506, 507, 20 L.Ed. 176; Selective Draft Law Cases (Arver v. United States), 245 U.S. 366, 38 S.Ct. 159, 62 L.Ed. 349, L.R.A.1918C, 361, Ann.Cas.1918B, 856; McKinley v. United States, 249 U.S. 397, 39 S.Ct. 324, 63 L.Ed. 668; United States v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605, 622, 623, 51 S.Ct. 570, 574, 75 L.Ed. 1302. Since the Constitution commits to the Executive and to Congress the exercise of the war power in all the vicissitudes and conditions of warfare, it has necessarily given them wide scope for the exercise of judgment and discretion in determining the nature and extent of the threatened injury or danger and in the selection of the means for resisting it. Ex parte Quirin, supra, 317 U.S. 28, 29, 63 S.Ct. 10, 11, 87 L.Ed. -; cf. Prize Cases, supra, 2 Black 670, 17 L.Ed. 459; Martin v. Mott, 12 Wheat. 19, 29, 6 L.Ed. 537. Where, as they did here, the conditions call for the exercise of judgment and discretion and for the choice of means by those branches of the Government on which the Constitution has placed the responsibility of warmaking, it is not for any court to sit in review of the wisdom of their action or substitute it judgment for theirs.
When the orders were promulgated there was a vast concentration, within Military Areas No. 1 and 2, of installations and facilities for the production of military equipment, especially ships and airplanes. Important Army and Navy bases were located in California and Washington. Approximately one-fourth of the total value of the major aircraft contracts then let by Government procurement officers were to be performed in the State of California. California ranked second, and Washington fifth, of all the states of the Union with respect to the value of shipbuilding contracts to be performed.
In the critical days of March, 1942, the danger to our war production by sabotage and espionage in this area seems obvious. The German invasion of the Western European countries had given ample warning to the world of the menace of the 'fifth column.' Espionage by persons in sympathy with the Japanese Government had been found to have been particularly effective in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
At a time of threatened Japanese attack upon this country, the nature of our inhabitants' attachments to the Japanese enemy was consequently a matter of grave concern. Of the 126,000 persons of Japanese descent in the United States, citizens and non-citizens, approximately 112,000 resided in California, Oregon and Washington at the time of the adoption of the military regulations. Of these approximately two-thirds are citizens because born in the United States. Not only did the great majority of such persons reside within the Pacific Coast states but they were concentrated in or near three of the large cities, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles, all in Military Area No. 1.
In addition, large numbers of children of Japanese parentage are sent to Japanese language schools outside the regular hours of public schools in the locality. Some of these schools are generally believed to be sources of Japanese nationalistic propaganda, cultivating allegiance to Japan.
Considerable numbers, estimated to be approximately 10,000, of American-born children of Japanese parentage have been sent to Japan for all or a part of their education.
Congress and the Executive, including the military commander, could have attributed special significance, in its bearing on the loyalties of persons of Japane e descent, to the maintenance by Japan of its system of dual citizenship. Children born in the United States of Japanese alien parents, and especially those children born before December 1, 1924, are under many circumstances deemed, by Japanese law, to be citizens of Japan.
No official census of those whom Japan regards as having thus retained Japanese citizenship is available, but there is ground for the belief that the number is large.
The large number of resident alien Japanese, approximately one-third of all Japanese inhabitants of the country, are of mature years and occupy positions of influence in Japanese communities. The association of influential Japanese residents with Japanese Consulates has been deemed a ready means for the dissemination of propaganda and for the maintenance of the influence of the Japanese Government with the Japanese population in this country.
But appellant insists that the exercise of the power is inappropriate and unconstitutional because it discriminates against citizens of Japanese ancestry, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Fifth Amendment contains no equal protection clause and it restrains only such discriminatory legislation by Congress as amounts to a denial of due process. Detroit Bank v. United States, 317 U.S. 329, 337, 338, 63 S.Ct. 297, 301, 87 L.Ed. -, and cases cited. Congress may hit at a particular danger where it is seen, without providing for others which are not so evident or so urgent. Keokee Consol. Coke Co. v. Taylor, 234 U.S. 224, 227, 34 S.Ct. 856, 58 L.Ed. 1288.
Our investigation here does not go beyond the inquiry whether, in the light of all the relevant circumstances preceding and attending their promulgation, the challenged orders and statute afforded a reasonable basis for the action taken in imposing the curfew. We cannot close our eyes to the fact, demonstrated by experience, that in time of war residents having ethnic affiliations with an invading enemy may be a greater source of danger than those of a different ancestry. Nor can we deny that Congress, and the military authorities acting with its authorization, have constitutional power to appraise the danger in the light of facts of public notoriety. We need not now attempt to define the ultimate boundaries of the war power. We decide only the issue as we have defined itwe decide only that the curfew order as applied, and at the time it was applied, was within the boundaries of the war power. In this case it is enough that circumstances within the knowledge of those charged with the responsibility for maintaining the national defense afforded a rational basis for the decision which they made. Whether we would have made it is irrelevant.
The purpose of Executive Order No. 9066, and the standard which the President approved for the orders authorized to be promulgated by the military commanderas disclosed by the preamble of the Executive Orderwas the protection of our war resources against espionage and sabotage. Public Proclamations No. 1 and 2, by General DeWitt, contain findings that the military areas created and the measures to be prescribed for them were required to establish safeguards against espionage and sabotage. Both the Executive Order and the Proclamations were before Congress when the Act of March 21, 1942, was under consideration. To the extent that the Executive Order authorized orders to be promulgated by the military commander to accomplish the declared purpose of the Order, and to the extent that the findings in the Proclamations establish that such was their purpose, both have been approved by Congress.
It is true that the Act does not in terms establish a particular standard to which orders of the military commander are to conform, or require findings to be made as a prerequisite to any order. But the Executive Order, the Proclamations and the statute are not to be read in isolation from each other. They were parts of a single program and must be judged as such. The Act of March 21, 1942, was an adoption by Congress of the Executive Order and of the Proclamations. The Proclamations themselves followed a standard authorized by the Executive Orderthe necessity of protecting military resources in the designated areas against espionage and sabotage. And by the Act, Congress gave its approval to that standard. We have no need to consider now the validity of action if taken by the military commander without conforming to this standard approved by Congress, or the validity of orders made without the support of findings showing that they do so conform. Here the findings of danger from espionage and sabotage, and of the necessity of the curfew order to protect against them, have been duly made. General DeWitt's Public Proclamation No. 3, which established the curfew, merely prescribed regulations of the type and in the manner which Public Proclamations No. 1 and 2 had announced would be prescribed at a future date, and was thus founded on the findings of Pro lamations No. 1 and 2.
After the disastrous bombing of Pearl Harbor the military had a grave problem on its hands. The threat of Japanese invasion of the west coast was not fanciful but real. The presence of many thousands of aliens and citizens of Japanese ancestry in or near to the key points along that coast line aroused special concern in those charged with the defense of the country. They believed that not only among aliens but also among citizens of Japanese ancestry there were those who would give aid and comfort to the Japanese invader and act as a fifth column before and during an invasion.
If the militar were right in their belief that among citizens of Japanese ancestry there was an actual or incipient fifth column, we were indeed faced with the imminent threat of a dire emergency. We must credit the military with as much good faith in that belief as we would any other public official acting pursuant to his duties. We cannot possibly know all the facts which lay behind that decision. Some of them may have been as intangible and as imponderable as the factors which influence personal or business decisions in daily life. The point is that we cannot sit in judgment on the military requirements of that hour. Where the orders under the present Act have some relation to 'protection against espionage and against sabotage', our task is at an end.
There are other instances in the law where one must obey an order before he can attack as erroneous the classification in which he has been placed. Thus it is commonly held that one who is a conscientious objector has no privilege to defy the Selective Service Act and to refuse or fail to be inducted. He must submit to the law. But that line of authority holds that after induction he may obtain through habeas corpus a hearing on the legality of his classification by the draft board.
Whether in the present situation that remedy would be available is one of the large and important issues reserved by the present decision. It has been suggested that an administrative procedure has been established to relieve against unwarranted applications of these orders. Whether in that event the administrative remedy would be the only one available or would have to be first exhausted is also reserved. The scope of any relief which might be affordedwhether the liberties of an applicant could be restored only outside the areas in questionis likewise a distinct issue. But if it were plain that no machinery was available whereby the individual could demonstrate his loyalty as a citizen in order to be reclassified, questions of a more serious character would be presented. The United States, however, takes no such position. We need go no further here than to deny the individual the right to defy the law. It is sufficient to say that he cannot test in that way the validity of the orders as applied to him.
It is not to be doubted that the action taken by the military commander in pursuance of the authority conferred upon him was taken in complete good faith and in the firm conviction that it was required by considerations of public safety and military security. Neither is it doubted that the Congress and the Executive working together may generally employ such measures as are necessary and appropriate to provide for the common defense and to wage war 'with all the force necessary to make it effective.' United States v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605, 622, 51 S.Ct. 570, 574, 75 L.Ed. 1302. This includes authority to exercise measures of control over persons and property hich would not in all cases be permissible in normal times.
It does not follow, however, that the broad guaranties of the Bill of Rights and other provisions of the Constitution protecting essential liberties are suspended by the mere existence of a state of war. It has been frequently stated and recognized by this Court that the war power, like the other great substantive powers of government, is subject to the limitations of the Constitution. See Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 18 L.Ed. 281; Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries Co., 251 U.S. 146, 156, 40 S.Ct. 106, 108, 64 L.Ed. 194; Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398, 426, 54 S.Ct. 231, 235, 78 L.Ed. 413, 88 A.L.R. 1481. We give great deference to the judgment of the Congress and of the military authorities as to what is necessary in the effective prosecution of the war, but we can never forget that there are constitutional boundaries which it is our duty to uphold. It would not be supposed, for instance, that public elections could be suspended or that the prerogatives of the courts could be set aside, or that persons not charged with offenses against the law of war (see Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 63 S.Ct. 2, 87 L.Ed. -) could be deprived of due process of law and the benefits of trial by jury, in the absence of a valid declaration of martial law. Cf. Ex parte Milligan, supra.
Today is the first time, so far as I am aware, that we have sustained a substantial restriction of the personal liberty of citizens of the United States based upon the accident of race or ancestry. Under the curfew order here challenged no less than 70,000 American citizens have been placed under a special ban and deprived of their liberty because of their particular racial inheritance. In this sense it bears a melancholy resemblance to the treatment accorded to members of the Jewish race in Germany and in other parts of Europe. The result is the creation in this country of two classes of citizens for the purposes of a critical and perilous hourto sanction discrimination between groups of United States citizens on the basis of ancestry. In my opinion this goes to the very brink of constitutional power.
Except under conditions of great emergency a regulation of this kind applicable solely to citizens of a particular racial extraction would not be regarded as in accord with the requirement of due process of law contained in the Fifth Amendment. We have consistently held that attempts to apply regulatory action to particular groups solely on the basis of racial distinction or classification is not in accordance with due process of law as prescribed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Cf. Yick Wo. v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 1070, 30 L.Ed. 220; Yu Con Eng v. Trinidad, 271 U.S. 500, 524528, 46 S.Ct. 619, 625, 626, 70 L.Ed. 1059. See also Boyd v. Frankfort, 117 Ky. 199, 77 S.W. 669, 111 Am.St.Rep. 240; Opinion of the Justices, 207 Mass. 601, 94 N.E. 558, 34 L.R.A.,N.S., 604. It is true that the Fifth Amendment, unlike the Fourteenth, contains no guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Cf. Currin v. Wallace, 306 U.S. 1, 14, 59 S.Ct. 379, 386, 83 L.Ed. 441. It is also true that even the guaranty of equal protection of the laws allows a measure of reasonable classification. It by no means follows, however, that there may not be discrimination of such an injurious character in the application of laws as to amount to a denial of due process of law as that term is used in the Fifth Amendment.
I think that point is dangerously approached when we have one law for the majority of our citizens and another for those of a particular racial heritage.
State Distribution of War Supply and Facility Contracts June 1940 through December 194 (issued by Office of Production Management, Bureau of Research and Statistics, January 18, 1942); Ibid.Cumulative through February 1943 (issued by War Production Board, Statistics Division, April 3, 1943).
Federal legislation has denied to the Japanese citizenship by naturalization (R.S. § 2169; 8 U.S.C. 703, 8 U.S.C.A. § 703; see Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178, 43 S.Ct. 65, 67 L.Ed. 199), and the Immigration Act of 1924 excluded them from admission into the United States. 43 Stat. 161, 8 U.S.C. 213, 8 U.S.C.A. § 213. State legislation has denied to alien Japanese the privilege of owning land. 1 California General Laws (Deering, 1931), Act 261; 5 Oregon Comp. Laws Ann. (1940), § 61-102; 11 Washington Rev.Stat.Ann. (Remington, 1933), §§ 10581, 10582. It has also sought to prohibit intermarriage of persons of Japanese race with Caucasians. Montana Rev.Codes 1935, § 5702. Persons of Japanese descent have often been unable to secure professional or skilled employment except in association with others of that descent, and sufficient employment opportunities of this character have not been available. Mears, Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast (1927), pp. 188, 198-209, 402, 403; H.R.Rep. No. 2124, 77th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 101-138.
Nationality Law of Japan, Article 1 and Article 20, § 3, and Regulations (Ordinance No. 26) of November 17, 1924,all printed in Flournoy and Hudson, Nationality Laws (1929), pp. 382, 384-387. See also Foreign Relations of the United States, 1924, vol. 2, pp. 411-413.