Opinion ID: 463698
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Doctrine Applied

Text: 83 The foregoing suggests that not every act of concealment will toll the statute of limitations. Concealment must go to a critical element or defense attending each particular cause of action. See id. at 35. We must therefore analyze the disparate effect of appellee's course of conduct on the only two claims that are not barred by sovereign immunity: the Takings Clause and contract claims. 84 1. The Takings Clause claims and the military emergency doctrine. In their complaint appellants alleged that the United States concealed the fact that there was no military necessity justifying the exclusion, evacuation, and internment program. Complaint at 52-53 p 96, JA 58-59. The District Court, however, did not restrict its judgment to the pleadings. As previously noted, the District Court also looked to certain undisputed facts in the historical record. 58 After reviewing this material the District Court concluded that it did appear that the United States had concealed critical evidence during the wartime legal challenges to the exclusion program, 586 F.Supp. at 787-788. The District Court assumed, however, that the government's act of concealment was limited to its alleged suppression of the Hoover, Fly, and Ringle memoranda. See id. It noted that these documents were in the public domain as early as 1949. Id. at 788. 59 It therefore concluded that although the statute of limitations may have been tolled for a time the statute had run long before appellants filed their claims in 1983. 85 We do not dispute the District Court's reading of the historical record. 60 But because we believe the District Court's analysis to have rested on a legally defective premise, we reverse this aspect of its judgment. 86 (a) What was allegedly concealed. Paragraph 95 of appellants' complaint, Complaint at 52, JA 58, alleges that the government excluded from the record of pending court actions    evidence contradicting the so-called 'military necessity' for mass imprisonment. The District Court credited this allegation, finding it consistent with the undisputed historical material before it. 586 F.2d at 787-88. But the District Court never considered the legal relevance of this allegation to the particular cause of action pleaded by appellants in this case. 87 When the government impinges on property rights in the midst of a military emergency, there is no compensable taking under the Fifth Amendment. United States v. Caltex, supra, 344 U.S. at 154-56, 73 S.Ct. at 202-04; United States v. Pacific Railroad, 120 U.S. 227, 234, 7 S.Ct. 490, 493, 30 L.Ed. 634 (1887). In Korematsu and Hirabayashi the Supreme Court addressed the question of military necessity as a justification for the evacuation program, albeit not in the context of a Takings Clause claim. In those cases the Court determined that it must defer to the military judgment that it was impossible, as a practical matter, to segregate the loyal from the disloyal. It is true that Ringle's analysis contained evidence undermining that conclusion. But the Court did not lack for evidence arguing against the military judgment on this vital point. In Korematsu the Japanese-American Citizens League (JACL) had submitted a brief that raised substantial questions about the empirical basis of the claim of military necessity. 61 In the face of such contrary evidence, however, the Court determined that it must defer to the military judgment. Korematsu, 323 U.S. at 218-19, 223-24, 65 S.Ct. at 194-95, 197-98. 88 For the government to have concealed the factual basis of appellants' claims it would not merely have had to conceal evidence suggesting the absence of a military emergency. In addition, the concealed evidence would have had to be sufficient to rebut the presumption of deference to the military judgment articulated by the Supreme Court. Given the constitutional underpinnings of the presumption of deference articulated by the Court, however, nothing less than an authoritative statement by one of the political branches, purporting to review the evidence when taken as a whole, could rebut the presumption articulated in Korematsu. 62 89 Thus to have concealed evidence going to the very basis of the evacuee's Takings Clause claim, the government would have had to conceal both Ringle's report and the fact that there were no intelligence reports contradicting Ringle. Although appellants alleged this further act of concealment in their complaint, see Complaint at 52 p 96, JA 58, the District Court did not discuss whether the undisputed historical material on which it based its judgment contradicted this allegation. As noted previously, however, nothing prevents us from looking at those same historical documents to determine whether appellants' allegations retain any credibility. 90 Our reading of the CWRIC report suggests that appellants' allegation does have support in the historical record. 63 At the very least, the CWRIC report suggests that contemporary official intelligence analysis firmly opposed a mass evacuation. See PERSONAL JUSTICE DENIED at 51-60. Moreover, both the CWRIC Report, see id., and the Burling and Ennis memoranda, see Ennis I, JA 115-118; J. Burling, Memorandum for the Attorney General (April 12, 1944), JA 119, indicate that this information was available to the War Department and the Justice Department at the time it prepared its Hirabayashi and Korematsu briefs. Given the procedural posture of this case, we must credit the allegations of appellants' complaint unless they are specifically contradicted by the historical documents before the District Court. We therefore conclude that concealment has been alleged sufficient to toll the statute of limitations. 64 91 (b) When the statute began to run. The District Court found that the statute began to run when reference to the Ringle, Fly, and Hoover memoranda appeared in several books and articles. But just as we do not believe that the suppression of these materials, by itself, could have tolled the statute, we do not find that their disclosure could have started the running of the statute anew. None of these documents could have reversed the presumption of deference erected by the Supreme Court in Korematsu. Any court reviewing such documents would have concluded that it must defer to the judgment of the military authorities who often must be presumed to act on the basis of conflicting reports. 92 Not only would the Ringle Report have been discounted as a partial statement of the facts, but it could not pass as an authoritative statement of one of the political branches. The Korematsu and Hirabayashi Court grounded its deference to the war-making branches'  special role in securing the national defense. Hirabayashi, 320 U.S. at 99, 63 S.Ct. at 1385. Consequently, only a statement by one of the political branches could have rebutted the presumption of deference. 93 Of course, there can be no question but that the publication of the Ringle Report should have put the evacuees on notice of the need to conduct further inquiries into possible claims they might have against the United States. 65 It is wholly possible that further inquiries would have uncovered the Ennis and Burling memoranda. 66 Nonetheless, even these memoranda would not likely have affected appellants' legal rights. To be sure, these memoranda indicate that responsible Justice Department officials, who purported to have a wide view of the evidence, had serious doubts about the military necessity rationale. But that is all they represent. They present one side of a heated debate within the Justice Department, and between Justice and the War Department, on the appropriateness of the evacuation policy. They cannot be understood to be an authoritative statement by one of the political branches that there was reason to doubt the basis of the military necessity rationale. 94 That statement came only in 1980 when Congress passed the Act creating the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). Pub.L. 96-317, 94 Stat. 964 (July 31, 1980), codified at 50 U.S.C.App. Sec. 1981 note (1982). Section 2(a) provides a brief statement of Findings and Purpose. It states that the Act was passed because no sufficient inquiry has been made into [the internment]. Pub.L. 96-317 2(a)(3), 94 Stat. 964. This reference is elucidated by the Act's legislative history. According to the House report, [T]he committee found that no significant study has been done by the Government to determine the extent of any civil rights violations   . H.R.Rep. No. 1146, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. 5 (1980). The Senate report spoke in stronger terms, finding that the [i]nternees were deprived of their liberty and property apparently based on their ethnic origins alone. S.Rep. No. 751, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. 2 (1980). 95 At a minimum, the Act can be understood to be a formal statement that Congress no longer believed that the explanation provided by the military authorities for the internment program was adequate and that the issue should be reopened. Moreover, Congress took this step fully cognizant of previous congressional and Supreme Court approval of the legality of internment program. See H.R.Rep. No. 1146, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. 11 (1980) (reprinting the letter of the Assistant Attorney General detailing previous Supreme Court and congressional review of Executive Order 9066). In so doing Congress finally removed the presumption of deference to the judgment of the political branches. 67 With this step the statute of limitations began to run on appellants' Takings Clause claims. 68 96 2. The contract claims. Although not barred by sovereign immunity, the statute of limitations was never tolled for appellants' contract claims. Unlike the military emergency doctrine of United States v. Caltex, supra, there is no analogous doctrine governing contract claims that suggests that military necessity is a defense to a contract claim. 97 It is true that when the United States has made promises to perform an act of sovereign no contract is formed. See United States v. Juda, supra, 6 Ct.Cl. at 454. But the mere fact that the government acts to further the national defense does not bring its conduct within the act of sovereign doctrine. See id. at 454-455 (finding that the evacuation of the Bikini Islanders from their homes to facilitate atomic tests did not constitute an act of sovereign). Indeed, the act of sovereign doctrine is only invoked where the government can allege that it never intended to form a contract but only sought to distribute public benefits without binding obligations. See id. 98 Thus there is no reason why appellants could not have brought their contract claims in the 1940's. A judicial determination that the government had acted pursuant to a military emergency would have had no effect on their claims. Nor would it have affected their ability to attack the act of sovereign defense. That defense would stand or fall, in 1945 or 1985, on whether the United States intended to undertake binding commitments to specific persons or whether it merely intended to distribute public benefits. The existence vel non of a military emergency could have only the most attenuated influence on this issue. 99 The concealment of the lack of military necessity therefore did not have any legal effect on appellants' contract claims. Having failed to assert such claims within the statutory period, they may not do so at this later date. 100