Court Opinion

ID: 9419559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:08.278362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.898246
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Murphy,
concurring.
I join in the opinion of the Court, but I am of the view that detention in Relocation Centers of persons of Japanese ancestry regardless of loyalty is not only unauthorized by Congress or the Executive but is another example of the unconstitutional resort to racism inherent in the entire evacuation program. As stated more fully in my *308dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States, ante, p. 233, racial discrimination of this nature bears no reasonable relation to military necessity and is utterly foreign to the ideals and traditions of the American people.
Moreover, the Court holds that Mitsuye Endo is entitled to an unconditional release by the War Relocation Authority. It appears that Miss Endo desires to return to Sacramento, California, from which Public Proclamations Nos. 7 and 11, as well as Civilian Exclusion Order No. 52, still exclude her. And it would seem to me that the “unconditional” release to be given Miss Endo necessarily implies “the right to pass freely from state to state,” including the right to move freely into California. Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, 97; Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35. If, as I believe, the military orders excluding her from California were invalid at the time they were issued, they are increasingly objectionable at this late date, when the threat of invasion of the Pacific Coast and the fears of sabotage and espionage have greatly diminished. For the Government to suggest under these circumstances that the presence of Japanese blood in a loyal American citizen might be enough to warrant her exclusion from a place where she would otherwise have a right to go is a position I cannot sanction.