Court Opinion

ID: 9420180
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:53:16.972463+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:23.089507
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Murphy,
with whom Mr. Justice Rutledge agrees,
concurring.
The opinion of the Court, in which I join, adequately expresses my views as to all but one important aspect of this case. That aspect relates to the fact that § 990 of the California Fish and Game Code, barring those ineligible to citizenship from securing commercial fishing licenses, is the direct outgrowth of antagonism toward persons of Japanese ancestry. Even the most cursory examination of the background of the statute demonstrates that it was designed solely to discriminate against such persons in a manner inconsistent with the concept of equal protection of the laws. Legislation of that type is not entitled to wear the cloak of constitutionality.
The statute in question is but one more manifestation of the anti-Japanese fever which has been evident in California in varying degrees since the turn of the century. *423See concurring opinion in Oyama v. California, 332 U. S. 633, 650, and dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 233. That fever, of course, is traceable to the refusal or the inability of certain groups to adjust themselves economically and socially relative to residents of Japanese ancestry. For some years prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, these protagonists of intolerance had been leveling unfounded accusations and innuendoes against Japanese fishing crews operating off the coast of California. These fishermen numbered about a thousand and most of them had long resided in that state. It was claimed that they were engaged not only in fishing but in espionage and other illicit activities on behalf of the Japanese Government. As war with Japan approached and finally became a reality, these charges were repeated with increasing vigor. Yet full investigations by appropriate authorities failed to reveal any competent supporting evidence; not even one Japanese fisherman was arrested for alleged espionage. Such baseless accusations can only be viewed as an integral part of the long campaign to undermine the reputation of persons of Japanese background and to discourage their residence in California. See McWilliams, Prejudice (1944), ch. VII.
More specifically, these accusations were used to secure the passage of discriminatory fishing legislation. But such legislation was not immediately forthcoming. The continued presence in California of the Japanese fishermen without the occurrence of any untoward incidents on their part served for a time as adequate and living refutation of the propaganda. Then came the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. See Korematsu v. United States, supra. Once evacuation was achieved, an intensive campaign was begun to prevent the return to California of the evacuees. *424All of the old charges, including the ones relating to the fishermen, were refurbished and augmented. This time the Japanese were absent and were unable to provide effective opposition. The winds of racial animosity blew unabated.
During the height of this racial storm in 1943, numerous anti-Japanese bills were considered by the California legislators. Several amendments to the Alien Land Law were enacted. And § 990 of the Fish and Game Code was altered to provide that “A commercial fishing license may be issued to any person other than an alien Japanese.” No pretense was made that this alteration was in the interests of conservation. It was made at a time when all alien Japanese were excluded from California, with no immediate return indicated; thus the banning of fishing licenses for them could have no early effect upon the conservation of fish. Moreover, the period during which this amendment was passed was one in which both federal and state authorities were doing their utmost to encourage greater food production for wartime purposes. The main desire at this time was to increase rather than to decrease the catch of fish. Certainly the contemporaneous bulletins and reports of the Bureau of Marine Fisheries of California did not indicate the existence of any conservation problem due to an excess number of fishermen. See Thirty-Eighth Biennial Report (July 1, 1944), pp. 33-36; Fish Bulletin No. 58, for the year 1940; Fish Bulletin No. 59, for the years 1941 and 1942.
These circumstances only confirm the obvious fact that the 1943 amendment to § 990 was intended to discourage the return to California of Japanese aliens. By taking away their commercial fishing rights, the lives of those aliens who plied the fisherman’s trade would be made more difficult and unremunerative. And the non-Japanese fishermen would thereby be free from the compe*425tition afforded by these aliens. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not permit a state to discriminate against resident aliens in such a fashion, whether the purpose be to give effect to racial animosity or to protect the competitive interests of other residents.
The 1945 amendment to § 990 which is now before us stands in no better position than the 1943 amendment. This later alteration eliminated the reference to “alien Japanese” and substituted therefor “a person ineligible to citzenship.” Adoption of this change also occurred during a period when anti-Japanese agitation in California had reached one of its periodic peaks. The announcement of the end of the Japanese exclusion orders, plus this Court’s decision in Ex parte Endo, 323 U. S. 283, made the return to California of many of the evacuees a reasonable certainty. The prejudices, the antagonisms and the hatreds were once again aroused, punctuated this time by numerous acts of violence against the returning Japanese Americans. Another wave of anti-Japanese proposals marked the 1945 legislative session. It was in this setting that the amendment to § 990 was proposed and enacted in 1945.
It is of interest and significance that the amendment in question was proposed by a legislative committee devoted to Japanese resettlement problems, not by a committee concerned with the conservation of fish. The Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Japanese Resettlement issued a report on May 1, 1945. This report dealt with such matters as the Alien Land Law, the Japanese language schools, duál citizenship and the Tule Lake riot. And under the heading “Japanese Fishing Boats” (pp. 5-6) appeared this explanation of the proposed amendment to § 990:
*426“The committee gave little consideration to the problems of the use of fishing vessels on our coast owned and operated by Japanese, since this matter seems to have previously been covered by legislation. The committee, however, feels that there is danger of the present statute being declared unconstitutional, on the grounds of discrimination, since it is directed against alien Japanese. It is believed that this legal question can probably be eliminated by an amendment which has been proposed to the bill which would make it apply to any alien who is ineligible to citizenship. The committee has introduced Senate Bill 413 to make this change in the statute.”
Not a word was said in this report regarding the need for the conservation of fish or the necessity of limiting the number of fishermen. The obvious thought behind the amendment was to attempt to legalize the discrimination against Japanese alien fishermen by dropping the specific reference to them.
The proposed revision was adopted. The trial court below correctly described the situation as follows: “As it was commonly known to the legislators of 1945 that Japanese were the only aliens ineligible to citizenship who engaged in commercial fishing in ocean waters bordering on California, and as the Court must take judicial notice of the same fact, it becomes manifest that in enacting the present version of Section 990, the Legislature intended thereby to eliminate alien Japanese from those entitled to a commercial fishing license by means of description rather than by name. To all intents and purposes and in effect the provision in the 1943 and 1945 amendments are the same, the thin veil used to conceal a purpose being too transparent. Under each and both, alien Japanese are denied a right to a license to catch fish on the high seas for *427profit, and to bring them to shore for the purpose of selling the same in a fresh state . . . this discrimination constitutes an unequal exaction and a greater burden upon the persons of the class named than that imposed upon others in the same calling and under the same conditions, and amounts to prohibition. This discrimination, patently hostile, is not based upon a reasonable ground of classification and, to that extent, the section is in violation of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, . . .
We should not blink at the fact that § 990, as now written, is a discriminatory piece of legislation having no relation whatever to any constitutionally cognizable interest of California. It was drawn against a background of racial and economic tension. It is directed in spirit and in effect solely against aliens of Japanese birth. It denies them commercial fishing rights not because they threaten the success of any conservation program, not because their fishing activities constitute a clear and present danger to the welfare of California or of the nation, but only because they are of Japanese stock, a stock which has had the misfortune to arouse antagonism among certain powerful interests. We need but unbutton the seemingly innocent words of § 990 to discover beneath them the very negation of all the ideals of the equal protection clause. No more is necessary to warrant a reversal of the judgment below.