Justices to Rule on Damage Suits by Interned Japanese

Forty-two years after the Supreme Court upheld the mass imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the justices agreed Monday to decide whether the victims of that extraordinary episode may sue the government for billions of dollars in lost property.

U.S. officials have long since conceded that the round-up of about 120,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast was a “national mistake” and a “setback to fundamental American principles,” as then-President Gerald R. Ford put it in 1976.

But government attorneys have fought any and all suits against the United States.

The entire issue was reopened five years ago, when historians uncovered World War II intelligence reports--evidence that U.S. attorneys had concealed from the Supreme Court at that time--showing that the mass detention was not a “military necessity.”

Lawyers representing the Japanese-Americans said this new evidence showed that a “deliberate fraud” had been perpetrated on the high court. And, earlier this year, they won a partial victory from a federal appeals court, which ruled that victims of the mass internment may not sue the government for violations of their civil rights but may sue for “just compensation” for lost property.

Attorneys for the Reagan Administration appealed that decision, contending that the statute of limitations for such suits had expired decades ago.

The question now before the high court is a procedural one: Did the six-year time limit on such suits begin just after World War II ended, or did it begin in 1980, when a government commission officially acknowledged the mistake by the United States?

“Our national misjudgment under pressures of war in 1940 does not suggest that a lawsuit may be brought in the 1980s to challenge those events,” U.S. Solicitor General Charles Fried said in urging an end to the suit.

But the appeals panel, citing the “extraordinary acts of concealment,” concluded that the normal statutes of limitation do not apply.

‘Honest Accounting’

“Where such concealment is alleged, it ill behooves the government of a free people to evade an honest accounting,” Judge J. Skelly Wright wrote for the appeals court in Washington.

The mass internment of Japanese-Americans began in the spring of 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his top advisers became afraid that the Japanese army might invade California or another part of the West Coast. Two years later, the Supreme Court upheld Roosevelt’s order in the case of Korematsu vs. the United States.

“The fact alone that attack of our shores was threatened by Japan rather than another enemy power sets those citizens apart from others who have no particular association with Japan,” the court said at the time.

‘Outrageous Actions’

Attorneys representing the Japanese-Americans say that that decision placed “the highest stamp of approval . . . on the government’s outrageous actions” and encouraged “rampant racism.” Moreover, the ruling was based on a false contention that the internment was “a military necessity,” they contend.

The justices had been given a 1944 report, prepared by the military, defending the mass detention, but U.S. attorneys chose to exclude information provided by the FBI and the Office of Naval Intelligence that said the vast majority of Japanese-Americans were loyal and posed no threat.

Benjamin Zelenko, a Washington attorney representing William Hohri and 18 other Japanese-Americans who brought the suit, said he was still “hopeful” that there would be a trial to determine the value of property lost because of the mass round-up. A government commission in 1983 estimated that the loss was between $3.4 billion and $4.2 billion.

Compensation Bill Died

Congress had considered legislation providing $1.2 billion in compensation, but it was never enacted.

“This was an infamous miscarriage of justice, and we think we can prevail over the government on the statute of limitation question,” Zelenko said.

The high court took no action Monday on a separate appeal filed by the Japanese-American plaintiffs contending that they should also be permitted to sue the United States for violation of their constitutional rights.

Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who was interned as an infant in 1942, said he was disappointed that the court had agreed to hear the government’s appeal but not that of the Japanese-Americans--a possible indication that the high court may move to end the suit.

Arguments in the case of United States vs. Hohri (86-510) will take place in the spring and a decision can be expected by July.

Religious Bias Ruling

In other actions, the high court:

--Made it easier for employers to settle complaints of religious discrimination. On an 8-1 vote, the justices said that “any reasonable accommodation by the employer is sufficient” to resolve a dispute with an employee who contends that he was discriminated against because of religion.

An appeals court had ruled that a Connecticut schoolteacher who wanted to take off three extra days for religious holidays may do so unless the school board could show that this caused “an undue hardship.” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist suggested that an offer of three days of unpaid leave would be “a reasonable one” (Ansonia Board of Education vs. Philbrook, 85-495).

--Ruled that a city may ban nude dancing in bars based on a state’s power to regulate liquor. In an unsigned 5-2 opinion, the court upheld a Newport, Ky., ordinance on the grounds that the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition, gave “broad power to the states and generally they may delegate this power as they see fit” (City of Newport vs. Iacobucci, 86-139).