Not a Shining Chapter in ACLU History

The Dec. 1 Morning Report noted the American Civil Liberties Union new fund-raising lithograph--which “will also be plastered on dozens” of bus shelters--depicting notable cases from the ACLU files. One of the four scenes represents the Japanese Americans interned during WWII, as though the ACLU had done something to prevent such internment of American citizens. The actual historical record is quite to the contrary, and is well set forth in the book “In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU” by Prof. Samuel Walker.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to designate military zones from which any person could be excluded. On June 22, 1942, the ACLU National Committee, by a vote of 52 to 26, accepted that order in principle, although it urged restraint and protection of individuals in its implementation.

The ACLU statement read: “The government has the right in the present war to establish military zones and to remove persons, either citizens or aliens, from such zones where their presence may endanger national security, even in the absence of a declaration of martial law.” The Northern California ACLU voted 119 to 65 to approve the Presidential Order, and 100 to 91 not to challenge its constitutionality. There was a great deal of infighting in the ACLU between the liberals, conservatives and extreme leftists, on the one hand, and the pacifists on the other, over the whole question of ACLU involvement in this matter. It was not a shining moment for the ACLU.

There were four test cases of the order and its implementation, and the ACLU was involved in only two of them, one from Seattle (Hirabuyashi) and one from San Francisco (Korematsu), despite the vote of the Northern California ACLU board. There was no case from Southern California. Both cases eventually lost in the Supreme Court.

Abraham Lincoln Wirin, my friend of blessed memory did, however, achieve a notable victory in 1948 in two cases before the Supreme Court, in which the California Alien Land Law and a law denying fishing licenses to resident immigrants were struck down (Oyama and Takahashi). That was the only significant contribution that the ACLU made regarding Japanese Americans, and the self-aggrandizement and puffery of the lithograph is certainly not warranted on the internment issue.