FDR Solicitor General Lied to Supreme Court about Japanese Internment
In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the U.S Supreme Court, packed to the hilt with 8 justices appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, upheld FDR's notorious Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced internment of Japanese-Americans as a matter of "military urgency" during World War II. It's an ugly decision and the full story is even worse. As The Los Angeles Times reports, Neal Katyal, the acting solicitor general for the Obama administration, has admitted that one of his predecessors, FDR's Solicitor General Charles Fahy, deliberately misled the Supreme Court in the case. Here's L.A. Times reporter David Savage:
Katyal said Tuesday that Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat. The report indicated there was no evidence Japanese Americans were disloyal, were acting as spies or were signaling enemy submarines, as some at the time had suggested….
[Katyal] said that two of the government's civilian lawyers had told Fahy it would be "suppression of evidence" to keep the naval intelligence report from the high court.
"What does Fahy do? Nothing," Katyal said.
Instead, Fahy told the justices the government and the military agreed the roundup of Japanese Americans was required as a matter of "military necessity."
