Even the Ignored Amendments Can Be Violated in a Horrible Fashion
Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin points to a "forthcoming" paper by law professor Tom Bell which reveals another one of those unconstitutional moments from "the good war." It also rather ruins witty commentary about the oh, so relevant Third Amendment (that'd be the one that says the government cannot quarter troops in your house in peacetime, "nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.")
Everybody knows the Japanese internment, few know that when the Japanese army was trying to gain a foothold in the Aleutian Islands, off of Alaska, the U.S. forcibly booted out the island natives and quartered troops in their homes.
The passage Somin highlights:
They were forcibly removed from their homes and interred in distant and unhealthy camps, an ordeal in which "[t]hey fell victim to an extraordinarily high death rate, losing many of the elders who sustained their culture."Worried about Japanese invaders, and pursuing a burnt earth policy, the U.S. military completely destroyed some evacuated villages. Other empty villages, though left standing, "were pillaged and ransacked by American military personnel." When about a year later they were finally returned to their homes, "All household effects and equipment the Aleuts had left behind were missing."The occupying forces took more than just the market value of the destroyed property. As reported in Personal Justice Denied, the official report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, "Through the insult of massive looting and vandalism of their homes and places of worship by American military forces, the Aleuts lost invaluable tangible ties to their past. Houses can eventually be rebuilt and refurnished, but stolen family mementos, heirlooms and religious icons . . . cannot be recovered." Quartering was thus not the only or worse thing that the Aleuts suffered at the hands of their government. [footnotes omitted]
As Tom points out, much of the above represents clear violations of the Takings Clause and other parts of the Constitution, in addition to the Third Amendment. Yet, unlike in the contemporary case of the internment of the Japanese-Americans, no one in government even considered the possibility that the Aleuts' constitutional rights had been violated.
Even when the federal government belatedly gave the Aleuts partial compensation for their losses in the 1980s, officials never admitted that the Aleuts had suffered violations of their Third and Fifth Amendment rights. Ultimately, the surviving Aleuts had to settle for a long-delayed, relatively paltry, $12,000 in compensation. The failure of officials to even consider this obvious violation of the Constitution is, as Tom notes, extremely telling. It does not paint a flattering picture of our constitutional culture, especially when it comes to property rights.
Reason on constitutional law and war.
