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143 pp. Foreword by JACL President Samuro Kido. (8vo) original blue wrappers. First Edition in book form, without title page or colophon as issued. 

The lot also includes:

• JACL Anti-Discrimination Committee reprint of a 1948 statute authorizing the Attorney General to adjudicate Japanese-American claims for property loss resulting from the wartime evacuation. 3pp.

Oakland-born Nisei Fred Korematsu was arrested in May 1942 for violating military orders for internment of Japanese-Americans. Convicted, but placed on five years probation, he was taken to an internment camp in Utah. With the aid of the ACLU, appeal of his conviction – and challenge to the constitutionality of the internment - eventually reached the US Supreme Court, which, in December 1944, held that while the military evacuation and internment was of questionable constitutionality, it was justified by circumstances of wartime “emergency”, and that the government had the right to distinguish between citizens based on their “ethnic affiliation” with an enemy country. The JACL amicus brief presents, in great detail, a rebuttal to the military justification for the evacuation and reprints the minority opinion of three Justices who dissented from the decision, as well as the Court’s decision in a parallel case that did limit governmental authority to indefinitely intern loyal citizens, even in time of war. Not until 1983 did a federal Court Judge formally overturn the conviction of Korematsu, who was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.