On the 75th anniversary yesterday of the U.S. dispossession and internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, Google commemorated Fred Korematsu, one of 120,000 citizens rounded up, who dared to challenge the constitutionality of President Franklin Roosevelt’s order, handed down two months after Pearl Harbor. The first time plaintiff Korematsu lost one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time; he was then shunned by many Japanese-Americans for causing trouble. But 40 years later an accidental discovery of once-classified evidence vindicated him. Roosevelt and government lawyers lied through their teeth claiming a military justification; the real reason was to encourage anti-Japanese racism and give the public a scapegoat. The best that can be said for Roosevelt, an Episcopalian, in this case is that he hoped the end justified the means. (google.com)
The Daily Office 
