August 10

On August 10, 1988, Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act. This Act gave reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned or relocated during World War II.

Internment camps were located in California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Washington State. The Justice Department and the Army also had camps that housed Italian-Americans and German-Americans as well as Nissei. It was not isolated parts of the government involved with the internment; responsibility was scattered throughout the government.

Several of these camps were located on Indian land, for which the Indians were not compensated. This action was typical of how the federal government controlled Indian lands at that time.

The internments were based on executive orders that restricted people of certain ancestries from living in designated areas. Of course, these areas were large population centers, eventually encompassing most of the West Coast. The legality of applying this to natural born US citizens is dubious at best, under the Constitution and the 14th Amendment. A substantial number of the internees were natural citizens. Some have justified the internment under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, but natural citizens are required to show a specific threat for the Acts to apply.

This came to the Supreme Court in Korematsu v United States. Korematsu challenged the legality of Order 9066, which allowed the exclusion zones. The Supreme Court upheld the internment, citing necessity. However, Korematsu is also notable for inventing the strict scrutiny standard, which is used in civil rights cases to this day.

Strict scrutiny means that the government needs to have a very good justification for discriminating against a given group. Rational basis review, on the other hand, just means that the government must have a reasonable justification for what they are doing. Strict scrutiny is very difficult to meet, and Korematsu was rare in meeting that standard.

Korematsu has never been explicitly overturned.

After WWII, some attempts at reparations for property were made, but based on theft, forced sales and destroyed IRS records, few were successful in collecting. The 1988 Act gave each internee $20,000.