Japanese Americans were separated from their homes and a large portion of their property as they were interned within “ten desolate concentration camps, officially called ‘relocation centers.’” ( Daniels n.p.). In faced with the forcible removal from their homes, Japanese Americans had little choice but to abandon much of their personal wealth as well as face the systemic invalidation of their ethnic identity. This patriotic fervor that condoned an act of ignorance, naturally, had an exceptionally negative impact on Japanese Americans. As public paranoia of Japanese Americans increased, government leaders began to take action: “early in 1942 the state’s entire congressional delegation – along with the delegations from Oregon and Washington – began to lobby the federal government to do ‘something’ about the Japanese Americans in their midst” ( Daniels n.p.). In the case of Executive Order 9066, the federal government certainly utilized the public reaction to bolster their cause. In facing extreme acts of violence, it is often common behavior to irrationally strike out at those who can be held accountable or even those who can be linked to the guilty parties. In the wake of these attacks, Americans rapidly became fearful that their communities would be targeted next. The authorization and enforcement of Executive Order 9066 can be attributed to the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that developed following the bombings of Pearl Harbor. Years later, it was revealed that the federal government withheld critical evidence that presented contrary evidence for the claim of “military necessity.” On February 19, 1976, President Gerald Ford terminated Executive Order 9066 and its subsequent impact by signing Proclamation 4417. Despite the apparent negligence of legitimate legality, the Supreme Court upheld the order in the case of Korematsu v. Consequently, roughly 110,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast were removed from their homes with little to no regard for their civil liberties. This order provided Roosevelt with the ability “to prescribe military areas… from which any or all persons may be excluded.” Public Law 503, set in place a month later, supplied Executive Order 9066 with the authority to impose these military orders onto Japanese American communities. This federal mandate condoned the forced removal and incarceration of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast into inland concentration camps.

Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 into commission.

It was Leflar and a few other lawyers at his level who shaped the circumstances under which Japanese Americans were confined and ultimately released.On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. But he played a much bigger role than those men, supervising the day-to-day work of the agency lawyers stationed at each of the camps from 1942 to 1944. United States, the notorious Supreme Court decision that is the subject of Mark Killenbeck’s article Sober Second Thought? Korematsu Reconsidered. That’s because he, unlike a Charles Fahy or an Edward Ennis, had no role in Korematsu v. Leflar’s is not a name that constitutional lawyers are likely to remember in connection with the mass removal and detention of Japanese Americans in World War II. It is because one of the most important lawyers to oversee the development and administration of all the WRA camps was the dean under whose leadership this law review was founded: Robert A. This is not only because Arkansas was the only state outside the Western Defense Command to host not one but two of the War Relocation Authority’s (WRA) concentration camps for Japanese Americans. There is no more appropriate place to discuss the Japanese American cases of World War II than in the pages of the Arkansas Law Review.