Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avrikin.

This day, August 31st, 1942, an ACLU lawyer is arguing in California District Court that the

internment of Japanese Americans is unconstitutional. The next day, September 1st, a judge would rule

in the case upholding the government's wartime detention of Japanese Americans and Japanese

nationals.

This fight and this ruling was really the start of a long legal battle

and at the heart of it was a man named Fred Coramatsu

who had resisted the order to report to a detention center.

Kauramatsu's case attracted the attention of the ACLU and after this ruling it would eventually

go all the way to the Supreme Court where two years later the Supreme Court upheld his

convection for violating the order but they also issued another ruling

declaring the interment camps unconstitutional we'll get a little bit into that, but that ruling at the Supreme Court and at moment the Supreme Court a few years later effectively ended Japanese interment, but staying in this moment of the first year of Japanese interment, the case of Fred Karamatsu and lots more here to discuss as always are

Nicole Hemmer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. Let me take half a

step back and just paint the picture of what we're talking about here, which is

120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans throughout the American West who in the wake of Pearl Harbor are forced to leave

their homes and businesses.

First go to internment camps and then to concentration camps.

We're talking about four years from the spring of 1942 to early 1946. Families broken apart,

businesses lost, tragedy. That is the big picture. Now to zoom all the way into this really fascinating character of Fred Coramatsu in his experience,

Nicki, where does the saga begin for him?

...