Prejudice, War, and the Constitution

During World War II, 110,000 citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry were banished from their homes and confined behind barbed wire for two and a half years. This comprehensive work surveys the historical origins, political characteristics, and legal consequences of that calamitous episode. The authors describe the myths and suspicions about Orientals on the West Coast and trace the influence of racial bigotry in the evacuation and in the court cases growing out of it. A theory is advanced to account for the administrative and legal decisions which initiated and concluded this calamity. Finally, the authors analyze the principal constitutional issues involved in the evacuation and their implications for the future.

Jacobus tenBroek founded the National Federation of the Blind in 1940 and was also a constitutional law scholar, a civil rights activist, a leader in the reform of social welfare, and a distinguished national and international humanitarian. 

 

Edward Norton Barnhart (1909-1988) was Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric, University of California Berkeley.

 

Floyd W. Matson served as a primary leader of the National Federation of the Blind of Hawaii. In 2005 the National Federation of the Blind of Hawaii honored Dr. Matson as a "treasure of Hawaii" for all of his outstanding efforts to support the blind in that state and throughout the nation.