World War and the Growth of Global Power 281Korematsu v. United States, in 1944, the Supreme Court supported the
Administration, voting 6-3 to allow the camps to exist on the basis of nation-
al security. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Frank Murphy attacked the
majority decision: “I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial
discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever
in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly
revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in
the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in
some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and
necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States.
They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American
experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the
Constitution.”
Ironically, the very same Supreme Court ruled in the case Ex parte Mitsuye
Endo that the U.S. government could not detain citizens deemed loyal to the
United States. On January 2, 1945, the government canceled the original
Executive Order and Japanese internment ended. In 1980, a full 35 years later,
Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment
of Civilians, which, three years later, issued a report condemning internment.
The report, titled “Personal Justice Denied,” called the government’s actions
“unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity.” Eventually,
$1.2 billion was set aside for reparations.
Labor Goes to War: The End of “Radical” Unionism
While various groups at home—women, Blacks, Japanese—made limited
gains or actually suffered, American unions gained more from the war. After
the frequent and at-times violent labor confrontations of the New Deal years,
labor saw opportunity with the massive economic mobilization that came with
war. Military contracts meant more jobs, higher wages, and more possibilities
to get workers into a union. Materially, workers surely benefitted from the
domestic economic changes that the war brought on, particularly the burst of
production associated with Military Keynesianism. “Radical” unionism, how-
ever, the type associated with the sit-downs and Little Steel conflict, faded as
labor was “contained,” kept in its place, despite strikes and aggressive union
activity during the war years. While workers might have made more money