" The internment of the West Coast Japanese is the worst blow our liberties have sustained in many years." Eugene Rostow, The Japanese American Cases-A Disaster, The Yale Law Journal, June 1945
Early Criticism of Korematsu v. U.S. Government Decision
Eugene Rostow "was an early critic of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and, especially, of the Supreme Court decisions that validated the policy." His 1945 article in the Yale Law Journal, The Japanese American Cases---A Disaster, heavily criticized the Supreme Court decisions in the Hirayabashi, Yasui, and Koremastu cases and "those decisions became a foundational part of the movement to provide restitution to interned Japanese Americans." http://www.law.yale.edu/news
"Our war-time treatment of Japanese aliens and citizens of Japanese descent on the West Coast has been hasty, unnecessary and mistaken. The course of action which we undertook was in no way required or justified by the circumstances of the war. It was calculated to produce both individual injustice and deep-seated social maladjustments of a cumulative and sinister kind." Eugene Rostow, The Japanese American Cases-A Disaster, The Yale Law Journal, June 1945
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Dean of Yale Law School dean of Yale Law School from 1955 to 1965, "As a young Yale professor, in 1945, Mr. Rostow published a law review article condemning the government's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, at a time when that policy had gone largely unquestioned." Todd S. Purdum, NYTimes, November 26, 2002
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Referring to General DeWitt's Final Report, Rostow stated that the commanding general did not make his decision based upon 'factual findings' but on "ignorant race prejudice." Eugene Rostow, The Japanese American Cases-A Disaster, The Yale Law Journal, June 1945