The “Racial Storm in 1943”: The Case of Japanese Fishermen

Unlike today, when not a single person from the banned seven Muslim nations has harmed an American on U.S. soil, Japan unleashed a devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.

Many Americans had prejudicial views of Japanese for decades before the attack. The war intensified these feelings.

Japanese citizens and permanent residents were forced out of their homes and into detention camps. During their absence, California passed a law to bar all Japanese from obtaining a commercial fishing license. Bear in mind that commercial fishing was a leading occupation for the Japanese.

The law was amended because some lawmakers feared their ban would be overturned as a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The discrimination was too obvious, they thought. The rewrite took out Japanese and substituted the term non-citizen. (Compare to today, where President Trump says his immigration ban is not anti-Muslim.)

Torao Takahashi, born in Japan, became a resident of California in 1907. Thirty-six years later—after living lawfully and peaceably in America as a legal, permanent resident (non-citizen), he lost his livelihood by this ban.

Once he sued, California offered the laughable defense that the ban was designed to conserve the fish in the Pacific Ocean to citizens, as though the Japanese were depleting fishing stocks.

The Supreme Court threw out the requirement of citizenship to fish for a living in California.

Here are brief excerpts (quoting):

The statute in question is but one more manifestation of the anti-Japanese fever which has been evident in California in varying degrees since the turn of the century. That fever, of course, is traceable to intolerance (and) unfounded accusations and innuendoes against Japanese fishing crews operating off the coast of California. These fishermen numbered about a thousand and most of them had long resided in that state. It was claimed that they were engaged not only in fishing but in espionage and other illicit activities on behalf of the Japanese Government.

More specifically, these accusations were used to secure the passage of discriminatory fishing legislation.… During the height of this racial storm in 1943, numerous anti-Japanese bills were considered by the California legislators. (The Court described how the law was changed from excluding Japanese to non-citizens)…

We should not blink at the fact that section 990, as now written, is a discriminatory piece of legislation having no relation whatever to any constitutionally cognizable interest of California. It was drawn against a background of racial and economic tension. It is directed in spirit and in effect solely against aliens of Japanese birth. It denies them commercial fishing rights not because they threaten the success of any conservation program, not because their fishing activities constitute a clear and present danger to the welfare of California or of the nation, but only because they are of Japanese stock, a stock which has had the misfortune to arouse antagonism among certain powerful interests. We need but unbutton the seemingly innocent words of section 990 to discover beneath them the very negation of all the ideals of the equal protection clause. No more is necessary to warrant a reversal of the judgment below.