The Korematsu case

[Jim Root]

As many of you know I have been led to believe that John J. McCloy, along with Maxwell Taylor, may be the "Big Fish" in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. It is my belief that if there was in fact a conspiracy to assassinate the President that the conspiators would have to be positioned to accommodate both the assassination and the cover-up. Both McCloy and Taylor, in my opinion, meet this criteria. In a circumstantial evidence case one would need to demonstrate that a character, like McCloy, would be willing to deceive the public, tamper with evidence and protect the guilty if he were to deem it necessary (for the good of the nation) to do so.

Two cases in point:

The Korematsu Case (dealing with the relocation of an American citizen during the relocation of Japanese-

Americans during WWII) demonstrates just such a proclivity on the part of John J. McCloy. As an interesting side note: During the process of relocating the Japanese-Americans during WWII McCloy first worked with Earl Warren.

From an article by Harvey A. Silverglate and Carl Takei that appeared in the Boston Pheonix:

"In the spring of 1943, the Supreme Court was preparing to hear two cases — Yasui v. United States and Hirabayashi v. United States — challenging a wartime curfew for people of Japanese ancestry. A third case, Korematsu v. United States, which challenged the internment of this group, was coming down the pike as well.

'The War Department knew it would have to provide military justification for these racially discriminatory measures. However, a month before oral arguments in Yasui and Hirabayashi, it encountered a problem. General John L. DeWitt, who directed the internment of Japanese-Americans, submitted a report to justify the program. In it, he wrote: "It was impossible to establish the identity of loyal and disloyal with any degree of safety. It was not that there was insufficient time in which to make such a determination; it was simply a matter of facing the realities that a positive determination could not be made, that an exact separation of the ‘sheep from the goats’ was unfeasible." He grounded this assertion on the notion that the Japanese race was "a potentially dangerous element" with peculiar traits that made their loyalties and intentions inscrutable. This rationale, War Department officials realized, was legally indefensible.

'Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy and several Army officials asked DeWitt to rewrite the report so as not to jeopardize the Supreme Court cases. DeWitt complied; he removed the racist language and replaced it with the assertion that wartime circumstances demanded immediate action, that there was no time to investigate the loyalty of each Japanese-American. McCloy then forwarded the doctored report to the Justice Department for use in the upcoming Korematsu case. The War Department destroyed all copies of the original, racist report, except for one that was accidentally misplaced and which eventually made its way to the National Archives, only to be rediscovered nearly a half-century later.

'The Supreme Court issued opinions in the Yasui and Hirabayashi cases on June 21, 1943, and in Korematsu on December 18, 1944. In all three, the court ruled for the government, relying heavily on the Justice Department’s assertion (which the lawyers derived primarily from the doctored report) that the exigencies of war demanded immediate action, and that there had been insufficient time to separate loyal from disloyal Japanese-Americans.

'In his dissent in Korematsu, Justice Robert Jackson expressed concern that the court, "having no real evidence before it, has no choice but to accept General DeWitt’s own unsworn, self-serving statement, untested by any cross-examination."

Justice Robert Jackson and McCloy would differ on another occassion. Jackson would preside over the Nuremburg Trials, McCloy would overturn or change the sentences of many of those that had been convicted. This would occur seven years after the 1944 opinion in the Korematsu Case was written.

In "The Legacy of Nuremberg," a documentary project of Minnesota Public Radio we find this statement about McCloy and his part in "reconsidering" Nuremburg "judgments."

"The man who appointed the review board, John McCloy, stressed that the board was not reconsidering judgments but would examine fairness in sentences imposed by the tribunal. Many prosecutors suspected that politics were involved, though John McCloy always denied that he was acting on any political directives from Washington, according to prosecutors and historians.

"Between 1949 and 1958," says William Caming, "all of the prisoners had sentences reduced and were then released. Including, surprisingly enough, four of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen death squads. It was a political measure. No members of the prosecution staff and none of the judges at Nuremberg were even consulted."

'Among the first released were the German industrialists, including Alfried Krupp and Karl Krauch, the I.G. Farben executive. Many of the former prisoners, like Krupp, would re-establish their wealth and positions in German society. Years later, a handful of the convicted war criminals would be tried again in a series of war crimes trials in Germany that continue to this day. The German government and German industry also paid out billions of dollars in compensation to victims of Nazi crimes. And beginning in the 1960s, a post-war generation of German writers, intellectuals and politicians confronted many of the demons of Nazism.

'In addition, 20 of the 24 Einsatzgruppen officers convicted by Benjamin Ferencz were released, including nine men originally sentenced to death, according to historian Peter Maguire. The last two left Landsberg prison in 1958. Recently declassified U.S. documents and CIA files obtained by Peter Maguire suggest that at least two former Einsatzgruppen officers later may have worked as spies for western intelligence agencies, including the CIA."

Would John J. McCloy do "anything" to protect the "integrity" of the US Government and its intelligence activities?

I can imagine Judge Jackson, if he had lived till 1964, writting his "opinion" of McCloy and the Warren Commission Report. He might have said, ""having no real evidence before it, THE NATION has no choice but to accept THE WARREN COMMISSIONS own..., self-serving statement, untested by any cross-examination."

Jim Root

[Tim Carroll]

As many of you know I have been led to believe that John J. McCloy, along with Maxwell Taylor, may be the "Big Fish" in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. It is my belief that if there was in fact a conspiracy to assassinate the President that the conspiators would have to be positioned to accommodate both the assassination and the cover-up. Both McCloy and Taylor, in my opinion, meet this criteria. In a circumstantial evidence case one would need to demonstrate that a character, like McCloy, would be willing to deceive the public, tamper with evidence and protect the guilty if he were to deem it necessary (for the good of the nation) to do so.

Two cases in point:

The Korematsu Case (dealing with the relocation of an American citizen during the relocation of Japanese-

Americans during WWII) demonstrates just such a proclivity on the part of John J. McCloy. As an interesting side note: During the process of relocating the Japanese-Americans during WWII McCloy first worked with Earl Warren....

In "The Legacy of Nuremberg," a documentary project of Minnesota Public Radio we find this statement about McCloy and his part in "reconsidering" Nuremburg "judgments."

This was excellent scholarship and really provides a peek behind the curtain at the mindset of the Power Control Group leaders. Beyond making the case that McCloy met the gatekeeping requirements of playing ball regardless of social justice, it also reveals the favorable disposition these industrial and military industrial leaders had for our former Nazi enemies. The stark contrast of McCloy's positions towards the Japanese in Korematsu and towards advocacy of leniency for the Germans cannot be written off as a racial bias. The roots of the Kennedy assassination took hold during the decade and a half between the end of WWII and the downing of the U-2 on Mayday, 1960. An irresistable momentum had been built toward a Nazi-like First Strike Final Solution which Kennedy inherited and sought to restrain.

Tim