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WWII Museum Essay Contest

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Mary Schmoker
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52 views4 pages

WWII Museum Essay Contest

Uploaded by

Mary Schmoker
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Struggle for Justice: In the Courts and in Society

Justice is a word that can be elusive. It requires us to put ourselves into the shoes of

others, outside of the culture and country we were born into. Justice was what Judge Jackson

was seeking when he sentenced Nazi leaders after their horrendous and tragic violation of

human rights; a true expression of justice was the “grave responsibility” put upon him. He

attempted to feel the pain of the countless number of Jewish families destroyed. The pain of

others is often the hardest to feel, but by doing so we can bring justice to the world and be

remembered as heroes instead of tyrants.

Even the very people making our laws can fall into the trap of doing injustice. In the

Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) case, Chief Justice Roger Taney thought it was “just” to declare it

law that African-Americans were not fit to be citizens. What went wrong? I think that Taney’s

major mistake was not seeing the plight of African-Americans at the time. He was not able to

escape the situation and cultural landscape of his birth, which limited his empathy towards

others. If he were to free himself from this constricting view, he might have been able to see

the suffering of African-Americans all around him. This breadth of vision is what we must strive

for when we aim for justice. We must look at what connects us and recognize that, as humans,

we share our triumphs and our failures.

Another act that shows a misunderstanding of justice is the internment of Japanese

Americans during World War II. In a state of panic, the leaders of America mistakenly saw a

common threat in our homeland when there was none. President Roosevelt succumbed to this

human need for security and issued Executive Order 9066, which ordered the incarceration of

over 112,000 Japanese men, women, and children. The eyes of America were still clouded two
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years later, with the Korematsu v. United States (1944) Supreme Court case declaring that this

internment was constitutional. War has a dangerous ability to twist the meaning of justice.

America finally realized its mistake 39 years later, when the verdict was overturned by judge

Marilyn Hall Patel.

We must look back at these unjust decisions of the past and consider, “What were the

professionals of our nation thinking?” If they were shrouded from justice by their biases, we

have to be extra careful to take our own into account. Biases and prejudices lead to scapegoats,

which can be a dangerous construct in society. The majority strips away their common

humanity in order to justify inhumane attacks. The group deemed guilty is then vulnerable to

vicious treatment, both at a societal and a legal level. Many times what is right is only revealed

after the fact, so we must be on the look out for tragedies that have been concealed through

seductive rhetoric. Justice starts when we, as common citizens, detect our country’s and our

own faults in the past; justice succeeds when we act to amend these faults to heal the wounds

that our blindness of righteousness has created.

Such an act of justice is exemplified by the Olmstead v. United States (1928) case and its

aftermath. Roy Olmstead was a bootlegger in Washington state, perhaps one of the most

successful of his day. The U.S. government was suspicious about him, so they wiretapped his

private phone calls without judicial approval. Neither bootlegging nor wiretapping are just, but

when do two wrongs make a right? Reciprocated wrongs simply lead to a degradation of

society, a race to the bottom of defeating the “other”. Olmstead tried to amend this situation

by challenging the case, but was defeated in the Supreme Court, which effectively declared

wiretapping constitutional and sent Olmstead to the penitentiary. However, after some time,
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justice prevailed. President Roosevelt pardoned Olmstead in 1935, fully restoring his

constitutional rights. Even the Supreme Court overturned its ruling in 1967 in the Katz v. United

States case, protecting citizens by ruling that they have the right to “reasonable expectation of

privacy”. It seems that, once again in American history, time parts the dark clouds and shine a

light the injustice of our past.

A last example of justice is the fate of draft dodgers in the Vietnam War. Fresh young

men, not even old enough to vote, were called up to be cogs in the war machine that was

Vietnam. The were called to crawl through the inhospitable jungles in Vietnam, booby traps and

camouflaged guerilla fighters hiding at every corner. The death toll of over 50,000 speaks

numbers, but the psychological effects of such warfare are even scarier. It is not surprising,

then, that hundreds of thousands of men resisted being drafted. They protested in the streets,

found loopholes in the system, and fled the country. Over 200,000 were convicted of crimes,

with sentences ranging from compulsory military service to imprisonment. However, by the

start of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, times had changed. America had recognized its failed

intervention and, most of all, its reckless killing of its own young men. Jimmy Carter’s first day

as president saw him pardon over 200,000 draft dodgers. He took it upon himself to see those

young men as freedom fighters, resisting the unjust laws that the government placed upon

them.

So what is the “grave responsibility” of justice? It is to look past the intense emotions of

the past, to see further than just ourselves. It is to connect ourselves to the whole of humanity;

to see the continuity between ourselves instead of the borders that separate us. Justice is the
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freeing of past mistakes by the vision of a better future. Without such a vision, we will be

convicted by history.

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