Korematsu v. United States became one of the Supreme Court’s most condemned decisions. But long before Fred Korematsu’s challenge reached the Court, decades of anti-Japanese discrimination and the fear that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor had already set a sweeping government policy in motion.

In Part 1, Judge Stephen Sfekas traces the growth of Japanese American communities on the West Coast, the intelligence assessments that undercut claims of a widespread security threat, and the fight within the Roosevelt administration over how to respond. He examines the political and military pressure behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the law Congress passed to enforce military restrictions, and the curfews and exclusion orders imposed on people of Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens. The episode ends as plans  ...