THE sudden attack on Pearl Harbor forced the President’s Roosevelt’s hands. The United States could not longer covertly assist its allies across the Atlantic. She formally declared War on the Axis nations. This was a decisive moment which turned the course of the war. However, FDR did something else as well. He issued Executive Order No 9066 on 19.2.1942 which authorized the War Department to create “military areas” from where any declared class of Americans could be excluded. Like measures nearer home, it was innocuous and could not be faulted. What unfolded was another story altogether. Under the cover of this Order whole of the Pacific Coast was made out of bounds for Japanese Americans and almost all of them were rounded up in detention camps. Many of these hapless detenues were born on American soil who had never thought of themselves as anything remotely Japanese! The racial origin was the only basis for their incarceration and deprivation of citizenship rights. The challenge to this inhumanity and indignity made its way to the Supreme Court which in Korematsu v United States [323US. 214(1944)]. The majority, speaking through Hugo Black steered the basis of the discrimination away from race and located it in military expediency. Dissenting opinions of Justices Murphy, Robert Jackson and Owen Roberts were scathing. Murphy termed the action as resembling “the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy.” Justice Jackson was also brutal when he said, ‘A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer that he military emergency. Even during that period, a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it confirms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination…’. The Korematsu decision was considered a black mark for the Court which failed to rise to the occasion to protect the right to life and dignity of thousands of citizens as it mistakenly felt that in a moment of crisis or an emergency, discretion to opt for inaction against executive overreach was the better part of judicial valour. In 1980, long years after the atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had brought the Pacific War to an end, the United States Congress felt the need to constitute a Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Interment of Citizens. While the Congress has oversight over the executive, the Commission did not hesitate to conclude that “each part of the decision, questions of both factual review and legal principles, has been discredited or abandoned”. It was of the opinion that “Today the decision in Korematsu lies overruled in he court of history.” President Reagan in fact honoured many of the detainees and also ensured that they were given compensation in restitution. In fact, on 20.05.2011, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal issued an unprecedented statement denouncing Charles Fahy, the Solicitor General during that time for having “suppressed critical evidence” from the Korematsu Court. While the Congressional Committee had concluded that Korematsuhad been overruled in the ‘court of history’, it was finally buried by the ‘court of law’ itself in Trump v Hawaii when Chief Justice Roberts fell back on Justice Jackson’s dissent to hold for the majority that “Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and –to be clear-has no place under the Constitution. It was left to Justice Sonia Sotomayor to point out the irony in her dissent. She reminded the Court that while it was righting the historical wrong of Korematsu, it was at the same breath validating the equally racist Muslim Travel Ban of the incumbent President.I have fallen back upon Korematsuas the parallels are for all to see. A strong executive. A public emergency. A demonized people-based on religion or occupation or on migration and a Court only too eager to surrender in the name of the survival of the nation. If one factor sticks out in this equivalence exercise it is the absence in the recent Indian Supreme Court decisions of any brave dissent-like the searing words of Robert Jackson-which appealed to the conscience of the future Court.