ABSTRACT
Justice Black wrote the opinion of the Court upholding the criminal conviction of Hiroshi Korematsu, a United States citizen, for failing to report to an Assembly Center. But unanimity had broken down. Justices Murphy, Roberts, and Jackson filed dissents, Justice Murphy bluntly calling the majority opinion a "legalization of racism." As awareness of these crimes grew throughout the War and public disgust increased, the Allied governments issued threats of punishment, both to express the general sense of revulsion and in the hope of deterring Nazis from criminal acts in the future. By the end of the war many people would have been content with summary execution, naked and unashamed. The public would have found it easy to draw up lists of ogres who had haunted the imagination in recent years; their deaths would have occasioned little soul-searching. The idea of a form of trial for major Nazi war criminals was attractive to many.
