User:Corderob123/Ozawa v. United States

Background
Takao Ozawa was born on June 15, 1875, in Kanagawa, Japan. In 1894, he moved to San Francisco, California, where he attended school. After he graduated from Berkeley High School, Ozawa attended the University of California. In 1906, after graduating, he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. After settling down in Honolulu, Ozawa learned English fluently, practiced Christianity, and obtained a job at an American company. While in Hawaii, he married a Japanese woman with whom he had two children. Ozawa's wife studied in the United States. His family spoke fluent English and focused on American culture more than they did on Japanese culture.

On October 16, 1914, Takao Ozawa decided to apply for citizenship since he had lived in America for 20 years. Despite his US education, Ozawa did not get his citizenship easily. Ozawa tried to petition under the naturalization law, but he was ineligible as he was classified as Japanese. By the time Ozawa's case made it to the Supreme Court he had been living in America for 28 years.

'''In his brief to the court, Ozawa argued for his case on the basis of his good character. Ozawa notably wrote in his brief that "The color of skin is controlled by climate", further arguing that an individual's race should not be a determining factor in their worth as a person and ulitamilty his worth as a citizen of The United States. An excerpt from one of Ozawa's legal briefs reads as follows: "I neither drink liquor of any kind, nor smoke, nor play cards, nor gamble, nor associate with any improper person. My honesty and my industriousness are well known among my Japanese and American acquaintances and friends; and I am always trying my best to conduct myself according to the Golden Rule."'''

The courts' reaction
Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice George Sutherland approved a line that lower court cases held, stating that "the words 'white person was only to indicate a person of what is popularly known as the Caucasian race." The courts stated that the Japanese were not considered as "free white persons" within the meaning of the law. Justice Sutherland wrote that the lower courts' conclusion that the Japanese were not "free white persons" for purposes of naturalization had “become so well established by judicial and executive concurrence and legislative acquiescence that we should not at this late day feel at liberty to disturb it, in the absence of reasons far more cogent than any that have been suggested." Justice Sutherlnad also wrote in the the court's opinion that the court was not making “any suggestion of individual unworthiness or racial inferiority."  The Court declined to review the ethnological authorities relied on by the lower courts to support their conclusion or those advanced by the parties.

Ozawa's case seemingly added to the Supreme Courts ever growing list of contradictions and muddled rhetoric surrounding race and citinzsenhip. '''Three months after Ozawa's case was heard by the Supreme Cour, the court completely altered their own reasoning during the case of United States v. Thind. Thind, an Indian man from the northern region of Punjab moved to The United States when he was young, having even joined the U.S. Army during World War I. Thind made the argument that he should be able to naturalize as a U.S. citizen because he was of the Cacausian race, the rhetoric that Ozawa's case upheld. Although the court agreed that Thind was Cacausian, the court also asserted that Thind was not white and that whiteness has to be "be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word ‘Caucasian’ only as that word is popularly understood."'''

The Supreme Court demonstrated that at the time of Ozawa and Thind's case they were concerned with maintaining and protectging white citizenship as oppose to following their own rheotric.