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Fred Korematsu and Rosa
Parks, 1988
Courtesy of Shirley Nakao
and the Korematsu Institute
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Each year on January 30
Californians celebrate the man whose name graces the Supreme Court case that
challenged the government’s right to imprison citizens and residents during
wartime. This year marks the sixth annual “Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the
Constitution,” honoring both the man and the landmark case, Korematsu v. the
United States, part of the pantheon of civil rights cases, legislation, and
individuals whose names are synonymous with efforts to maintain civil liberties
afforded by the U. S. Constitution.
After the bombing of Pearl
Harbor in 1941, the federal government enacted Executive Order 9066, which led
to the imprisonment of 120,000 residents and citizens of Japanese descent
living on the West Coast. All of those individuals forced to leave homes and
businesses were housed for the duration of the war in what was termed Relocation
Centers or internment camps, located in desolate places scattered mainly
throughout the West. At the time the order was issued, Fred Korematsu, a native
of Oakland whose family owned a local nursery, was working as a ship welder.
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Fred Korematsu and family
members at the family nursery,
San Leandro, California,
date unknown
Korematsu family photo,
online courtesy the Korematsu family via PBS
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While the rest of his
family followed the government decree, Korematsu, who was in a relationship
with a Caucasian woman and did not want to be separated from her, changed his
physical appearance and sought to maintain his freedom. After evading authorities
for two months, he was arrested and jailed prior to being transported to join
his family at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Delta, Utah.
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The Guard
Tower at Topaz War Relocation Center in Delta, Utah
Courtesy of Jane Beckwith, Topaz Museum
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While in jail before
departing for Utah, Korematsu was visited by Ernest Besig, head of the Northern
California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who asked if
Korematsu would like to become part of a suit aimed at challenging the
government’s order. At the time, Besig was also defying orders—those of the
national chapter of the ACLU—which had chosen not to question the government’s
order. Korematsu agreed to join the suit and was represented by ACLU attorney
Wayne Collins.
Despite the efforts of Mr.
Collins and the ACLU, in 1944 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government
did, in fact, have the right, based on reasonable concerns for national
security, to imprison U.S. citizens and residents en masse, absent evidence of
any crime. As the January 1945 letter from the collection of the ACLU of
Northern California at the California Historical Society illustrates, Korematsu
was resigned to accept the loss and move on with his life.
Fred Korematsu to Ernest
Besig, January, 1945
Courtesy of the California
Historical Society
For many years Korematsu,
like other interned Japanese Americans, kept silent about his time at Topaz as
well as his Supreme Court case. His daughter, Karen, didn’t know about her father’s
case until a high school classmate mentioned it in school. But in the early
1980s, Peter Irons, a professor at the University of California, San Diego,
discovered evidence that Charles Fahy, the Solicitor General who argued Korematsu
v. United States for the government, had concealed military documents
stating that Japanese Americans did not, in fact, pose a threat to national
security.
Irons assembled a team of
young, mostly Japanese American attorneys, headed by Dale Minami, who appealed Korematsu’s
conviction based on the government’s false statements to the Court. On November
10, 1983, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco formally vacated Korematsu’s
conviction—although the Supreme Court ruling was unaffected.
Partly owing to the momentum
created by the Korematsu case, and in recognition of the harm caused to all
citizens interned during World War II, in 1988 Congress passed the Civil
Liberties Act. The legislation awarded $20,000 to each individual internee or
their heirs as partial reparation for businesses, homes, and property lost as a
result of the mandates of Executive Order 9066, as well as to acknowledge the overall injustice done to American citizens. The
language of the act noted that the government’s actions were based on “race
prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” 82, 219
individuals received payment and letters of apology.
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Fred Korematsu holding an
apology and reparations letter from
President George H. W.
Bush, a result of the 1988 Civil Rights Act awarding
reparations to citizens of
Japanese American descent, 1990
Courtesy of Shirley Nakao
and the Korematsu Institute
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In 1998 President Bill
Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom and noted that, “In
the long history of our country’s constant search for justice, some names of
ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls. Plessy, Brown, Parks . . . to
that distinguished list . . . we add the name of Fred Korematsu.”
Unlike the years after the
war when many internees were reluctant to call attention to the government’s
shameful actions, Korematsu became an outspoken advocate for civil liberties,
participating in, among other things, two amicus curiae (“friend of the
court”) briefs urging the federal government not to restrict the civil rights
of citizens of Middle Eastern descent following the attacks of September 11,
2001.
In a 2004 statement that
calls to mind recent comments by politicians and candidates in the 2016
presidential race, Korematsu said: “No one should ever be locked away simply
because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist.
If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans,
then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.”
In that same year, Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, writing in the majority opinion ruling that prisoners
seized as part of the “war on terror” have the right to challenge their
detention, noted that, “A state of war is not a blank check for the President
when it comes to the rights of American citizens.”
Before his death in 2005,
Korematsu urged those in America whose civil rights are in danger of being
abrogated not to be afraid to speak up, noting, “One person can make a
difference, even if it takes forty years.”
“He had a very strong
will,” his lawyer Dale Minami said of Korematsu. “He was like our Rosa Parks.
He took an unpopular stand at a critical point in our history.”
The following is a partial list of places, organizations, and
awards named for Korematsu:
Fred T. Korematsu Middle School, El Cerrito, California
Fred T. Korematsu Middle School, Davis, California
Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy, Oakland, California
Korematsu Court (street), San Jose, California
Fred T. Korematsu Campus, San Leandro High School, San Leandro,
California
The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, Seattle,
Washington
The Fred T. Korematsu Summer Fellowship for Law Students,
Washington, D.C.
For more information, watch
this video, courtesy of UNITY Lab & Vignettes
Alison Moore
Strategic Initiatives Liaison
Sources
Alison Moore, This Day in History: August 10—The U.S. Rights a Wrong,
http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2015/08/this-day-in-history-august-10-us-rights.html
American Civil Liberties Union of Northern
California Records, California Historical Society, MS 3580
Executive Order 9066, Densho
Encyclopedia, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Executive_Order_9066/
Gary Kamiya, “Resisting Arrest,”
Salon.com, June 29, 2004
Fred Korematsu, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Korematsu
Fred Korematsu, Densho Encyclopedia, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Fred_Korematsu/
Korematsu
v. United States, Densho
Encyclopedia, http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Korematsu_v._United_States/
___________________________________________________________________________
Read our ongoing blog series about the World War II incarceration
of Japanese Americans:
Uncovering History through
Art and Artifacts: Japanese Internment
This Day in History -
August 10: The U.S. Rights a Wrong
http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2015/08/this-day-in-history-august-10-us-rights.html
70 Years Ago Today: World
War II Incarceration Camp at Manzanar Closes
This Day in History: The
Bombing of Pearl Harbor—Defending the Country, Confronting Fears