Photo by Lia Chang

Fred T. Korematsu stood up not only for his own rights and those of his fellow Japanese-American internees, but for the civil rights of all.  His heroism and educational outreach efforts inspired countless activists and demonstrated the importance of building cross-cultural alliances in order to strengthen the broader civil rights movement.

Early Life | WWII | Resistance: 1942 Case | Supreme Court Case | Coram Nobis Case | Post 9/11 Activism | Honors and Awards | Legacy |

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Early Life

Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, on January 30, 1919, to Japanese immigrant parents. Upon graduation from Castlemont High School in 1937,  Mr. Korematsu wanted to serve his country in the military and attempted to enlist in the United States National Guard and the United States Coast Guard, but was rejected because his Selective Service classification had been changed to “Enemy Alien,” even though he was a citizen of the United States.

Mr. Korematsu attended the Master School of Welding and worked at the docks in Oakland as a shipyard welder, quickly rising through the ranks to foreman until his union barred all people of Japanese ancestry and his employment was terminated. When World War II broke out, he suffered from acts of discrimination, as he was turned away from restaurants and barber shops, and denied the right to work, travel, and ultimately to reside in his native State of California.

WWII

Mr. Korematsu was an American citizen by birth. He was also one of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In the ensuing months, the Army issued orders rounding up these Americans and forcing them into ten internment camps, each surrounded by barbed wire and machine gun towers and located in desolate regions from California to Arkansas.

Resistance: 1942 Case

In 1942, Fred Korematsu refused to comply with Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 which was authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order No. 9066.  It imposed strict curfew regulations and required over 100,000 United States citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry to leave their homes on the West Coast and submit to imprisonment based solely on their ancestry. Rather than reporting to the assembly center with the rest of his family, Mr. Korematsu chose to defy the order and decided to carry on his life as an American citizen.

Mr. Korematsu was arrested on May 30, 1942, and charged with violating the military’s exclusion order. While spending two and one-half months in the Presidio stockade prison in San Francisco, the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Ernest Besig, offered to defend him. Fred Korematsu was tried and convicted by a federal court and taken by military authorities to the Tanforan Relocation Center in San Bruno, California, where he lived in squalor. After spending several months at Tanforan, a former horse racing track, Mr. Korematsu and his family were sent to the Topaz concentration camp in Utah.

The Supreme Court case: 1944

Believing the discriminatory conviction went against freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, Mr. Korematsu appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In its 1944 landmark decision, the high court ruled against him, declaring that the internment was not caused by racism, but rather, was justified by the Army’s claims that Japanese Americans were radio-signaling enemy ships from shore, and were prone to disloyalty. The court called the internment a “military necessity.”

In a stinging dissent, Justice Robert Jackson complained about the lack of any evidence to justify the internment, writing: “the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination … and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” Constitutional law scholars have referred to the 1944 case as a “civil liberties disaster.”

Re-opening: the Coram Nobis Case

Following World War II and the release of Japanese Americans from the concentration camps, Fred Korematsu attempted to resume life as an American citizen, marrying his wife Kathryn and raising two children, Karen and Ken. He maintained his innocence through the years , but the conviction had a lasting impact on Mr. Korematsu’s basic rights, affecting his ability to obtain employment.

His case stood for almost 40 years until UC San Diego political science professor Peter Irons, with the help of researcher Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, stumbled upon secret Justice Department documents while researching government’s archives. Among the documents were memos written in 1943 and 1944 by Edward Ennis, the Justice Department attorney responsible for supervising the drafting of the government’s brief.

As Ennis began searching for evidence to support the Army’s claim that the internment was necessary and justified, he found precisely the opposite — that J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, the FCC, the Office of Naval Intelligence and other authoritative intelligence agencies categorically denied that Japanese Americans had committed any wrong. Other memoranda characterized the government’s claims that Japanese Americans were spying as “intentional falsehoods.” These official reports were never presented to the Supreme Court, having been intentionally suppressed and, in one case, destroyed by setting the report afire.

It was on this basis — governmental misconduct — that a legal team of pro bono attorneys successfully reopened Mr. Korematsu’s case in 1983, resulting in the erasure of his criminal conviction for defying the internment. The team included: Lorraine K. Bannai, Marjie Barrows, Edward M. Chen, Dennis W. Hayashi, Peter Irons, Karen N. Kai, Donna Komure, Dale Minami, Leigh-Ann Miyasato, Robert L. Rusky, Donald K. Tamaki, Akira Togasaki, Eric Yamamoto and Aiko Yoshinaga-Herzig.

During the litigation, Justice Department lawyers offered a pardon to Mr. Korematsu if he would agree to drop his lawsuit. In rejecting the offer, Kathryn Korematsu, his wife of 58 years, remarked, “Fred was not interested in a pardon from the government; instead, he always felt that it was the government who should seek a pardon from him and from Japanese Americans for the wrong that was committed.”

In throwing out Mr. Korematsu’s 40-year-old criminal conviction, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the US District Court of the Northern District of California wrote:

Korematsu remains on the pages of our legal and political history. As a legal precedent it is now recognized as having limited application. As a historical precedent it stands as a constant caution that in times of war or declared military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting our constitutional guarantees. It stands as a caution that in times of distress the shield of military necessity and national security must not be used to protect governmental actions from close scrutiny and accountability. It stands as a caution that in times of international hostility and antagonisms our institutions, legislative, executive and judicial, must be prepared to protect all citizens from the petty fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused.

Post-9/11 Activism

After 9/11, Mr. Korematsu continued to speak out. In 2003, he filed a “Friend of the Court” amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Muslim inmates being held at Guantanamo Bay. In the brief, he warned that the government’s extreme national security measures were reminiscent of the past. In 2004, he filed a similar brief on behalf of an American Muslim man being held in solitary confinement in a U.S. military prison without a trial.

Honors and Awards

In 1988, the year President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, a street in San Jose, CA was named Korematsu Court.

In 1998, Mr. Korematsu received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. President Clinton’s introduction of Mr. Korematsu reflects the significance of his achievements: “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, today we add the name of Fred Korematsu.”

Other awards include honorary doctorates from the University of San Francisco, California State University, East Bay, McGeorge School of Law, and the City University of New York Law School, and official recognition from the California State Senate. Mr. Korematsu also served as past President of the San Leandro chapter of the Lion’s Club, and actively supported the Boy Scouts of America. He has been the subject of numerous documentaries including the Oscar-shortlisted film Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: the Fred Korematsu Story, directed by Eric Fournier.

Legacy

On March 30, 2005, Mr. Korematsu died of respiratory failure at the age of 86. Since then, several organizations and schools have opened in his name, including:

• In 2005, an elementary school in Davis, CA was re-named the Fred T. Korematsu elementary school at Mace Ranch
• In 2006, the Discovery Academy in Oakland, CA was re-named the Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy

• In 2009, the Asian Law Caucus launched the Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education in San Francisco
• In 2009, Seattle University’s School of Law launched the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality
• In the summer of 2010, the new freshman campus at San Leandro High in San Leandro, CA will be re-named the Fred T. Korematsu freshman campus of San Leandro High