NikkeiWest--Northern California Japanese American Newspaper

By J.K. Yamamoto — More than five years after his passing, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu continues to make headlines.

Last month, in addition to the State of California’s designation of his birthday, Jan. 30, as Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution, a campus bearing his name was opened in San Leandro, where he lived for many years, and a Constitution Day event at the Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) was dedicated to his memory.

When Japanese Americans were interned in 1942, 23-year-old Korematsu remained in the Bay Area under an assumed identity. After being arrested and convicted of violating the evacuation order, he and the ACLU of Northern California challenged the constitutionality of the internment. The Supreme Court ruled against him in 1944, but in 1983 his case was reopened and the conviction was overturned.

The ACOE event, held Sept. 24 in the Board of Education chambers in Hayward, was hosted by Avi Black, history/social science coordinator and project director of the “Words That Made America” program. The audience included teachers from around the county and a group of students from the Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy.

Black talked to the students about the situation that Korematsu and other Japanese Americans faced during World War II: “Imagine somebody coming to your house and saying to you, you have three days to take the most important things that you have in two hands and then you’re going to have to just leave … You don’t know when you’re coming back. You have to go. So find your stuff right now and bring it with you. Doesn’t feel very fair, does it?

“What if that was not just you, but a whole bunch of people who were like you who were told to do that? Even worse. How do you feel? What do you do? Do you get angry? ... Do you go ahead and try to make the best of the situation? Maybe some people do … Some people say we can’t let this happen, this isn’t fair, and they fight for what they believe is right. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

“We’re going to meet people … who fought to defend not only their own rights but also the rights of everybody. Not only Japanese American people, but Latino people, Muslim American people, white people, African American people — everyone.”

‘The Courage of Their Convictions’

Speakers included Peter Irons, a member of Korematsu’s legal team, professor of political science emeritus at UC San Diego, and author of several books, including “The Courage of Their Convictions: 16 Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court.” He explained that his books are “all from the perspective of ordinary people … where they came from and what was it that got them involved in cases that the vast majority of them never knew or even suspected would go to the U.S. Supreme Court … I went around the country and I tracked these people down and I interviewed them. I had a little tape recorder and I put it down and I started out by saying, ‘Tell me your story.’ ”

One of the plaintiffs was a 12-year-old girl living in Minerstown, Pa., in the 1930s. As Jehovah’s Witnesses, she and her family were a religious minority in the town, Irons said. “Lillian Gobitis decided one day, because of her religion, she would stop saluting the American flag at the beginning of school every day … She got expelled from school … So her parents, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the school board and won. They won in the federal court and then they won in a federal court of appeals, and then they went to the U.S. Supreme Court because the school board appealed, and guess what? They lost.

“The Supreme Court ruled that the school had the right, in order to foster 100 percent patriotism and loyalty, to force students to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance even if they had religious objections … Three years later the Supreme Court realized that it had made a terrible mistake and reversed that opinion, but Lillian Gobitis never got back to public school, which is a terrible shame. She’s still alive. She’s 87 years old. We’re in contact now and then. She’s still a Jehovah’s Witness and still a wonderful person.”

Another case involved Michael Hardwick, a gay man who lived in Atlanta in the 1980s. “One night he got arrested in his very own home, in his bedroom, with another man. They were charged with committing an act that could send them to prison in Georgia for 20 years … He challenged that and took it up to the Supreme Court. Guess what? He lost.

“The Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to throw people in prison, not only gay and lesbian people but straight people as well … There were certain things you couldn’t do, even in your own bedroom with your own wife or partner. But 19 years later, the Supreme Court realized it had made a terrible mistake in his case and they reversed it ...

“Over all these years, from 1935 to 1986, people were willing to stand up for their constitutional rights even though at great cost to themselves … Ultimately, you can win. You’re not always going to win; we still have people who lose and whose rights are still up for decision. But we do have people with the courage and the stamina and the support of groups like the ACLU, the NAACP, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Council on Islamic-American Relations … that fight for civil rights and civil liberties. So it’s a mixed story, but it’s a story that I think in the end is going to inspire and uplift a new generation.”

‘Wherever There’s a Fight’

Stan Yogi of the ACLU of Northern California discussed his latest book, “Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California.” His co-author, Elaine Elinson, was also invited but was unable to attend.

“My parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II because they were Japanese Americans, and I first learned about Fred Korematsu and his case when I was in college over 20 years ago, the time when Peter Irons and Fred Korematsu’s legal team were reopening his criminal case,” Yogi said. “I identified with what was going on because my own family had experienced similar things … As I learned more about the case, I realized that it’s not just a Japanese American issue, it’s an American issue. It’s about our constitutional rights.”

“Wherever There’s a Fight” covers a period from the Gold Rush to 2008. Like Irons’ book, it tells “the stories of individuals whose rights were violated, and in the face of political stonewalling, sometimes outright physical violence, economic reprisals, and social ostracism, they mustered up incredible courage to stand up for their rights, oftentimes alone, as was the case with Fred Korematsu,” Yogi said. “Some of these people are well known, like Cesar Chavez, the leader of the United Farm Workers, but most of them were just ordinary folks like you and me.”

One of them was Charlotte Brown, the daughter of a former slave, who was ordered off a San Francisco streetcar in 1863. “At that time, African Americans were thrown off streetcars regularly just because of their race. Remember, the Civil War was still raging at this time, and a few years earlier two slaves in California had won their freedom through the judicial system …  The Omnibus Railroad Company, which ran the streetcar, justified its conductor’s action … by saying that white women and children might be fearful riding side-by-side with African Americans. Charlotte Brown was not willing to put up with this discrimination and she sued ...“She won, but her victory was diminished by the award she received. It was five cents, which was the streetcar fare. Incredibly, within days of this decision, Charlotte Brown and her father were on another San Francisco streetcar and were thrown off. Yet again, Charlotte Brown returned to court, and this time she was successful and won $500 in damages. A few years later, the California Supreme Court ruled that streetcar segregation was illegal and about 30 years after Charlotte Brown’s case, the State Legislature enacted a law prohibiting streetcar segregation.”

In 1885, Lee Yick, a Chinese immigrant, was arrested in his San Francisco laundry for violating a law that required all laundry owners who operated in wooden buildings to obtain approval from the Board of Supervisors. “Lee Yick had operated his laundry in that same wooden building on 3rd Street for 20 years and he had received approval from the Board of Fire Warden … Who do you think were the majority of folks that ran laundries out of wooden buildings? Chinese Americans, no big surprise. The Board of Supervisors had denied the petitions of all 200 Chinese laundry owners to continue operating in wooden buildings, and they approved, with one exception, all 80 applications from non-Chinese laundry owners.”

Yogi said he and Elinson learned that because Chinese immigrants were the target of so much discrimination, they became well-organized. “The Chinese Laundrymen’s Association hired high-powered attorneys to represent Lee Yick. Their case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which, happily, ruled in Lee Yick’s favor unanimously. They said that although the law was fair and impartial on its face — it didn’t say Chinese Americans can’t operate wooden laundries; it just said wooden laundries can’t be operated without board approval — the law was being obviously enforced in a discriminatory manner, and therefore it was unconstitutional.”

A current case reminded Yogi of Lee Yick’s case. “Just yesterday I read a newspaper story about a zoning board in a western Kentucky town that had initially approved the construction of a mosque for Somali immigrants, but 14 days later reversed its decision because of community complaints. That zoning board had recently issued permits for Christian churches.”

In 1944, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez leased an asparagus farm in Westminster, Calif., and wanted their children to attend a nearby school. “Gonzalo’s sister took her children as well as the three Mendez children to the 17th Street School to enroll, and an administrator there said that he would enroll the lighter-skinned cousins but refused to enroll the three Mendez children. He said they’d have to enroll in the ‘Mexican school,’ which had inferior supplies and was in a run-down building.

“The Mendezes were infuriated by this outright discrimination … so they joined forces with other Mexican American families in Orange County to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 5,000 Mexican American students throughout the county. The attorney for the school district argued that the ‘separate but equal’ standard was still the law of the land … He also said that there were pedagogical reasons for segregation, namely that the Mexican American students needed to be taught English, and to be taught American culture and values. The Mendez family attorney refuted those arguments easily by putting on the stand the Mendez children themselves, who spoke English fluently and obviously understood American customs and values.”

The judge ruled in the family’s favor and the school board appealed. “The case received national attention because people thought it might be the case that would overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson, which was the case that justified ‘separate but equal’ schools and facilities. So an array of civil rights organizations, including the ACLU, the Japanese American Citizens League and the NAACP… supported the case, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling … the first time that a federal court had ruled that segregation of Mexican American students was unconstitutional.

“The Mendez family attorney gave (NAACP attorney and future Supreme Court justice) Thurgood Marshall all of the court papers, and Thurgood Marshall utilized a lot of the same strategies several years later in Brown vs. Board of Education, which was successful in overturning Plessy vs. Ferguson.”

Yogi announced that the book has a website (www.wherevertheresafight.com), which includes resources for educators.

Korematsu Discovery Academy

Principal Charles Wilson of the Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy, part of the Oakland Unified School District, gave a brief history of the school: “We opened in August 2006. Our opening is actually an example of people taking control of their own lives. The parents in our neighborhood were sick and tired of a failing school, and the school that was failing was called Stonehurst Elementary, located at the intersection of 105th and E Street … the lowest-performing school, perhaps, in the State of California. So through groups like the Oakland Community Organization, they brought parents together to work on design teams to design schools that they wanted to have ... small schools that address the needs of the children.

“We have the honor of being the second school in the state named after Fred Korematsu. The first opened in Davis a little bit before us. But we have the extra special honor of actually having been the school that Fred Korematsu went to ... His family’s nursery was very close, so he walked from his family’s nursery to our school every day. So truly it’s grounded in the roots, literally, of the nursery ...

“The community has changed radically since the internment. The population within the neighborhood is largely African American and Latino. But there are still kids and families that need people to stand up for what’s right. So we’ve been working hard for the last five years ... We’re very happy to be doing the right thing for the children of our neighborhood.”

Before the students recited the school’s creed, Wilson explained, “We don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance at our school. My understanding of the law was that we had to show a display of patriotism at school, and we decided to make that a creed that we wrote ourselves. We feel that it encompasses the spirit of Fred Korematsu.”

The creed: “Korematsu. We stand up for what is right. Discovery. We are the innovators and the explorers of the future. Academy. We are scholars. Together we have the power to reach for the stars.”

The educators were then shown clips from the documentary “Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story” (2000), which includes footage of Korematsu receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998 from President Bill Clinton, who compared Korematsu to Rosa Parks and other civil rights icons.

A Daughter’s Memories

Karen Korematsu spoke after taking part in the ribbon-cutting at San Leandro High School’s Fred T. Korematsu campus, which is dedicated to ninth-graders. She had also visited McKinley Elementary School with Irons and Yogi to speak with a group of fourth-graders.

She described the McKinley students as “very inspiring because they’ve all been studying about Fred Korematsu and doing these projects, just so totally amazing. They were asking me all these questions — of course, they want to know how old I am ... and where is the Presidential Medal of Freedom? It’s locked up in a safety deposit box.”

Korematsu recalled that she did not know about her father’s Supreme Court case or even the internment until she was in high school. “I was in a social studies class and each of the students had been assigned a paperback book ... We were to get up in front of the class to give the oral book report. I can’t even remember what mine was about. My friend Maya, who is Sansei, third-generation Japanese American, like me, was assigned this little paperback book called ‘Concentration Camps USA.’

“She got up in front of the class and started talking about the Japanese internment and these camps, and I’m thinking, ‘That’s interesting. I’ve never heard about that.’ Then she goes on and tells about ... this famous Supreme Court case, Korematsu vs. the United States. Well, I’m sitting in the back and all of a sudden 30 pairs of eyes turning around, looking at me.”

Knowing that her last name was rare, Korematsu initially thought that the case was about “some black sheep in the family,” perhaps one of her father’s brothers or a cousin from Japan.

“After the class, I went over to Maya and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ She said, ‘I thought you knew ... I think this is about your father.’ I said, ‘No, no way.’

“So I went home and confronted my mother, and she goes, ‘Yes, that’s your father.’ I said, ‘Well, why didn’t anyone tell me about this?’ She said, ‘We knew we would someday. Maybe when you were older, you might understand.’ But obviously not even my cousins had talked about this.”

Unlike many Japanese American kids who grew up learning about their history and culture, Korematsu was “far removed from that” because her father was “excommunicated from the community ... They didn’t want anything to do with him.”

But after that revelation at age 16, she learned what her family and other Japanese Americans had gone through. “A lot of people lost everything. They lost their businesses. They would have to start over. What would they do? Like my grandparents, they came back to East Oakland and the land they had was in a state of bad repair. They had a flower nursery. The glass was all broken. It would take a lot of time and money to build it back up.”

When the internment orders came, her father was faced with a fundamental question, she said. “He learned about the Constitution in high school ... In his heart of hearts, he was an American citizen, so what does that mean? It was a matter of ‘Am I an American or am I not?’

“It was interesting to find out later that all those years until my father’s case was reopened in ’83, he was always worried about my brother and I ... What if Japan decided to do some crazy thing? What would happen? Does that mean that we’re all rounded up and put in concentration camps all over again? So it was something that he carried with him. He carried this burden with him for almost 40 years ... In some part he felt responsible because he had lost his case at the Supreme Court level in 1944 ...

“Because of that (conviction) he had a record. He couldn’t work for the government. It was difficult to find work. He couldn’t get a real estate license when he went through all the process of taking classes and a test. So he suffered, and it took courage for him to reopen his case, because what if he lost again?”

Korematsu, who joined her father in protesting profiling of Muslim and Arab Americans after 9/11, said, “We’re all saying to the government, ‘Hey, you already played that card. You can’t do that again’ ... Just because, like the Japanese Americans, they look like the enemy, does that mean they get sent away and lose everything? ... We need to learn how to respect each other’s differences and have the courage to speak up when we think something is wrong.”

She added, “My father’s story is really an American story, and I think that’s the inspiration and why the community really pulled together to name the Fred T. Korematsu Campus at San Leandro High School after my father —  to be an example for now and future generations to really take this to heart and know that they can make a difference. One person can make a difference, if you do it without violence. As my father said, protest, but not with violence. Otherwise they won’t listen to you. But don’t be afraid to speak up.”

Post-9/11 Issues

Ling Woo Liu, director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education, spoke about the post-9/11 special registration process that was put in place under the Patriot Act. Some 82,000 legal immigrants who had entered the U.S. after 9/11 were required to register with immigration facilities. The law targeted “boys and men over the age of 16 years from 25 different countries ... 24 of those countries were Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern countries. The only exception was North Korea.”

These individuals were “photographed, fingerprinted and subjected to unreasonable scrutiny on the basis of race, religion and national origin,” Liu said.

The program closed with a debate on the construction of the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center, known by critics as the “Ground Zero Mosque.” Opponents say that placing an Islamic center near the former site of the World Trade Center is an insult to the victims of 9/11, while proponents say it does not represent radical Islam and is one of many religious centers in the area.

Shaykh Abdullah bin-Hamid Ali, professor of Islamic law and Arabic at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, spoke for the proponents. Irons, whose legal training enables him to argue both sides of a case, represented the opponents, although he is not personally opposed. Organizers said the debate served as a model of how one may engage in civil discourse around a controversial issue.