NikkeiWest--Northern California Japanese American Newspaper

By John Sammon—APTOS—Fred Korematsu was one of those rare people history will remember as having the courage to stand alone and suffer the consequences because his principles wouldn’t allow him to tolerate injustice, in this case the government’s treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“Fred made a gift to the country, the gift of civil rights,” said attorney Dale Minami. “Fred decided I’m not going to go. He did this because he had a deep sense of principle.”

Minami represented Korematsu in a landmark court case overturning a government conviction against his client.

Jan. 30, 2011, is the first official “Fred Korematsu Day,” a remembrance signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in September of 2010.

At a lunch held at the Seascape Golf Course in Aptos on Jan. 23 sponsored by the Japanese American Citizens League to honor Korematsu, who died in 2005, approximately 200 members and guests including Korematsu’s wife Kathryn and daughter Karen recalled his struggle against the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942.

Executive Order 9066 mandated the removal of 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes to internment camps because the government perceived them to be disloyal. Many lost their jobs, homes and property.

Korematsu was one of four sons born in Oakland to Japanese-born parents. He attended school and worked at his parent’s flower nursery next to the family home. Before Pearl Harbor he attempted to enlist in the National Guard and then the Coast Guard, but was rejected because he was of Japanese descent. He then trained as a welder and worked in ship yards in the defense industry. After World War II started, his job was taken from him because he was of Japanese ancestry.

When the government ordered the removal and internment of Japanese Americans, Korematsu refused to go, went into hiding, but was arrested by authorities. He was held in jail, tried and convicted in federal court, and sent to an internment camp in Utah with other Japanese Americans where he was housed in a horse stall with a single light bulb.

“Some of the assembly centers were former race tracks,” his daughter Karen Korematsu explained.

He was disdained by other Japanese Americans who considered him a pariah and a troublemaker whose refusal to relocate had jeopardized their own chances to receive leniency.

Ernest Besig, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed to take on Korematsu’s case despite pressure from some colleagues to avoid it. An appeal was made to the U.S. Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court in 1944 seeking to overturn his conviction, but the court’s verdict was upheld under the guise that it was acceptable during “times of peril.”

After the war and release from internment, Korematsu took temporary jobs in which he was paid half what his white co-workers received. He moved to Detroit, Michigan and took a job as a draftsman, then later moved back to Oakland seeking drafting work. He got married and had a son and a daughter.

The hinge that turned Korematsu’s conviction came in the early 1980s when legal historian, lawyer and University of California San Diego professor Peter Irons came across evidence that information provided by the FBI and military intelligence officers that Japanese Americans had posed no threat had been deliberately withheld from the Supreme Court justices.

Minami was contacted and asked if he along with a team of lawyers would like to attempt to overturn Korematsu’s conviction. Korematsu himself had to face the difficult decision of whether he wanted to proceed again, and risk losing in court again.

“We said we’d take his case for free,” Minami recalled. “We realized this was the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to correct history and the legal record, to say you can’t remove and take an entire group of people without accountability.”

During investigative inquiry, it was found that government officials had openly lied to the Supreme Court justices, altered and destroyed evidence. In addition, when the government learned Korematsu’s case was being re-opened, officials tried to offer him a pardon, with the understanding that what he did was wrong.

“It was an insulting offer,” Karen Korematsu said.

“The government tried to side-track the issue,” Minami added. “But Fred wasn’t going to say he was wrong.”

At a hearing in November of 1983, Korematsu stood before a Federal U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco and said he had once come to court in chains. He said he wanted the government to admit they were wrong so no citizen of any creed or color should have to go through such an experience again.

The court cleared his name and overturned his conviction, but that did not reverse the Supreme Court decision. Because the Federal Court decision found in Korematsu’s favor, it was not appealed to the higher Supreme Court.  Ling Woo Liu, director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education based in San Francisco, said overturning the Supreme Court ruling given the Federal Court’s decision in San Francisco in 1983 would require a similar case where a mass incarceration had taken place based on ethnicity, and where someone came forward to challenge it like Korematsu did.

“Luckily, there has not been a second case of such discrimination,” Liu said. “The original Supreme Court decision still stands today, but it’s considered discredited.”

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized the formation of a commission to look into the legality of the internment. The commission made a finding that the forced relocation was wrong and had been motivated by “race prejudice, war hysteria and a lack of leadership.”

The precedent set by the outcome of the Korematsu decision in 1983 also led President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to sign the Civil Liberties Act which provided reparations of $20,000 for each surviving detainee. It was followed by a formal apology from the U.S. Government.

To this day the case, Korematsu versus United States, is still studied by students in constitutional law schools throughout the country.

To the end of his life Korematsu remained a champion of civil rights, speaking to groups and writing in the name of justice and equality, particularly after the events of 9-11 in which he said Muslims in the country were in danger of having their civil liberties restricted.

“Fred knew that all citizens should be protected from the prejudices that can be aroused,” Minami said.

A donation from the Japanese American Citizens League will be given to the Korematsu Institute to help fund curriculum kits for school history departments so that students can learn about discrimination. Karen Korematsu thanked the JACL for honoring her father and for the donation.

“I’m overwhelmed,” she said. “The institute was founded to further my father’s vision, and the importance of education in which he truly believed.”

While she said official recognition of her father with Korematsu Day is heartwarming, she added that the civil liberties of citizens are still under potential threat.

“My father was one of the first people to speak up,” Karen Korematsu said. “This story is so important because people often don’t pay attention to history. We can make the same mistakes. That’s why education is so important.”

Korematsu late in his life probably put it best.

“The government shouldn’t pardon me,” he had said. “I should pardon the government.”

Celebration of Fred T. Korematsu Day on Jan 30 will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. in Wheeler Hall at the UC Berkeley Campus. Activities will include a VIP and general reception, a keynote speech by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder of the Rainbow Coalition, addresses by congressional and state officials, plus a screening of the Emmy-award-winning film produced by Korematsu’s son Ken , Of Civil Wrongs and Rights, the Fred Korematsu story.

For information visit www.korematsuinstitute.org.