Fred Korematsu
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, born on January 30, 1919, in Oakland, California, was an American civil rights activist known for his resistance to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was ordered to relocate to internment camps under Executive Order 9066, which he believed violated his rights as a U.S. citizen. Korematsu took a stand against this order, changing his identity to evade internment and was subsequently arrested and convicted for his defiance. His legal battle culminated in the significant Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment policy at the time.
Despite the initial ruling against him, Korematsu's conviction was later overturned in 1983, recognizing the government's knowledge that Japanese Americans were not a security threat at the time of internment. Following this, he became a prominent advocate for civil rights and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Korematsu's legacy includes his role in the fight for justice for Japanese Americans and other marginalized groups. California honors his memory with Fred Korematsu Day on January 30, reflecting his impact on civil rights and the ongoing struggle against discrimination.
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Fred Korematsu
Activist
- Born: January 30, 1919
- Birthplace: Oakland, California
- Died: March 30, 2005
- Place of death: Larkspur, California
Korematsu stands as a key figure in the struggle against the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. His legal battle against this policy resulted in the US Supreme Court decision Korematsu v. United States in 1944. His vindication many decades later helped to bring redress to Japanese Americans and served to make him a civil rights icon.
Full name: Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu (toh-yoh-SAH-bew-roh koh-ray-MAH-tsew)
Areas of achievement: Activism, social issues
Early Life
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was born on January 30, 1919, in Oakland, California. He was the third of four sons born to Japanese parents who had immigrated to the United States in 1905. As a child, he attended public schools in Oakland and assisted his parents in their plant nursery business. Throughout his youth, he experienced firsthand the discrimination directed at Japanese Americans. He attempted to enlist in the US armed forces when he was in his early twenties but was rejected due to his race. Korematsu found work as a welder in the Oakland shipyards instead, but he was fired in the days following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Shortly thereafter, with the issuing of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, all Japanese Americans were required to report for transfer to wartime internment camps. Korematsu, believing that his rights as an American citizen were being violated, refused to comply with the order. He changed his name and underwent plastic surgery on his eyelids in an attempt to disguise his racial background. He was arrested in May 1942 and was eventually placed on trial for failing to comply with the relocation order.
As his case developed, Korematsu was approached by the head of the local California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who sought permission to use his case as a way of testing the legality of the internment process. Despite this assistance, Korematsu was found guilty of violating the law implementing the executive order. He was placed on probation for five years and sent to the Central Utah War Relocation Center in Topaz, Utah.
Life’s Work
Korematsu refused to let the case rest, however. With the assistance of his legal counsel, he brought his case to the US Court of Appeals. In January 1944, the Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s verdict, and Korematsu again appealed his case, this time to the US Supreme Court. The court issued its decision on Korematsu v. United States on December 18, 1944, determining by a vote of six to three that internment was justified due to national-security interests during a time of war.
Following the high court decision, Korematsu remained in the Utah camp. After his release at the end of the war, he lived for a brief time in Salt Lake City, and then in Detroit, Michigan, before returning to the Oakland area in 1949. While living in Detroit, he married Kathryn Pearson, with whom he had two children. Those aware of his legal battles held him in no particular esteem at this time, seeing him as a more negative than positive force in the Japanese American community.
By the 1970s, however, key individuals involved in the case had begun to see things differently, among them former US Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren, who, as attorney general and governor of California during the wartime period, had played a key role in the internment process. In 1980, following the statements of Warren and others, President Jimmy Carter appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the wartime violation of Japanese American rights. In 1983, Korematsu’s original conviction was overturned in the District Court in San Francisco. The judge noted that the government had concluded that Japanese Americans on the West Coast were not threats to national security before the case went before the US Supreme Court in 1944, but the government had suppressed this information. Through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Congress after apologizing for the wartime violations and granted personal compensation in the amount of $20,000 to internment camp survivors.
In the period following the redress of wartime internment, Korematsu quickly attained iconic status in the struggle for Japanese American rights and became a strong supporter of the rights of other minorities as well. In 1998, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he participated in legal efforts to protect the rights of individuals of Middle Eastern background in the United States and worked on behalf of Muslims detained in military prisons. He died of respiratory failure on March 30, 2005, in Marin County, California, a greatly respected and admired figure in civil rights history.
Significance
Korematsu was an ordinary man whose tenacity and sense of justice led him to resist internment during World War II and, after years of hard work, to ultimately find personal vindication and redress for Japanese Americans whose rights had been violated. He spent the final years of his life serving as an advocate for other minorities experiencing similar forms of injustice and educating others as a frequent speaker at universities and civil rights events. The state of California honors Korematsu by celebrating Fred Korematsu Day on January 30, the first such commemoration to be named for an Asian American.
Bai, Matt. “He Said No to Internment.” New York Times Magazine, 25 Dec. 2005, p. 38. Print.
Garrow, David J. “The Rule of Fear: Another Lesson from World War II Internments.” The New York Times, 23 Sept. 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/weekinreview/aftermath-the-rule-of-fear-another-lesson-from-world-war-ii-internments.html. Accessed 13 Sept. 2022.
Goldstein, Richard. "Fred Korematsu, 86, Dies; Lost Key Suit on Internment." The New York Times, 1 Apr. 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/us/fred-korematsu-86-dies-lost-key-suit-on-internment.html. Accessed 13 Sept. 2022.
Irons, Peter. Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993. Print.
Trickey, Erick. "Fred Korematsu Fought Against Japanese Internment in the Supreme Court . . . and Lost." Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Jan. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fred-korematsu-fought-against-japanese-internment-supreme-court-and-lost-180961967/. Accessed 13 Sept. 2022.