was an American civil rights activist who resisted the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Shortly after the Imperial Japanese Navy launched its attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast from their homes and their mandatory imprisonment in incarceration camps. Korematsu challenged the order and became a fugitive.
The legality of Roosevelt's order was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Korematsu v. United States (1944). However, Korematsu's conviction for evading internment was overturned four decades later in US District Court, after the disclosure of new evidence challenging its necessity, which had been withheld from the courts by the U.S. government during the war. Korematsu was discussed seventy-four years later in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), with Chief Justice John Roberts writing: "The forcible relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority.""Trump v. Hawaii" (June 26, 2018) (PDF) p. 38 Legal scholars differ as to whether this statement actually overturned Korematsu or was merely a "disapproving dictum" of it.
To commemorate his journey as a civil rights activist posthumously, "Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution" was observed for the first time on his 92nd birthday, January 30, 2011, by the state of California, the first such commemoration for an Asian American in the United States. In 2015, Virginia passed legislation to make it the second state to permanently recognize each January 30 as Fred Korematsu Day.
The Fred T. Korematsu Institute was founded in 2009 to carry on Korematsu's legacy as a civil rights advocate by educating and advocating for civil liberties for all communities.
Youth Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, on January 30, 1919, the third of four sons to Japanese parents Kakusaburo Korematsu and Kotsui Aoki, who immigrated to the United States in 1905.U.S. Census, January 1, 1920, State of California, County of Alameda, enumeration district 145, p. 12-A, lines 29–33. Korematsu resided continuously in Oakland from his birth until the time of his arrest. He attended public schools, participated in the Castlemont High School (Oakland, California) tennis and swim teams, and worked in his family's flower nursery in nearby San Leandro, California. He encountered racism in high school when a U.S. Army recruiting officer was handing out recruiting flyers to Korematsu's non-Japanese friends. The officer told Korematsu, "We have orders not to accept you."Chin, Steven A. When Justice Failed: The Fred Korematsu Story. Ed. Alex Haley. Raintree, 1992, p. 20. Even his girlfriend Ida Boitano's Italian parents felt that people of Japanese descent were inferior and unfit to mix with white people.Chin, Steven A. When Justice Failed: The Fred Korematsu Story. Ed. Alex Haley. Raintree, 1992, p. 10.
World War II When called for military duty under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, Korematsu was formally rejected by the U.S. Navy due to stomach ulcers, but it is believed that he was truly rejected on the basis of his Japanese descent. Instead, he trained to become a welder in order to contribute his services to the defense effort. First, he worked as a welder at a shipyard. He went in one day to find his timecard missing; his coworkers hastily explained to him that he was Japanese so therefore he was not allowed to work there. He then found a new job, but was fired after a week when his supervisor returned from an extended vacation and found him working there. Because of his Japanese descent, Korematsu lost all employment completely following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
On March 27, 1942, General John L. DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Area, prohibited Japanese Americans from leaving the limits of Military Area No. 1, in preparation for their eventual evacuation to internment camps.Public Proclamation No. 4 (7 F.R. 2601). Korematsu underwent plastic surgery on his eyelids in an unsuccessful attempt to pass as a Caucasian, changed his name to Clyde SarahKorematsu v. U.S., 1944 WL 42849, Appellate Brief, p. 4."3 Japanese Defy Curbs", The New York Times, June 13, 1942, p. 8. and claimed to be of Spanish and Hawaiian heritage.Annie Nakao, "Overturning a wartime act decades later", San Francisco Chronicle, December 12, 2004, p. D3.
When on May 3, 1942, General DeWitt ordered Japanese Americans to report on May 9 to Assembly Centers as a prelude to being removed to the internment camps, Korematsu refused and went into hiding in the Oakland area. He was arrested on a street corner in San Leandro on May 30, 1942, and held at a jail in San Francisco.David Margolick, "Legal Legend Urges Victims To Speak Out", The New York Times, November 24, 1984, p. 25. Shortly after Korematsu's arrest, Ernest Besig, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union in northern California, asked him whether he would be willing to use his case to test the legality of the Japanese American internment. Korematsu agreed, and was assigned civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins. The national ACLU argued for Besig, its own district director, not to fight Korematsu's case, as many high-ranking members of the ACLU were close to President Roosevelt and the ACLU did not want to be viewed negatively during a time of war. Besig decided to take Korematsu's case despite this.Daniels, Roger (2004). Prisoners Without Trial Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill & Wang, p. 65.
Korematsu felt that "people should have a fair trial and a chance to defend their loyalty at court in a democratic way, because in this situation, people were placed in imprisonment without any fair trial".Chin, Steven A. When Justice Failed: The Fred Korematsu Story. Ed. Alex Haley. Raintree, 1992, pp. 67–68. On June 12, 1942, Korematsu received his trial date and was given $5,000 bail (). After Korematsu's arraignment on June 18, 1942, Besig posted bail and he and Korematsu attempted to leave. When met by military police, Besig told Korematsu to go with them. The military police took Korematsu to the Presidio.Fournier, Eric Paul (Director). (2000). Of Civil Wrongs & Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story. [DVD]. Korematsu was tried and convicted in federal court on September 8, 1942, for a violation of Public Law No. 503, which criminalized the violations of military orders issued under the authority of Executive Order 9066, and was placed on five years' probation. He was taken from the courtroom and returned to the Tanforan Assembly Center, and thereafter he and his family were placed in the Central Utah War Relocation Center in Topaz, Utah. As an unskilled laborer, he was eligible to receive only $12 per month () for working eight-hour days at the camp. He was placed in a horse stall with a single light bulb, and later said "jail was better than this".Chin, Steven A. When Justice Failed: The Fred Korematsu Story. Ed. Alex Haley. Raintree, 1992, p. 70.
Korematsu's actions were both hailed and criticized. Many Japanese residents living on the West Coast cooperated with the government internment order, hoping to prove their loyalty as Americans, including members of the Japanese American Citizens League. Korematsu was thus disdained for his opposition to a government order, and was even seen as a threat in the eyes of many Japanese Americans. When Korematsu's family was moved to the Topaz internment camp, he later recalled feeling isolated because his imprisoned compatriots recognized him and many, if not most, of them felt that if they talked to him they would also be seen as troublemakers.Chin, Steven A. When Justice Failed: The Fred Korematsu Story. Ed. Alex Haley. Raintree, 1992, p. 38.
Korematsu then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which granted review on March 27, 1943, but upheld the original verdict on January 7, 1944. He appealed again and brought his case to the United States Supreme Court, which granted review on March 27, 1944. On December 18, 1944, in a 6–3 decision authored by Justice Hugo Black, the Court held that compulsory exclusion, though constitutionally suspect, was justified during circumstances of "emergency and peril".
However, the Court also decided Ex parte Endo in December 1944 to grant Mitsuye Endo her liberty from the camps because the Department of Justice and War Relocation Authority conceded that Endo was a "loyal and law-abiding citizen" and that no authority existed for detaining loyal citizens longer than necessary to separate the loyal from the disloyal. Endo's case did not address the question of whether the initial removal itself was constitutional, as did Korematsu's case.
Later adult life and compensation
After being released from the camp in Utah, Korematsu had to move east since the law would not allow former internees to move back westward. He moved to Salt Lake City, Utah,Annie Nakao, "Fred Korematsu – he defied wartime order to internment camp", San Francisco Chronicle, April 1, 2005, p. B7. where he continued to fight racism. He still knew there were inequalities among the Japanese, since he experienced them in his everyday life. He found work repairing water tanks in Salt Lake City, but after three months on the job, he discovered he was being paid half of what his white coworkers were being paid. He told his boss that this was unfair and asked to be paid the same amount, but his boss only threatened to call the police and try to get him arrested just for being Japanese, so he left his job.Chin, Steven A. When Justice Failed: The Fred Korematsu Story. Ed. Alex Haley. Raintree, 1992, p. 80. After this incident, Korematsu lost hope, remaining quiet for over thirty years. His own daughter did not find out about what her father did until she was in high school. Peter Irons said that Korematsu "felt responsible for the internment in a sort of backhanded way, because his case had been lost in the Supreme Court." He moved to Detroit, Michigan, where his younger brother lived, and where he worked as a draftsman until 1949. He married Kathryn Pearson in Detroit on October 12, 1946. They returned to Oakland to visit his family in 1949 because his mother was ill. They did not intend to stay, but decided to after Kathryn became pregnant with their first child, Karen.Lorraine Bannai interview of Kathryn Korematsu, May 2008. His daughter was born in 1950, and a son, Ken, in 1954.
In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a proclamation formally terminating Executive Order 9066 and apologizing for the internment, stated: "We now know what we should have known then—not only was that evacuation wrong but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans. On the battlefield and at home the names of Japanese-Americans have been and continue to be written in history for the sacrifices and the contributions they have made to the well-being and to the security of this, our common Nation." In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed a special commission to investigate the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, which concluded that the decisions to remove those of Japanese ancestry to prison camps occurred because of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership". In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which had been sponsored by Representative Norman Mineta and Senator Alan K. Simpson. It provided financial redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling $1.2 billion.