AN AMERICAN HERO YOU SHOULD KNOW
People readily recognize the names of our nation’s most important civil rights leaders, lofty names such as Malcolm X and Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. But do you also know the name Fred Korematsu?
I embarrassingly admit my own ignorance before moving to San Diego in 2011, and I place blame on being born and raised in South Dallas and spending 16 years of my life in Germany and Japan. But I know now why California celebrates this quiet, courageous man who took a stand against injustice and prevailed 40 years later. And you should know him, too.
Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland in 1919 to first-generation Issei parents, five years before the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, halting immigration from Japan against the backdrop of growing anti-Asian sentiment along the West Coast.
Fred was 22 years old when the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and like many young Americans, Fred ran off to enlist to serve in the U.S. military. However, officers looked at his name and his face and turned him away that day — he eventually also lost his job as a welder due to his Japanese heritage.
Two months later, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, leading directly to the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans. Korematsu, who had had enough of discrimination, decided to defy the order and remained in Oakland.
On May 30, Korematsu was waiting for his Italian American girlfriend when he was arrested on a street corner in San Leandro in the Bay Area, and jailed. Korematsu was convicted and ended up living in the horse stalls at the Tanforan Assembly Center for several months until being sent to the incarceration camp in Topaz, Utah.
Still feeling betrayed by his own government, Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of his imprisonment and took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944 ... and lost. Devastated, he felt betrayed by his own country.
After the war ended, Korematsu married and led an unassuming life, returning to Oakland in 1949. But the conviction on his record haunted him for decades.
While the movement for Japanese American redress picked up steam in the 1970s and 1980s, a legal team led by Dale Minami reopened Korematsu’s case in 1983, bringing evidence that had been newly discovered by San Diego legal historian and professor Peter Irons — evidence that had been unlawfully suppressed in 1943.
Korematsu and Minami were successful in overturning the conviction in a federal court in San Francisco on Nov. 10, 1983. It was a pivotal moment in our nation’s civil rights history and brought a level of closure for Korematsu and his family.
Korematsu remained an activist his entire life, helping to pass the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which included an official apology to Japanese Americans by the U.S. government. In 1998, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton. Korematsu passed away on March 30, 2005, in Oakland at the age of 86, a hero to so many for standing up for what he believed was right.
Now, as America continues to deal with the rise of White nationalism, the disputed election of 2020 and the more recent events of Jan. 6, this oft-forgotten chapter of our nation’s story remains relevant.
Minami, who led the successful reopening of Korematsu’s case in the 1980s, told me, “Fred Korematsu’s case and the incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry is a lesson in the fragility of our democracy, an echo of history which resounds today in the dangerous insurrection of the Capitol.”
Minami hit the nail on the head regarding the relevance of Korematsu to today’s America. I am often surprised — even among those in California, among progressives who believe in justice and equality, among the most educated of our society — that many have never heard of Fred Korematsu or even of the incarceration of the Japanese Americans during World War II.
My hope is that you remember the name Fred Korematsu and the stand he took. My hope is that we, the people of the United States, remain vigilant against those who would try to use the incarceration of the Japanese Americans as a convenient precedent for repeating similar enormities. My hope is that our country and our country’s leaders, from both sides of the aisle, unquestionably believe in the freedoms granted to us by our constitution ... and that they believe in them as much as a man named Fred Korematsu did 80 years ago.
Korematsu saw the locking up of Japanese Americans during World War II as a betrayal.