Fred Korematsu

Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu (是松 豊三郎, January 30, 1919 – March 30, 2005) was one of the many Japanese-American citizens living on the West Coast during World War II. Shortly after the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War and his military commanders to require all Japanese Americans be removed from desginated "military areas" and placed in internment camps. When such orders were issued for the West Coast, Korematsu instead became a fugitive. His conviction for disobeying that order led to a test of the order's legality before the United States Supreme Court in "Korematsu v. United States".

Biography

Early life

Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland, California in 1919, the third of four sons to Japanese parents 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.] Fred resided continuously in Oakland from his birth until the time of his arrest. He attended public schools, and worked in his family's flower nursery in San Leandro, California.

World War II

Korematsu was rejected by the U.S. Army when called for military duty under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, due to stomach ulcers. Instead, he trained to become a welder in order to contribute his services to the defense effort. He lost his employment because of his ancestry after the United States' entry into World War II in December 1941 following the Japanese 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, [Military Area No. 1 was defined as the entire California, Washington and Oregon coasts, as well as the Southern sections of California and Arizona along the border of Mexico. " [http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/evac.html Evacuation To Be Carried Out Gradually] ", "The San Francisco News", March 3, 1942.] in preparation for their eventual evacuation to detention camps. [Public Proclamation No. 4 (7 F.R. 2601).] Korematsu decided to evade evacuation by migrating to Nevada or the Midwestern United States. He underwent plastic surgery on his eyelids in the unsuccessful hope of passing as a caucasian, changed his name to Clyde Sarah, ["Korematsu 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, [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/12/INGLHA8USS1.DTL 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 prelude to being removed to the camps, [Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34.] Korematsu refused and went into hiding in the Oakland area. He was arrested on a street corner in San Leandro on May 30, 1942, 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.] and indicted on June 12, 1942. Released on bail pending trial, he was seized and sent to join the rest of his family at the Tanforan Assembly Center upon instructions of General DeWitt. Shortly after Korematsu's arrest, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union in northern California asked him if he would be willing to use his case to test the legality of the Japanese American interment. Korematsu agreed.

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 situated at Topaz, Utah. As an unskilled laborer, he was eligible to receive only $12 per month ($167 in 2007 dollars) for working eight hours per day at the camp.

He appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals. They 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 Black, the Court held that compulsory exclusion, though constitutionally suspect, is justified during circumstances of "emergency and peril". (See "Korematsu v. United States" for more information.)

However, the Court also decided "Ex parte Endo" in December 1944, granting 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. [The U.S. Supreme Court limited its decision to the validity of the exclusion orders, adding, "The provisions of other orders requiring persons of Japanese ancestry to report to assembly centers and providing for the detention of such persons in assembly and relocation centers were separate, and their validity is not in issue in this proceeding."]

Later life and compensation

After release from camp, Korematsu moved to Salt Lake City, Utah [Annie Nakao, " [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/01/BAGLHC1M651.DTL Fred Korematsu — he defied wartime order to internment camp] ", "San Francisco Chronicle", April 1, 2005, p. B7.] and Detroit, Michigan, where he worked as a draftsman until 1949, when he moved back to the Oakland area. ["3 Japanese-Americans Ask Court to Overturn Wartime Convictions", "The New York Times", January 31, 1983, p. A14.] He married circa 1946–1947; a daughter was born in 1950, and a son in 1954. [Ancestry.com. "California Birth Index, 1905-1995" [database on-line] . Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005.]

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed a special commission to investigate the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The commission 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, Congress apologized and granted personal compensation of $20,000 to each surviving prisoner.

In the early 1980s, while researching a book on internment cases, lawyer and University of California, San Diego professor Peter Irons came across evidence that Charles Fahy, the Solicitor General of the United States who argued "Korematsu v. United States" before the Supreme Court, had deliberately suppressed reports from the FBI and military intelligence which concluded that Japanese-American citizens posed no security risk. Along with a team of lawyers headed by Dale Minami, Irons filed a writ of "coram nobis" with the federal courts, seeking to overturn Korematsu's conviction. On November 10, 1983, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of U.S. District Court in San Francisco formally vacated the conviction.

Under the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct (promulgated in 1983 as a result of the Watergate scandal), a prosecutor's deliberate suppression of exonerating evidence is grounds for disbarment. Fahy's actions are often mentioned in legal ethics textbooks as an example of why the modern rule is necessary.

President Bill Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, to Korematsu in 1998, saying, "In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls. Plessy, Brown, Parks ... to that distinguished list, today we add the name of Fred Korematsu."

A member and Elder of First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, Korematsu was twice President of San Leandro Lions Club, and for 15 years a volunteer with Boy Scouts of America, San Francisco Bay Council. [" [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/10/MNKOREMATS4.DTL KOREMATSU, Fred Toyosaburo] " (obituary), "San Francisco Chronicle", April 10, 2005, p. Z99.]

From 2001 until his death, Korematsu served on the Constitution Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee. [http://www.constitutionproject.org/libertyandsecurity/members.cfm?categoryId=3] Discussing racial profiling in 2004, he warned, "No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy."

Fred Korematsu died of respiratory failure at his daughter's home in Marin County, California on March 30, 2005.

References

Further reading

*
*
*