Fred Korematsu Dies

[Brownian Motion]

Fred Korematsu, 86, Dies; Lost Key Suit on Internment

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Published: April 1, 2005

Fred T. Korematsu, who lost a Supreme Court challenge in 1944 to the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans but gained vindication decades later when he was given the Medal of Freedom, died on Wednesday in Larkspur, Calif. Mr. Korematsu, who lived in San Leandro, Calif., was 86.

The cause was a respiratory ailment, said Don Tamaki, a lawyer for Mr. Korematsu.

When he was arrested in 1942 for failing to report to an internment center, Mr. Korematsu was working as a welder and simply hoping to be left alone so he could pursue his marriage plans. He became a central figure in the controversy over the wartime removal of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants from the West Coast to inland detention centers. He emerged as a symbol of resistance to government authority.

When President Bill Clinton presented Mr. Korematsu with the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, in January 1998, the president likened him to Linda Brown and Rosa Parks in the civil rights struggles of the 1950's.

In February 1942, two months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the designation of military areas from which anyone could be excluded "as protection against espionage and sabotage."

In May 1942, the military command on the West Coast ordered that all people with Japanese ancestry be removed inland, considering them a security threat, and internment camps were built in harsh and isolated regions.

Mr. Korematsu, a native of Oakland, Calif., and one of four sons of Japanese-born parents, was jailed on May 30, 1942, in San Leandro, having refused to join family members who had reported to a nearby racetrack that was being used as a temporary detention center.

Mr. Korematsu had undergone plastic surgery in an effort to disguise his Asian features and had altered his draft registration card, listing his name as Clyde Sarah and his background as Spanish-Hawaiian. He hoped that with his altered appearance and identity he could avoid ostracism when he married his girlfriend, who had an Italian background.

A few days after his arrest, Mr. Korematsu was visited in jail by a California official of the American Civil Liberties Union who was seeking a test case against internment. Mr. Korematsu agreed to sue.

"I didn't feel guilty because I didn't do anything wrong," he told The New York Times four decades later. "Every day in school, we said the pledge to the flag, 'with liberty and justice for all,' and I believed all that. I was an American citizen, and I had as many rights as anyone else."

Mr. Korematsu maintained that his constitutional rights were violated by internment and that he had suffered racial discrimination. In the summer of 1942, he was found guilty in federal court of ignoring the exclusion directive and was sentenced to five years' probation. He spent two years at an internment camp in Utah with his family. In 1944, the A.C.L.U. took his case before the Supreme Court.

In December 1944 in Korematsu v. the United States, the Supreme Court upheld internment by a vote of 6 to 3. Justice Hugo L. Black, remembered today as a stout civil liberties advocate, wrote in the opinion that Mr. Korematsu was not excluded "because of hostility to him or his race" but because the United States was at war with Japan, and the military "feared an invasion of our West Coast."

In dissenting, Justice Frank Murphy wrote that the exclusion order "goes over the very brink of constitutional power and falls into the ugly abyss of racism."

The case was revisited long afterward when Peter Irons, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, discovered documents that indicated that when it went to the Supreme Court, the government had suppressed its own findings that Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were not, in fact, security threats.

In light of that information, Judge Marilyn H. Patel of Federal District Court in San Francisco overturned Mr. Korematsu's conviction in November 1983. In 1988, federal law provided for payments and apologies to Japanese-Americans relocated in World War II.

Mr. Korematsu returned to California after the war, worked as a draftsman and raised a family. For many years, he withheld information about his case from his children, seeking to forget about his humiliation.

In recent years, Mr. Korematsu expressed concern about civil liberties in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Surviving are his wife, Kathryn; his son, Ken, of San Francisco; and his daughter, Karen Korematsu-Haigh, of Larkspur.

In her decision overturning Mr. Korematsu's conviction, Judge Patel said, "Korematsu stands as a constant caution that in times of war or declared military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting constitutional guarantees."

[undergroundagent]

I wrote about this infamous case in a paper last year. Authorized the segregation of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. One of the more infamous decisions the Supreme Court has rendered.

Ranks right up there with Dred Scott Case.

Edited April 1, 2005 by undergroundagent

[jazzmessenger]

I have never heard of Mr. Korematsu before your post. Thank you for posting this.

[RainyDay]

Thank you for starting this thread. I took a journalism class many years ago and one of our assigments was to write a story about Mr. Korematsu. He came to the class and he told his story, then we all asked questions like a press conference. I knew about the Japanese American internment from family members who spoke of it with great sadness. But to hear him talk about it made an indelible impression on me. At the time, I worked with a woman who I didn't know was sent to a camp along with her family. I told her about the interview with Mr. Korematsu and she asked me to step out to the outdoor stairwell that we called the "terrace," where all private conversations took place. She told me about her experiences and I cried.

I'm sorry to hear of his death. I will always remember him as a quietly dignified person. RIP.

[Guy Berger]

I think the Japanese internment during WW2 has become increasingly relevant in the past three years, but that's a discussion that's more appropriate for the Politics forum.

Guy

[Brownian Motion]

I think the Japanese internment during WW2 has become increasingly relevant in the past three years, but that's a discussion that's more appropriate for the Politics forum.

Guy

I think so too, but I decided to post the obit outside of politics for maximum exposure.

[jazzmessenger]

I rarely ever read any thread in the polical forum, so I was glad this was posted in non-political thread.

[Use3D]

I think the Japanese internment during WW2 has become increasingly relevant in the past three years, but that's a discussion that's more appropriate for the Politics forum.

      Guy

I think so too, but I decided to post the obit outside of politics for maximum exposure.

Well don't be sad if it gets moved.

[RainyDay]

Whatever. I'm glad it started out as nonpolitical or I wouldn't have seen it when I was passing through.