Fred Korematsu's fight against prejudice
January 30, 2017 10:40 AM   Subscribe

Today Google’s US homepage is celebrating Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, civil rights activist and survivor of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1942, at the age of 23, he refused to go to the government’s incarceration camps for Japanese Americans. After he was arrested and convicted of defying the government’s order, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled against him, arguing that the incarceration was justified due to military necessity.

In 1983, Prof. Peter Irons, a legal historian, together with researcher Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, discovered key documents that government intelligence agencies had hidden from the Supreme Court in 1944. The documents consistently showed that Japanese Americans had committed no acts of treason to justify mass incarceration. With this new evidence, a pro-bono legal team that included the Asian Law Caucus re-opened Korematsu’s 40-year-old case on the basis of government misconduct. On November 10, 1983, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned in a federal court in San Francisco.

After 9/11, Korematsu continued to speak out. In 2003, he filed a “Friend of the Court” amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court for two cases appealed before the Supreme Court of the United States, on behalf of Muslim inmates being held at Guantanamo Bay: Shafiq Rasul, v. George W. Bush and Khaled A.F. Al Odah v. United States of America. In the brief, he warned that the government’s extreme national security measures were reminiscent of the past. In 2004, he filed a similar brief on behalf of an American Muslim man being held in solitary confinement in a U.S. military prison without a trial.

His life is a reminder that what is legal isn’t always the same as what’s right: "In 1942, Korematsu was one of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent who were forced to leave their homes and most of their worldly possessions under Executive Order No. 9066. The effort was later considered a low point in U.S. history, a moment where fear overwhelmed tolerance."

Fred Korematsu Day: "In 2010, the Governor of California signed the legislative bill establishing Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution on January 30 in perpetuity. Since 2010 Hawaii, Virginia and Florida have also established a day of recognition in honor of Fred Korematsu’s fight for justice and the importance of upholding our civil liberties and the Constitution."

What Happens When Kids LIVE Civics?: "We studied the US Supreme Court Case Korematsu v. United States. The students could not believe they had never been taught about the case before. They were even more surprised that the majority of adults they asked about the case had never heard of Fred Korematsu. I decided to have students write to Sen. Jack Latvala and Rep. Chris Latvala asking for a day of remembrance for Fred Korematsu in the state of Florida. The students were so excited to spread the word about Mr. Korematsu and were amazed that they were “allowed” to write to Sen. Latvala and Rep. Latvala. Students were invited to attend the “Meet Your Legislator” session and one of them read her letter to Sen. Latvala. That evening Sen. Latvala informed us that he was going to write a resolution in the Florida Senate for January 30th to be known as Fred Korematsu Day."

Previously on Fred Korematsu:
R.I.P., Fred Korematsu

Previously on the Japanese-American internment:
The Forgotten Internment
Never forget, never again
A deliberate, knowing lie.
...and other valuable posts earlier in Metafilter history.
posted by cynical pinnacle (20 comments total) 81 users marked this as a favorite
 
great post!!
posted by zutalors! at 10:45 AM on January 30, 2017


Fantastic post in an excellent person, thank you!
posted by filthy light thief at 10:46 AM on January 30, 2017


Yeeeaahhh!!!

Psst - if you want to do something to mark the occasion (besides donating to the ACLU, which is also an awesome way to celebrate Korematsu), a lovely small publisher I know is hosting a library book drive for their recently published kids' book Fred Korematsu Speaks Up. I finished reading my own copy last night and loved it, particularly the guide for young activists in the backmatter. I'll be buying a few copies for the book drive after payday.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:05 AM on January 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


Additionally, a number of German-Americans and Italian-Americans were incarcertated:


Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some 1,260 German nationals were detained, as the government had been watching them.[25] Of the 254 persons not of Japanese ancestry evicted from coastal areas, the majority were ethnic German.[26] During WWII, German nationals and German Americans in the US were detained and/or evicted from coastal areas on an individual basis. Although the War Department (now the Department of Defense) considered mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and ethnic Italians from the East or West coast areas for reasons of military security, it did not follow through with this. The numbers of people involved would have been overwhelming to manage.[27]

A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during the war. They comprised 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program.[28] Of the 254 enemy aliens evicted from coastal areas (excluding Japanese Americans), the majority were German.
But there seems reason to suspect that a part of the anti Japanese action was driven by racial bias. As for German-Americans, recall that the supreme leader of our forces was Eisenhower (German) and Admiral Halsey (German)
posted by Postroad at 11:17 AM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]




Postroad, the important part of that quote is "individual basis." There were very few American citizens of either German or Italian ancestry who were detained, and those few that were, were detained after a determination that they had individually done something to mark them as a security threat. It's not a conviction but at least it's an accusation. The Japanese Americans weren't even accused of anything individually.
posted by 1adam12 at 11:55 AM on January 30, 2017 [14 favorites]




Google seems to be highlighting activists lately.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:29 PM on January 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


I know! I sent them a thank-you note.
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 12:31 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I follow Japanese Americans for Hillary on Facebook. They've posted only a few times since the election but every time they do it's a kick in the gut, first because I'm reminded that I once followed groups like that in the hope that we would get our first woman president, and second because when Japanese Americans as a group are moved to speak about politics it's always because of something awful.

Anyway they just posted this: We Are Fred Korematsu
posted by sunset in snow country at 1:37 PM on January 30, 2017 [4 favorites]


Here's a post from 2002 by kirkaracha about the Manzanar War Relocation Center. Some of the links are dead, but a great post nonetheless.

NPR link about the photographers who recorded the internment camps through different perspectives. I've always been fascinated by Ansel Adams' photos of the camp and the way they meticulously avoid including the barbed wires and watch towers and yet still manage to capture the closed-off feel against the majestic backdrop of those mountains beyond.
posted by misozaki at 2:08 PM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


Thank you so much for posting this, cynical pinnacle. I thought about posting myself when I saw the Google doodle, but I'm so glad you got there before me because your post is so informative. I especially liked the info about the school kids in Florida.

Thank you!
posted by kristi at 3:08 PM on January 30, 2017


Sad that I never learned about this in school. Thankful that I'm learning about it now!
posted by vytae at 6:22 PM on January 30, 2017


My father was the son of two German immigrants-turned-citizens, who suffered no negative effects when WWII started (that he ever told me about - but there's a lot he has never talked about). When the U.S. entered the War, he volunteered and was accepted into the elite Marine Corps, but they took one look at his family name (which rhymed with Hitler), and shipped him off from his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, to the opposite coast so he could fight in the Pacific and not face any possible relatives on the battlefield (although as a non-pilot on a Marine Air Corps bomber, he never saw that much of whomever he dropped bombs on).

The Japanese population had zero political clout in the run-up to the war, but it was reported that one BIG reason FDR and the U.S. didn't take greater action when our 'closest ally', Great Britain, was getting its ass bombed was because there was measurable support for Nazi Germany in the Congress.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:30 PM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


The German - American Bund was a real thing in Minnesota. I had an uncle refuse to join. He was a farmer, which was considered an essential trade then.so they didn't draft him. He had his farm. He did some logging as well. He was coming home late and the Bund guys jumped him.he kept logging chains in his wagon and used said chains to single-handedly beat crap the out of several attackers.
my mother always regarded it as unfair that the Japanese got interned wholesale. Few if any displayed the least disloyalty to the United States. The Bund was another story. A certain number of them did serious spying and sabotage.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 11:29 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


The German - American Bund was a real thing

I've got some pretty photos of my German-American grandparents at parties from the '30s with very memorable flags hanging in the background.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:38 AM on January 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


I only learned after he passed away that my grandfather spoke German and regularly communicated with relatives in the homeland until the war broke out. Then he stopped, because his children we being teased about it.

In contrast (?), I was present at the hearings in 1988 for the US government to apologize to and pay paltry reparations to US citizens who were deprived of liberty and property as a result of Executive Order No. 9066, and I'll never forget the testimony of a US member of Congress that "my husband fought against these people". No, he did not. He did not fight against US citizens.
posted by oheso at 6:55 AM on January 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


One of the worst moments of law school for me was a discussion while we were reading Korematsu v. United States. Everyone in the class agreed that the Korematsu decision was wrong and totally racist, but when the professor asked us to compare it to Arab Americans being rounded up and questioned post 9/11, half the class immediately started screaming that that was totally different. It was so disheartening, like they saw the case as a unique situation and not something to guard against happening again.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:15 AM on January 31, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm so proud to be a Californian, which celebrates a Fred Korematsu Day. I read about him in my 9th grade Important Cases of the Supreme Court class, and it really affected me. I am not Japanese-American, but I am East Asian. I understand very clearly that it was pure and simple racism, because of the black hair and our distinctive features that made the Japanese targets. It's sickening, all those businesses & properties LOST, because these peoples' neighbors just took them over when they were "evacuated". Those photos taken of the families bundled up in coats with their possessions lined up next to them on the sidewalk, are just heartbreaking. My family was friends with a Japanese-American couple who met & married in the camps. After release from the camps, they didn't want to return to California, and just created a new life in Missouri. We must not allow this to happen again! I feel it's my duty as an Asian-American to stand up for my Arab and Muslim Americans.
posted by Pocahontas at 10:51 AM on January 31, 2017


Related: Minoru Yasui
posted by craven_morhead at 9:08 AM on February 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


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