KOREMATSU, FRED TOYOSABURO 1919-

Korematsu v. united states (1944)

Horrible Wrong

Fred Korematsu never wanted to be famous, and he never wanted to be convicted of a crime. But he was convicted of a crime, and his name will be forever associated in the annals of American justice with the wrong that can be done when basic safeguards of the Constitution are nullified for reasons of political or, as in Korematsu's case, military expediency.

Nisei

Toyosaburo Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, in 1919. He was a Nisei, or first generation Japanese American, born in the United States. He picked up the name "Fred" one year in school when a teacher who had trouble pronouncing his name called him Fred. He liked the name and it stuck. Korematsu graduated from high school in 1938 and worked in the family flower nursery. In June 1941 Korematsu and five friends went to the local post office to volunteer for service in the armed forces. Although his friends were given applications, Korematsu was turned away and was informed that the officer had orders not to accept Japanese Americans.

Executive Order 9066

During the months leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Korematsu had been dating an Italian American girl named Ida Boitano. Her parents disapproved of the mixed-race dating, but she continued to date him nonetheless. Just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the military to relocate any persons it wished from certain areas due to reasons of military security. On 2 May 1942 the army posted notices on local telephone poles ordering all persons of Japanese ancestry to report to military authorities only one week later, prepared to move into "assembly areas." Since the order only applied to Japanese Americans living in Pacific Coast states, Korematsu decided to ask Ida to move with him to Nevada where they could get married. She had second thoughts about leaving her family, so Korematsu assumed an identity as a person of Spanish Hawaiian descent while he continued to live in a boarding house in Oakland. On 30 May 1942 he was spotted by someone who knew him and was arrested for violating Order 9066. Korematsu and Boitano eventually ended their relationship.

Arrest and Trial

His arrest made headlines, and a lawyer named Ernest Besig with the American Civil Liberties Union offered to represent him in a battle over the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066. Although Korematsu was freed on bail, he was almost immediately picked up by military police and sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center, where his family had been moved. Korematsu was tried on 8 September 1942, Although the trial judge was impressed with his testimony concerning the racial aspect of the evacuation order (no other racial group was evacuated), he still found Korematsu guilty of violating the military order to evacuate. Rather than send him to prison, however, the judge sentenced him to five years of probation. The conviction was upheld by the court of appeals in late 1943. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court. In a split decision the Court ruled against Korematsu on 18 December 1944. One of the three dissenting justices, Frank Murphy, called the evacuation order a "legalization of racism."

New Trial

For the next thirty-eight years, Korematsu led an average American life. He married and had two children. Then, in January 1982, he was contacted by a law professor named Peter Irons. Irons told Korematsu that he had uncovered some government documents that had never been given to Korematsu's defense team or provided to any of the courts that had heard his case. Had the documents been presented to the courts, Korematsu would probably have prevailed. Fred Korematsu sought a new trial in U.S. District Court, and, with the help of Irons and another lawyer, Dale Minami (whose parents had been evacuated to the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming), a new trial was granted. The main thrust of Korematsu's argument was that he had lost his case because lawyers for the government had lied or concealed important documents. Judge Marilyn Patel ruled in Korematsu's favor, forty years after the original trial. In 1983 Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu received the prestigious Earl Warren Human Rights Award from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Source:

Peter H. Irons, Justice at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu 1919–2005, Japanese-American internment protester, b. Oakland, Calif. He was a shipyard welder when, after the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor in 1942, President F. D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which specified that West Coast residents of Japanese descent be treated as enemy aliens and interned at government camps. Korematsu refused to comply with the order and was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. Interned at a camp in Topaz, Utah, and represented by the American Civil Liberties Union , he fought the internment policy to the Supreme Court, which upheld (1944) the government's wartime right to intern its citizens. After the war he returned to the San Francisco Bay area. In 1982 was approached by legal historian Peter Irons, who had discovered documents supporting Korematsu's case that had been suppressed by government attorneys. Korematsu agreed to refight the case, and in 1983 his original conviction was overturned. Korematsu subsequently became for many a symbol of principled resistance to government-imposed injustice.

Bibliography: See P. Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases (1983, repr. 1993).