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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu
Defiant Stand for Freedom
Japanese American honored years after arrest, internment
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu being congratulated by President Bill Clinton on receiving the Medal of Freedom.
Washington -- Half a century ago, Fred Korematsu was grabbed by police on an East Bay street corner, handcuffed and taken to jail. His crime -- defying President Franklin Roosevelt's order that American citizens of Japanese descent report to internment camps.
"Jap Spy Arrested in San Leandro'' read the headline the next day. Korematsu contested his confinement, to no avail. He was sent to a secluded camp in Utah and spent five years on probation.
Yesterday, Korematsu stood in the East Room of the White House, where President Clinton praised his act of defiance as an "extraordinary stand.''
"In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls,'' Clinton said as he presented the Bay Area man with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
"Plessy, Brown, Parks, '' Clinton said, evoking the names of civil rights pioneers, "to that distinguished list, today we add the name of Fred Korematsu.''
Korematsu, now 78, swelled with pride as the government that had once stripped him of his freedom bestowed upon him its highest civilian award.
"This award is not given to everyone, everyday,'' said Korematsu, who still lives in San Leandro, after the ceremony. "It's very precious. Especially to be presented by the president himself.''
In the years after his internment, the graduate of Oakland's Castlemont High School never gave up on a justice system that once turned its back on him.
In the 1940s, during his captivity in what he calls a "concentration camp,'' Korematsu challenged his confinement before the Supreme Court and lost. It was 41 years later that a federal judge in San Francisco finally overturned his conviction for defying the internment orders. His vindication helped pave the way for an official apology from the U.S. government, and the payment of $20,000 each to thousands of surviving internees.
"It's a beautiful irony,'' said Dale Minami, a San Francisco attorney who led the legal effort to overturn Korematsu's conviction. ``He is being honored for what he was in prison for 56 years ago.''
The emotional ceremony in the the East Room would have been unimaginable in 1942, when an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps. In the months after the attack on Pearl harbor, anyone of Japanese descent was considered a threat to national security.
Korematsu's family, like most Japanese Americans in the Bay Area, was taken first to Tanforan race track in San Mateo County, then shipped out to the secluded Topaz internment camp in Utah. But Korematsu -- who was 22, had a girlfriend, and a job -- didn't want to go.
``I was just living my life, and that's what I wanted to do,'' he said in a 1987 interview.
In jail awaiting his court date, Korematsu's anger began to grow. ``It burned me up. I am an American citizen, and to have the government classify me as an enemy alien is wrong,'' he said.
Korematsu teamed up with lawyers from the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union and made his confinement a test case of the legality of the evacuation order that led to the internment camps. In 1944, the Supreme Court affirmed his conviction.
Nearly four decades later, new evidence was uncovered indicating that officials at the Navy and the Justice Department suppressed information showing that Japanese Americans posed no threat during World War II.
Korematsu, who had married and spent years working as a welder in the East Bay, went back to court, and in 1983, a federal judge vacated his conviction.
Korematsu said he hopes the award will serve as a vivid history lesson and a reminder that discrimination can happen to any American.
``It will give recognition that if they ever do try to start anything like that again -- they will have to think twice before they do it,'' he said.
Despite Korematsu's vindication, Minami said the award does not bring closure to an ugly chapter of American history.
``Until everybody is playing on an equal playing field, until there is no discrimination, I don't think you can have closure,'' Minami said. ``There are still residual psychological feelings. I don't think there is going to be closure for quite some time.
``But this is a step,'' he added.
The Medal of Freedom was one of 15 awards presented by Clinton yesterday on what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.'s 69th birthday.
``Humanity makes progress through decades of sweat and toil by dedicated individuals who give freely of themselves and who inspire others to do the same,'' Clinton said.
``All of our honorees have helped America to widen the circle of democracy by fighting for human rights, by righting social wrongs, by empowering others to achieve, by preserving our precious environment, by extending peace around the world.''
Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu with fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal Recipient Rosa Parks.
C ONGRESSWOMAN
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER
10TH DISTRICT ~ CALIFORNIA FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: January 14, 1998
CONTACT: Dave Lemmon (202) 225-1880
http://www.house.gov/tauscher/
Tauscher to Attend Presidential Medal of Freedom
Ceremony at White House for San Leandro Resident
WHAT:
Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) will attend a White House ceremony where President Clinton will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, a constituent of Rep. Tauscher’s who lives in San Leandro, CA.
WHEN:
9:45 AM to 10:45 AM EST
WHERE:
White House
East Room
Washington, DC
WASHINGTON--Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) today praised President Clinton’s decision to bestow the United States’ highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom , upon Mr. Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu. Mr. Korematsu will be joined by 14 other recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony on Thursday, January 15.
"The Presidential Medal of Freedom is our nation’s highest civilian honor, and Mr. Korematsu is certainly deserving of this prestigious tribute. Mr. Korematsu’s courage to demand the basic rights entitled to every American citizen needs to be commended and honored. During one of the darkest chapters in American history when the U.S. government forced thousands of American citizens into internment camps simply because of their ancestry, Mr. Korematsu had the courage to say no. He was subsequently arrested for demanding no more than what every American citizen is entitled to -- his basic human rights. This is a long overdue honor and I commend President Clinton for addressing this serious oversight. Every American owes Mr. Korematsu a debt of gratitude for having the courage, in an era of great hostility, to stand up for his Constitutional rights," Tauscher concluded.
Mr. Korematsu was arrested in 1942 for staying in his own home and refusing to comply with the order that sent more than 120,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry to internment camps during World War II. Mr. Korematsu eventually took his case to the Supreme Court in 1944. Although he lost the suit, many people sight this case as the catalyst for the Japanese American redress movement.
Korematsu v. United States , 1944
From United States Reports: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court at October Term, 1944 . From October 2, 1944, to and Including (in Part) January 29, 1945. Volume 323. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1945. 214-224.
Mr. Justice Black delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner, an American citizen of Japanese descent, was convicted in a federal district court for remaining in San Leandro, California, a "Military Area," contrary to Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 of the Commanding General of the Western Command, U.S. Army, which directed that after May 9, 1942, all persons of Japanese ancestry should be excluded from that area. . . .
It should be noted, to begin with, that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional. It is to say that courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny. Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can.
Exclusion Order No. 34, which the petitioner knowingly and admittedly violated, was one of a number of military orders and proclamations, all of which were substantially based upon Executive Order No. 9066, 7 Fed. Reg. 1407. That order, issued after we were at war with Japan, declared that "the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities. . . ."
One of the series of orders and proclamations, a curfew order, which like the exclusion order here was promulgated pursuant to Executive Order 9066, subjected all persons of Japanese ancestry in prescribed West Coast military areas to remain in their residences from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. As is the case with the exclusion order here, that prior curfew order was designed as a "protection against espionage and against sabotage." In Hirabayashi v. United States , 320 U.S. 81, we sustained a conviction obtained for violation of the curfew order. . . .
We upheld the curfew order as an exercise of the power of the government to take steps necessary to prevent espionage and sabotage in an area threatened by Japanese attack.
In the light of the principles we announced in the Hirabayashi case, we are unable to conclude that it was beyond the war power of Congress and the Executive to exclude those of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast war area at the time they did. True, exclusion from the area in which one's home is located is a far greater deprivation than constant confinement to the home from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Nothing short of apprehension by the proper military authorities of the gravest imminent danger to the public safety can constitutionally justify either. But exclusion from a threatened area, no less than curfew, has a definite and close relationship to the prevention of espionage and sabotage. The military authorities, charged with the primary responsibility of defending our shores, concluded that curfew provided inadequate protection and ordered exclusion. They did so, as pointed out in our Hirabayashi opinion, in accordance with Congressional authority to the military to say who should, and who should not, remain in the threatened areas. . . .
Compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental mpulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger. . . .y concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States. Our task would be simple, our duty clear, were this a case involving the imprisonment of a loyal citizen in a concentration camp because of racial prejudice. Regardless of the true nature of the assembly and relocation centers--and we deem it unjustifiable to call them concentration camps with all the ugly connotations that term implies--we are dealing specifically with nothing but an exclusion order. To cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice, without reference to the real military dangers which were presented, merely confuses the issue. Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, and finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders--as inevitably it must--determined that they should have the power to do just this. There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some, the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and time was short. We cannot--by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight--now say that at that time these actions were unjustified.
Fred Korematsu as a young man
Internment defier, 86, dies, Fred Korematsu, Oakland native cleared in'83, was civil rights symbol
Fred Korematsu, the Oakland native whose refusal to go to an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II and resulting legal battle to clear his name made him a symbol of civil rights, died Wednesday. He was 86.
His attorney said the longtime San Leandro resident died at his daughter's Larkspur home. The cause was respiratory illness.
Korematsu's four-decade fight with the U.S. government ended in 1983, when the 9th Circuit federal court in San Francisco overturned his conviction for opposing internment orders. He was also instrumental in winning a national apology and reparations for internment camp survivors and their families in 1988.
In 1998, Korematsu stood in the East Room of the White House as then-President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
"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," Clinton said at the time. "To that distinguished list today we add the name of Fred Korematsu."
The 1937 Castlemont High School graduate and son of Japanese immigrants was 23 years old and working as a welder when military officials ordered all Japanese Americans on the West Coast -- including U.S. citizens like him -- to report to remote internment camps in 1942.
Nearly all of the 120,000 complied, including Korematsu's family and friends, who urged him to go along. But he refused.
"All of them turned their backs on me at that time because they thought I was a troublemaker," he recalled. "I thought what the military was doing was unconstitutional. I was really upset because I was branded as an enemy alien when I'm an American."
Korematsu changed his name and had plastic surgery but eventually was arrested, convicted of violating the order and sent to an internment camp in Utah. The Supreme Court upheld Korematsu's conviction in December 1944, agreeing with the government that it was justified by the need to combat sabotage and espionage.
Current legal scholars almost universally regard the ruling as one of the worst in the court's history. But it was not repudiated until the early 1980s, when Asian American lawyers and civil rights advocates unearthed new evidence that undermined the internment order. Korematsu's conviction was overturned in 1983.
"I know he stood up when lots of other people failed to do so. He didn't consider himself a hero," said Ken Theisen, communications director for Bay Area Legal Aid. Instead, he saw himself as an ordinary man who didn't see any choice but to stand up, Theisen said.
For almost 40 years, Korematsu did not talk about his experiences, and even his daughter had to learn about it in a college textbook.
He remained active in civil rights issues in recent years, speaking out against parts of the USA PATRIOT Act he felt violated the rights of Arab Americans.
He was the subject of PBS's 2001 P.O.V. Emmy-winning documentary, "Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story."
He's been the recipient of scores of accolades, including an honorary doctor of law degree from California State University, Hayward, and honored by the San Leandro City Council and the Oakland school district.
Korematsu is survived by his wife of almost 60 years, Kathryn, daughter Karen and son Ken.
Fred Korematsu with Minoru Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi
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Medal History
