WurfWhile

“There are Arab-Americans today who are going through what Japanese Americans experienced years ago, and we can’t let that happen again…. I met someone years ago who had never heard about the roundup of Japanese-Americans. It’s been 60 years since this [arrest] happened, and it’s happening again, and that’s why I continue to talk about what happened to me.”

Fred T. Korematsu
Retired San Francisco Ship Welder

“If you look at Fred Korematsu, you see a very ordinary man who just wanted to be left alone, but who defied the United States government because he knew it [the government] was wrong.”

John Tateishi
Executive Director
Japanese American Citizens League

On Wednesday at the age of 86, Fred T. Korematsu died. Born on American soil and raised here, Korematsu’s life and death might have been unremarkable to the public at large, had not the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 put Korematsu in an internment camp with other Japanese Americans during WWII, because of their race. Korematsu’s Supreme Court case, and its redress, are not as well known as they should be by the general public in our country. The lessons they offer for U.S. government racial profiling, information suppression and injustice seem today, in an age of U.S. torture, more than unknown. The executive branch of our government actively fights to ignore them. Korematsu left Americans an important civil rights legacy, despite and because of the way his country, the United States, treated him. We should recognize how devoted an American Fred Korematsu was, and we should honor his contribution to our country. Fred’s actions represent what is best in America.