Ordinary man, extraordinary courage

Seattle Times
Wednesday, April 06, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
 

 The death of Fred Korematsu, the Japanese American whose challenge of World War II incarcerations in the U.S. went to the Supreme Court, provides an occasion to recall an ordinary man with extraordinary courage.

 Korematsu was a 23-year-old shipyard welder when he and 120,000 other U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry were ordered into war-relocation camps. Most complied; Korematsu refused. He was arrested, convicted and sent to one of the government camps that held Japanese Americans against their will. There was unbelievable courage in the young Korematsu's stance. His family and friends urged him at the time to avoid trouble and comply with the U.S. government. Instead, Korematsu demanded to be treated as innocent until proven guilty.

 By challenging the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 authorizing mass detention of Japanese Americans, Korematsu exercised the rights granted him by the U.S. Constitution.

 But sometimes the road to justice is a long one. Korematsu's case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the government in a 6-3 decision.

 Korematsu and several other Japanese Americans challenging U.S. policy, including Gordon Hirabayashi — named in 2000 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year by the University of Washington's College of Arts and Sciences — served their sentences and went on with their lives.

 It wasn't until 1983, when newly discovered documents showed the government had lied to the high court, that Korematsu's conviction was overturned. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the U.S. District Court of Northern California cited government misconduct through suppression, alteration and burning of evidence, race discrimination, lack of military necessity, and manifest injustice.

 In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu the Medal of Freedom and likened his quiet defiance to that of Rosa Parks in the civil-rights struggles of the 1950s.

 Today, Korematsu v. United States is cited in every constitutional law textbook, and the man behind the case is lauded as a civil-rights hero.

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