Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education

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Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education
Type Non-profit
Founded2009
Headquarters San Francisco, California
Key people
Karen Korematsu, co-founder; Ling Woo Liu, director
Services Education
Website korematsuinstitute.org

The Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education is a non-profit organization which advances pan-ethnic civil rights and human rights through education.

Contents

History

Background

In 1942, Fred Korematsu was arrested for defying the government's internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. [1] He appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court in 1944, which ruled against him, saying the incarceration was justified due to military necessity. [2] Four decades later, the discovery of new evidence allowed Korematsu to re-open his case with a team of pro-bono lawyers headed by legal scholar Peter H. Irons. In 1983, a federal court in San Francisco finally overturned Korematsu's conviction. [3] In 1988, the United States federal government officially apologized for its discriminatory wartime actions and granted reparations to all those who were being interned. In 1998, Korematsu received from President Bill Clinton the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. [4]

Establishment

In 2009, the Asian Law Caucus, together with Korematsu's daughter, Karen, launched the Korematsu Institute to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the removal of Korematsu's conviction. [5] [6] The institute's members advocated for the designation of January 30 as Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution in California, and the legislature approved this in 2010. [7] This was the first day in US history to be named after an Asian American. [8] To mark the first Fred Korematsu Day on January 30, 2011, [9] the Korematsu Institute began shipping out free Korematsu teaching kits to K-12 classrooms around California [10] [11] and held a commemorative event at University of California, Berkeley. [12] Each year on Fred Korematsu Day, the organization honors Japanese Americans who have contributed to the advancement of civil rights. [13]

In 2014, the Institute partnered with the San Joaquin County Office of Education to provide professional development for teachers on several civil rights topics, and was awarded a grant of $180,836. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Executive Order 9066</span> 1942 U.S. presidential order for the internment of Japanese-Americans

Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. "This order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland – resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans." Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens, born and raised in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internment of Japanese Americans</span> World War II mass incarceration in the United States

During World War II, the United States, by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forcibly relocated and incarcerated at least 125,284 people of Japanese descent in 75 identified incarceration sites. Most lived on the Pacific Coast, in concentration camps in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the inmates were United States citizens. These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066 following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Of the 127,000 Japanese Americans who were living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei and Sansei. The rest were Issei immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.

Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that upheld the internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II. The decision has been widely criticized, with some scholars describing it as "an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry", and as "a stain on American jurisprudence". The case is often cited as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Chief Justice John Roberts repudiated the Korematsu decision in his majority opinion in the 2018 case of Trump v. Hawaii.

Peter H. Irons is an American political activist, civil rights attorney, legal scholar, and professor emeritus of political science. He has written many books on the U.S. Supreme Court and constitutional litigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civil Liberties Act of 1988</span> Law granting reparations to interned Japanese Americans

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 is a United States federal law that granted reparations to Japanese Americans who had been wrongly interned by the United States government during World War II and to "discourage the occurrence of similar injustices and violations of civil liberties in the future". The act was sponsored by California Democratic congressman and former internee Norman Mineta in the House and Hawaii Democrat Senator Spark Matsunaga in the Senate. The bill was supported by the majority of Democrats in Congress, while the majority of Republicans voted against it. The act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Korematsu</span> Japanese-American civil rights activist (1919–2005)

Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was an American civil rights activist who resisted the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Shortly after the Imperial Japanese Navy launched its attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast from their homes and their mandatory imprisonment in incarceration camps, but Korematsu instead challenged the orders and became a fugitive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon Hirabayashi</span> American sociologist (1918–2012)

Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi was an American sociologist, best known for his principled resistance to the Japanese American internment during World War II, and the court case which bears his name, Hirabayashi v. United States.

Dale Minami is a prominent Japanese American civil rights and personal injury lawyer based in San Francisco, California. He is best known for his work leading the legal team that overturned the conviction of Fred Korematsu, whose defiance of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II led to Korematsu v. United States, which is widely considered one of the worst and most racist Supreme Court decisions in American history.

Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the application of curfews against members of a minority group were constitutional when the nation was at war with the country from which that group's ancestors originated. The case arose out of the issuance of Executive Order 9066 following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had authorized military commanders to secure areas from which "any or all persons may be excluded", and Japanese Americans living in the West Coast were subject to a curfew and other restrictions before being removed to internment camps. The plaintiff, Gordon Hirabayashi, was convicted of violating the curfew and had appealed to the Supreme Court. Yasui v. United States was a companion case decided the same day. Both convictions were overturned in coram nobis proceedings in the 1980s.

On February 19, 1942, shortly after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced removal of over 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast and into internment camps for the duration of the war. The personal rights, liberties, and freedoms of Japanese Americans were suspended by the United States government. In the "relocation centers", internees were housed in tar-papered army-style barracks. Some individuals who protested their treatment were sent to a special camp at Tule Lake, California.

The following article focuses on the movement to obtain redress for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and significant court cases that have shaped civil and human rights for Japanese Americans and other minorities. These cases have been the cause and/or catalyst to many changes in United States law. But mainly, they have resulted in adjusting the perception of Asian immigrants in the eyes of the American government.

Yasui v. United States, 320 U.S. 115 (1943), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of curfews used during World War II when they were applied to citizens of the United States. The case arose out of the implementation of Executive Order 9066 by the U.S. military to create zones of exclusion along the West Coast of the United States, where Japanese Americans were subjected to curfews and eventual removal to relocation centers. This Presidential order followed the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into World War II and inflamed the existing anti-Japanese sentiment in the country.

Nisei is a Japanese-language term used in countries in North America and South America to specify the ethnically Japanese children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants. The Nisei are considered the second generation, and the grandchildren of the Japanese-born immigrants are called Sansei, or third generation.

Wayne Mortimer Collins was a civil rights attorney who worked on cases related to the Japanese American evacuation and internment.

Founded in 1972, the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) is the United States' first legal aid and civil rights organization serving low-income Asian-Pacific American communities. The ALC focuses housing rights, immigration and immigrant rights, labor and employment issues, student advocacy (ASPIRE), civil rights and hate violence, national security and criminal reform.

Eric Yamamoto, the Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, is an internationally recognized expert on issues of racial justice, including racial reconciliation and redress. Flowing from the landmark 1944 Korematsu v. United States case, he is known for his work as a member of Fred Korematsu's 1983 legal team that succeeded in having Korematsu's original conviction overturned.

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga was a Japanese American political activist who played a major role in the Japanese American redress movement. She was the lead researcher of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC), a bipartisan federal committee appointed by Congress in 1980 to review the causes and effects of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II. As a young woman, Herzig-Yoshinaga was confined in the Manzanar Concentration Camp in California, the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas, and the Rohwer War Relocation Center, which is also in Arkansas. She later uncovered government documents that debunked the wartime administration's claims of "military necessity" and helped compile the CWRIC's final report, Personal Justice Denied, which led to the issuance of a formal apology and reparations for former camp inmates. She also contributed pivotal evidence and testimony to the Hirabayashi, Korematsu and Yasui coram nobis cases.

The Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution is celebrated on January 30 in California and a growing number of additional states to commemorate the birthday of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American civil rights activist best known for resisting the internment of Japanese Americans. It also recognizes American civil liberties and rights under the Constitution of the United States. It is the first day in U.S. history named after an Asian American.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Takei Nishio</span> Japanese-American internee

Esther Takei Nishio was an American woman from California, incarcerated at the Granada War Relocation Center in Colorado during World War II. She was the first Japanese-American student to enroll in a California university after returning from camp, in 1944, when she was chosen as a test case for resettlement.

Frank Fujio Chuman is a Japanese-American former civil rights attorney and author, involved in several important Japanese American civil rights cases and in the redress movement.

References

  1. ↑ "Dromm Honors Civil Rights Worker". Queens Gazette. February 18, 2015. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015.
  2. ↑ Bai, Matt (December 25, 2005). "He Said No to Internment". The New York Times Magazine . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved May 31, 2019.
  3. ↑ Irons, Peter (1993). Justice at War. University of California Press. p. 91-93.
  4. ↑ "Fred Korematsu -- he defied wartime order to internment camp". SFGate. April 1, 2005.
  5. ↑ "Civil rights institute named for Korematsu". SFGate. April 28, 2009.
  6. ↑ Kenney, Karen Latchana (September 1, 2012). Korematsu v. the United States: World War II Japanese-American Internment Camps. ABDO Publishing Company. pp. 133–. ISBN   978-1-61480-164-1.
  7. ↑ Zhao, Xiaojian & Park, Edward J. W. (November 26, 2013). Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. ABC-CLIO. pp. 112–. ISBN   978-1-59884-240-1.
  8. ↑ Liu, Ling Woo (January 30, 2011). "Fred Korematsu Day: California Honors a Civil Rights Hero"". Time .
  9. ↑ "Korematsu Day". The New York Times , February 4, 2011.
  10. ↑ "Fred Korematsu Day a first for an Asian American". SFGate. January 28, 2011.
  11. ↑ Danico, Mary Yu (September 3, 2014). Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia. SAGE Publications. pp. 615–. ISBN   978-1-4522-8189-6.
  12. ↑ Lee, Sophie (January 28, 2011). "Weekend Free-view: Be an Extra! See a Shipwreck! Celebrate F. Korematsu!". The Daily Clog. The Daily Californian . Archived from the original on August 13, 2011.
  13. ↑ Yamamoto, J. K. (February 4, 2013). "A Celebration of Heroes". Rafu Shimpo .
  14. ↑ Roberts, Elizabeth (November 30, 2014). "Shining light on dark chapter of Stockton's history". RecordNet.
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