Fred Korematsu

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, on January 30, 1919, the third of four sons to Japanese parents who immigrated to the United States in 1905. He attended public schools, participated in Castlemont High School's tennis and swim teams, and worked in his family's flower nursery. He encountered racism in high school when a U.S. Army recruiting officer told him, 'We have orders not to accept you.' After Pearl Harbor, Korematsu lost all employment completely. On May 3, 1942, General DeWitt ordered Japanese Americans to report to Assembly Centers; Korematsu refused and went into hiding. He was arrested on a street corner in San Leandro on May 30, 1942. Ernest Besig of the ACLU asked him to use his case to test the legality of internment, and Korematsu agreed. He was tried and convicted in federal court on September 8, 1942, for violating Public Law No. 503, and placed on five years' probation. He was taken to the Tanforan Assembly Center, then to the Central Utah War Relocation Center in Topaz, Utah, where he was placed in a horse stall with a single light bulb and later said 'jail was better than this.' The Supreme Court upheld his conviction in a 6–3 decision on December 18, 1944, ruling that compulsory exclusion was justified during 'emergency and peril.' After release, Korematsu moved east, faced discrimination in employment—he discovered he was being paid half of what his white coworkers were paid—and remained quiet for over thirty years. His own daughter did not find out about what her father did until she was in high school. His conviction was overturned in 1983 after new evidence showed the government had withheld information from the courts.

Reader's Guide

Fred Korematsu's significance lies in his role as a civil rights activist who challenged the U.S. government's mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. His case, Korematsu v. United States (1944), became a controversial precedent for the limits of executive power during wartime. Decades later, the disclosure of withheld evidence led to the overturning of his conviction. In 2018, the Supreme Court discussed Korematsu in Trump v. Hawaii, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that 'The forcible relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority.' Legal scholars differ on whether this statement actually overturned Korematsu or was merely a 'disapproving dictum' of it. His legacy is commemorated by Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution, first observed in California on January 30, 2011, and later in Virginia in 2015. The Fred T. Korematsu Institute, founded in 2009, continues his work in civil liberties education.

Did You Know?

• Korematsu underwent plastic surgery on his eyelids in an unsuccessful attempt to pass as a Caucasian, changed his name to Clyde Sarah, and claimed to be of Spanish and Hawaiian heritage.
• He was arrested on a street corner in San Leandro on May 30, 1942.
• At the Topaz internment camp, he was placed in a horse stall with a single light bulb and later said 'jail was better than this.'
• His own daughter did not find out about what her father did until she was in high school.
• Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution was first observed on January 30, 2011, in California, the first such commemoration for an Asian American in the United States.