Fred Korematsu

Common card · No. 311400

Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu (是松豊三郎, Korematsu Toyosaburō; January 30, 1919 – March 30, 2005) 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. Korematsu challenged the order and became a fugitive. The legality of Roosevelt's order was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Korematsu v. United States (1944). However, Korematsu's conviction for evading internment was overturned four decades later in US District Court, after the disclosure of new evidence challenging its necessity, which had been withheld from the courts by the U.S. government during the war. Korematsu was discussed seventy-four years later in Trump v. Hawaii...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Image courtesy of the family of Fred T. Korematsu, CC BY 2.0