who was fred korematsu?

Fred Korematsu was a Japanese American civil rights activist best known for challenging the U.S. government’s World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans in the Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States.

Quick Scoop: Who was Fred Korematsu?

• Born in Oakland, California in 1919 to Japanese immigrant parents, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was a U.S. citizen and West Coast native.

• After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government ordered more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast into incarceration camps under Executive Order 9066.

• Korematsu refused to report for removal, altered his appearance, and tried to stay with his Italian American girlfriend rather than go to a camp.

• He was arrested in May 1942, convicted of violating the exclusion order, and sent to the Topaz camp in Utah.

• With help from the ACLU, he became the “test case” against the mass incarceration policy, leading to the Supreme Court decision Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld his conviction and the government’s actions at the time.

• Decades later, evidence emerged that the government had withheld key reports showing Japanese Americans were not a security threat, and in 1983 a federal court overturned his conviction.

• Korematsu spent the rest of his life speaking out against discrimination and government overreach, becoming a symbol of resistance to civil liberties violations.

• In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, calling him a name that stands for “millions of souls” in the struggle for justice.

• He died in 2005, and several states (notably California) now recognize “Fred Korematsu Day” on his birthday, January 30, to honor his legacy.

In today’s debates about national security, immigration, and surveillance, Korematsu’s story is often cited as a warning about how fear can override constitutional rights.

TL;DR: Fred Korematsu was a Japanese American who defied World War II incarceration orders, lost at the Supreme Court in 1944, was vindicated decades later, and is now remembered as a major U.S. civil rights figure.

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