Remembering the courage of Fred Korematsu

Today, several states across the nation will celebrate the legacy of Fred Korematsu. Although the Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution is not recognized in Washington state, I urge everyone to remember the stories not only of Korematsu, but also of Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru “Min” Yasui, Mitsuye Endo and others who brought legal challenges to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.

To learn more about Korematsu’s life and struggle for justice, you can visit physical sites, such as the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, or read “Enduring Conviction,” by Lorraine Bannai, a professor at Seattle University School of Law who was part of the legal team that successfully challenged Korematsu’s conviction.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which granted U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John DeWitt the power to remove persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast and incarcerate them in camps. Of the almost 120,000 Japanese individuals who were incarcerated, two-thirds were, like Korematsu, American citizens. At 22, Korematsu defied the removal order in Oakland, Calif., and fought his criminal conviction up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court decided in a 6-3 decision that Korematsu’s constitutional rights could be abridged in light of military necessity. The majority’s opinion drew three dissents, with Justice Frank Murphy writing that the majority opinion functioned as a “legalization of racism.”

 Growing up, I never saw myself in Korematsu, despite — or more likely because — of the fact that I am Asian American. Being of Korean descent, I distanced myself from being associated with Chinese or Japanese Americans when I was younger because I felt it diminished my individuality. But as I learned more about Korematsu’s story, I realized that I had, to some degree, committed the very wrong he had protested: viewing him as Japanese rather than American.

Like me, Korematsu grew up believing that he was American, and had, in his words, “nothin’ to do” with his ancestral home. Whereas I have only imagined what it might be like to have a non-Asian last name or to have Western features, Korematsu was forced to take actions to conceal his ethnicity. After he violated the exclusion order, Korematsu changed his name to “Clyde Sarah.”  And after much hesitation, he ultimately walked up to the door of a plastic surgeon who promised (but failed) to change his facial features.

Although these acts were, at the time, decried as evidence of Korematsu’s disloyalty as a potential Japanese spy, they are now recognized as evidence of our nation’s disloyalty to its citizens. These subtler harms metastasize out of the loneliness that comes from being forced to stand between two communities. Whereas I have only experienced the occasional racial slight and disagreement in Asian American organizations, Korematsu was ostracized both by the community at large and the Japanese American community. His own family rejected him for defying the law. When the Supreme Court issued its decision, Korematsu asked himself, “Am I an American or not?” He recalled that, “When I found out that I lost my decision, I thought I lost my country.”

But what makes someone American? In awarding Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, President Bill Clinton stated that, by having his conviction overturned, Korematsu received what he wanted most of all: “the chance to feel like an American, once again.” Korematsu was American before, during, and after his case. The differences lie in the actions he took to feel more American, whether it be as simple as serving as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America, or as bold as demonstrating solidarity with Arab Americans following 9/11. Today, I urge everyone to reflect on how and why we can see ourselves in Korematsu’s story, and what it means to be, and feel, American.