By Patrice Bugelas-Brandt, Communications Department Volunteer

He was 23, in a San Francisco prison for defying a federal order, and had gone so far as to change his name and undergo minor plastic surgery to avoid arrest. In 1942, most would call the young man’s actions, at best, imprudent; at worst, suspicious and disloyal. Few would consider him a brave patriot. The country was at war and citizens wrapped themselves in a cloud of apprehension that measured civic duty and loyalty through obedience. Few supported the imprisoned shipyard worker, Fred Korematsu, or condoned his refusal to report, as ordered, to his assigned “Assembly Center” in Oakland where the federal government was rounding up Japanese Americans for relocation out of west coast states.

Ernest Besig, then Director of the ACLU-Northern California saw Korematsu’s defiance differently. He understood the Japanese Americans’ dilemma. Though there had been absolutely no evidence that these citizens held allegiance to any nation but the United States, they could only “prove” their loyalty by reporting, as ordered, to the Assembly Centers. Besig would later be quoted that he found the government orders “the most shocking examples of a Government abusing the rights of citizens.” So, within days of hearing about Fred Korematsu’s arrest, Besig visited the seemingly “imprudent” Korematsu in prison and recognized his bravery.
 

For the next 30 months Korematsu, civil right lawyer Wayne M. Collins, and the ACLU challenged the federal government’s case. Though Fred was able to post his $5,000 bond (equal to about $71,500 today) he was immediately re-arrested by U.S. Military Police and confined in the Presidio military base throughout his trial. When he lost his case in court, Fred was sent to the Central Utah War Relocation Center in Topaz, Utah as he filed his court appeals. In March of 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Korematsu’s case and that of Mitsuye Endo, who had challenged the government’s right to indefinitely hold her in a Japanese American relocation camp. On December 18, 1944, the Court ruled on both cases finding on behalf of Ms. Endo, stating that the government could not continue to detain a citizen the government itself conceded was loyal. However, the Court upheld Fred Korematsu’s conviction and dismissed his argument that the government had no legal basis to force his relocation. The Court found that “compulsory exclusion, though constitutionally suspect, is justified during emergency and peril.” The seemingly contradictory rulings, as one observer explained, meant that the government could criminally punish someone for refusing to be illegally imprisoned.
 

It would take almost another 40 years, but in 1983 a federal court vacated Korematsu’s conviction after evidence was discovered that in 1944 the U.S. Solicitor General had intentionally withheld FBI and military intelligence reports from the Court; reports which clearly stated that there was no evidence that Japanese Americans posed a threat to their country. The Supreme Court’s decision, however, was not overturned.

By the time Fred Korematsu died in 2005, the U.S. government had acknowledged that the World War II internment program had been based on “racism and hysteria.” President Reagan had signed a law, nationally apologizing to the surviving Japanese Americans who had endured the camps and issued them each $20,000 in compensation. In 1998, President Clinton honored Fred Korematsu with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

On this January 30, the 95 anniversary of his birth, Illinois joins a growing number of states in honoring Fred Korematsu establishing an annual day of recognition. Addressing the federal court in 1983, Korematsu explained his 1942 decision to defy the government’s orders and his life-long struggle to expose the egregious actions taken against Japanese Americans. It was, he explained “to see the government admit that they were wrong and to do something about it so that this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed or color.”

Fred Korematsu: a brave American patriot.

I lost my drive after my older brother Rufus was sentenced. I didn't care. I didn't trust. That was my attitude. Rufus was the father figure I looked up to. When he went to jail for the rest of his life, I started looking up to his buddies. A lot of them are dead or in jail now.

This is my family's story, but it didn't have to be this way.

When you're young, it's like you're sold a dream. I was in community college for filmmaking, getting to class on time every day. One time I even got behind the camera and practiced for broadcast. The director was telling me to move the camera through my earpiece. I tell you it was amazing.

But the dream crumbled. If you go to a doctor and that doctor doesn't help you, you're not going to trust that doctor. That's how I saw the justice system, the cops. They say they're there to serve and protect, they're there for law and order. But it was like they wanted my brother and me to go to jail. They threw us away.

One night I was on my way to a party, and the police stopped the car I was in. They told us to lie with our faces in the gravel while they looked at our ID. They said that I was driving with a felon, which violated my parole. I pleaded with these people. Why am I going to jail? What is it accomplishing? Nothing, but it's keeping me out of school. That really messed me up. I had to drop out of school. It was like crumbling. Like falling.

I'm not the only one. Instead of serving and protecting, the laws we have on the books throw people away. But I know the story could be different. These laws are made, and we can change them.

The only way I see to take a stand is for everyone to come together. Things would get better if the authorities would show people something other than harassment. Things would get better if people would speak against laws like the one that took my brother away for something so petty. Right now, the authorities see us as the enemy and we're looking at them as the enemy. But we've got to put the differences aside and come together on something good. You know what I'm saying?

I'm not thinking of myself anymore. When I hear my kids call me "Daddy, daddy," I love it. I want to tell them the things I had to learn on my own. I see big things for my kids. I want the story to be different for my kids.

It's time to reform mandatory minimum sentencing policies that are extreme, ineffective, and waste taxpayer dollars. One way we can rollback some of the mandatory minimums in the federal system is by urging Congress to pass the bipartisan Smarter Sentencing Act, which will give judges the ability to determine sentences that fit the crime. Click here to take action.

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Cross-posted from The Blog of Rights.

The Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the US v. Windsor case was a milestone event for the LGBT community and a vindication of the ACLU’s position that sexual orientation should not limit equal access to participating in society. A New York Times editorial today underscores that very point in its analysis of last week’s Ninth Circuit Court decision which ruled that sexual orientation could not be used as a factor in jury selections. The Times editorial outlines how the Appellate Court decision, written by Judge Reinhardt, built on the ground breaking Windsor case and that the judge’s strongly worded opinion maintained that the precedent for equal dignity for all was tied to equal responsibilities, stating:

Jury service is one of the most important responsibilities of an American citizen.

Read the article.