Interviews

1. Manhunt

2. The Final Verdict

3. A Wrong Righted

(1919 - 2005) Challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066.

Manhunt

I assumed that, that worst was gonna come before me, and I knew I wouldn't be a free man. They're not gonna let me have that, make it that easy for me, because, you know, I was even classified as an "enemy alien" by the draft card. And so I knew that as soon as they realized that I'm there, free, that they were gonna catch me.

I*: Were you afraid of being arrested?

No, I wasn't, because I didn't feel that I was, I did anything wrong. And if anybody did wrong, it was the law. Because I figured it was unconstitutional what they were doing.

* "I" indicates an interviewer (Lorraine Bannai).

World War II writ of coram nobis

Date: May 14, 1996

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Lorraine Bannai, Tetsuden Kashima

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Fred Korematsu was born on January 30, 1919, in Oakland, California. Korematsu was working as a welder in San Francisco when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. After Executive Order 9066 was issued in 1942, he resisted and made an attempt to leave the state of California. He was apprehended and arrested for failing to report for evacuation. Korematsu was one of several who challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066 in the courts and his case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the order in 1944.

Following World War II, Korematsu moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he married and raised a family before returning to California. In the early 1980s, his case was reopened after the discovery of a document indicating that in the original 1944 case, the federal government had withheld evidence to the high court. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel vacated the conviction in 1983. In 1998, Korematsu was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Fred Korematsu passed away in 2005. (April 15, 2008)

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