Fred Korematsu Day

January 30, 2011 

UC Berkeley Wheeler Auditorium

UC Berkeley Campus

 

2:00 to 3:00 pm: Main Program

3:00 to 4:00 pm: General Reception

4:00 to 5:00 pm: Film Screening   

 

Come celebrate the first Fred Korematsu Day on January 30, 2011, at UC Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium. The program includes keynote speaker Reverend Jesse Jackson and spoken word artist Beau Sia, as well as tributes from Karen Korematsu and California Assembly Members Warren Furutani and Marty Block.  There will also be a screening of the film, Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story. Click here for ticket information and more details.

Fred T. Korematsu was a national civil rights hero. In 1942, at the age of 23, he refused to go to the government's incarceration camps for Japanese Americans. After he was arrested and convicted of defying the government's order, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled against him, arguing that the incarceration was justified due to military necessity.

In 1983, Dr. Peter Irons, a legal historian, discovered key documents that government intelligence agencies had hidden from the Supreme Court in 1944. The documents consistently showed that Japanese Americans had committed no acts of treason to justify mass incarceration. With this new evidence, a legal team of mostly Japanese American attorneys re-opened Korematsu's 40 year-old case on the basis of government misconduct. On November 10, 1983, Korematsu's conviction was overturned in a federal court in San Francisco. It was a pivotal moment in civil rights history.

Korematsu remained an activist throughout his life. In 1998, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton. Korematsu's growing legacy continues to inspire activists of all backgrounds and demonstrates the importance of speaking up to fight injustice.