Karen Korematsu was sitting in social studies class listening to a book report on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II when the sound of her last name caught her by surprise.
Her classmate explained that one man had resisted military orders to move to an internment camp and challenged the race-based relocation in a case known as Korematsu v. the United States.
"I thought, that’s my name," Karen Korematsu recalled Tuesday while preparing for events marking today as Fred Korematsu Day in Hawaii. "All of a sudden, I had 35 pairs of eyes looking at me in class."
The year was 1966, and Karen, 16, was one of only a handful of Japanese-Americans at San Lorenzo High School in California. She had never heard of the case, even though her father was the plaintiff. That night, she asked him about it.
"He said it happened a long time ago, and he felt like what he did was right and the government was wrong," said Korematsu, a San Rafael, Calif., resident who is in Honolulu for today’s ceremonies. "It was that simple to him.
"And I could see the pain in his eyes. I just couldn’t ask him any more questions."
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, 120,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry were arrested and forcibly put in concentration camps in the name of national security.
Fred Korematsu was 23 years old and trained as a welder. But he had learned about the Constitution in high school. He had learned that he had civil rights as an American citizen. At least he thought he did.
Today, high school teachers and their students are learning from him. They study the tortured course of his struggle for justice and discover the difference one ordinary American made.
Korematsu challenged the "racial exclusion" decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court but lost the case in 1944 when the justices concluded the internment of innocent people was necessary for national security.
Korematsu was convicted of violating military orders, and that record dogged him for decades, keeping him from landing coveted jobs. It was not until 1983 that he was vindicated, after his case was reopened when researchers found evidence that government lawyers had misled the court and concealed crucial documents.
The suppressed evidence showed that the Naval Intelligence and the FBI had concluded that there was no reason to round up Japanese-Americans en masse, that as a group they were loyal Americans and had not committed espionage. They could be dealt with case by case, as were Italian-Americans and German-Americans.
Eric Yamamoto was a young lawyer on the team who successfully reopened the Korematsu case. Last year he was named the Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice at the University of Hawaii’s William S. Richardson School of Law.
"The relevance of Korematsu today is to say that first, we the citizens have to be very vigilant to make sure our executive branch and legislative branches don’t overreach and scapegoat in the name of national security," Yamamoto said.
"And second, that the courts, when entertaining challenges to these governmental actions, step up and don’t simply defer to the government, but instead closely scrutinize the government’s actions."
Over the years, Korematsu carried a heavy burden for his bravery in challenging the government.
"He was vilified from day one because he took a stance against the government," his daughter said. "He was ostracized even from his own Japanese-American community."
In 1998 he was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died in 2005. Today would have been Korematsu’s 94th birthday.
Mary Chun, a social studies teacher at Waialua High and Intermediate School, notes that Korematsu wasn’t much older than her students when he took a stand. Last year those students decided that they could do something, too.
"We talked about the fact that there was a day honoring him in California and schools were named after him but that in Hawaii a lot of people don’t even know who he is," Chun said.
The Waialua kids wrote letters to the governor, calling for Fred Korematsu Day in Hawaii, not a state holiday or a day off, but a day for reflection and education. In May, Gov. Neil Abercrombie wrote back and enclosed a proclamation designating Jan. 30, 2013, as Fred Korematsu Day in Hawaii.
Busloads of public school students are gathering to mark Fred Korematsu Day at the USS Arizona Memorial today and Thursday for showings of the half-hour documentary "Of Civil Wrongs and Rights" with remarks by Karen Korematsu and others.
They have been studying a curriculum developed by the Department of Education, the Fred Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education, and others. Teachers can order a free curriculum kit at www.korematsuinstitute.org.
The public may view the documentary at 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. today, on a first-come, first-served basis at the Arizona Memorial. A panel discussion and video presentation is also open to the public at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii from 6 to 7:45 p.m.
Karen Korematsu said her father’s fight for justice is an important touchstone in today’s debates over national security, racial profiling and immigration.
"It’s not just a Japanese-American story; it’s an American story and it has significance worldwide," she said. "We do have the ability to right a wrong when we can present the evidence. Even if it takes 40 years."
