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Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu and His Quest for Justice
Fred Korematsu's decision to resist F.D.R.'s Executive Order 9066, which provided authority for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, was initially the case of a young man following his he wanted to remain in California with his white fiancée. However, he quickly came to realize that it was more than just a personal choice; it was a matter of basic human rights.
After refusing to leave for incarceration when ordered, Korematsu was eventually arrested and convicted of a federal crime before being sent to the internment camp at Topaz, Utah.
He appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which, in one of the most infamous cases in American legal history, upheld the wartime orders. Forty years later, in the early 1980s, a team of young attorneys resurrected Korematsu's case. This time, Korematsu was victorious, and his conviction was overturned, helping to pave the way for Japanese American redress.
Lorraine Bannai, who was a young attorney on that legal team, combines insider knowledge of the case with extensive archival research, personal letters, and unprecedented access to Korematsu his family, and close friends. She uncovers the inspiring story of a humble, soft-spoken man who fought tirelessly against human rights abuses long after he was exonerated. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
After refusing to leave for incarceration when ordered, Korematsu was eventually arrested and convicted of a federal crime before being sent to the internment camp at Topaz, Utah.
He appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which, in one of the most infamous cases in American legal history, upheld the wartime orders. Forty years later, in the early 1980s, a team of young attorneys resurrected Korematsu's case. This time, Korematsu was victorious, and his conviction was overturned, helping to pave the way for Japanese American redress.
Lorraine Bannai, who was a young attorney on that legal team, combines insider knowledge of the case with extensive archival research, personal letters, and unprecedented access to Korematsu his family, and close friends. She uncovers the inspiring story of a humble, soft-spoken man who fought tirelessly against human rights abuses long after he was exonerated. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published October 18, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 26, 2017
About the time my parents were born, my country did not live up to the promise of its creed in a spectacular fashion. We gave into fear and nationalism. We interned more than one hundred thousand innocents with Japanese ancestry. We forced them from their homes with a few suitcases and sent them to horse stalls and camps. We forced them to sell their homes and farms and stores at fire sale prices. Only a few said no. One of them was Fred Korematsu.
Eventually, Fred Korematsu was arrested and sent to an internment camp. But because he resisted, he was prosecuted. Because he was prosecuted, he had an appeal. Because he appealed, and because his lawyers believed in the promise of our creed, the United States Supreme Court gave its imprimatur to internment in a case every law student reads.
But the United States Supreme Court made its decisions on a bad record. (139). To oversimplify dangerously, in our constitutional system, the greater the need, the greater the power the executive branch has to respond to it. Additionally, power has to be exercised for legitimate ends. What might be lawful to combat an invasion might not be lawful to combat jaywalking. The executive branch knew there was no actual need for exclusion and interment and it knew that many making the decisions were motivated by illegitimate ends. Instead of so informing the court, they falsified the record. (138). They burned the original documentation that would have shown there was no basis for the internment. (146). And they accidentally archived one copy of the file documenting their duplicity. (138).
In September 1981, after many years of searching, an ACLU lawyer, Peter Irons, found that documentation. (137).
But before he did, the harm was horrible. More than a hundred thousand innocent people lost their homes, their livelihoods, their dogs, their cats, their pianos, their cars, their friends, and their liberty. When they returned, those who did, they returned to hostile communities. Shopkeepers posted “No Japs Wanted” signs in their windows. (111). “Employment discrimination was rampant.” (111). American Legion posts refused membership to Nisei servicemen. (111). People shot at them and burned them out. Maybe the falsification of the record and the removal wasn’t the only thing that caused that eruption of id monsters, but man, it did not help.
In January 1982, Peter Irons visited Fred Korematsu with documentation that would, ultimately and effectively, reopen whether the Japanese Internment was lawful. (139). Fred Korematsu asked Irons to reopen his case. (149).
A whole bunch of lawyers, including the author, Lori Bannai, rose to the call. (Professor Bannai was one of my professors in law school I am pleased to say, and because of her, I have met Fred and his daughter Karen Korematsu.) The case was framed as a writ of coram nobis – an ancient writ available in some courts that allows a court to correct a judgment predicated on fundamental error that does not appear on the face of the judgment or the records before the original court. Judge Patel (who I have also met thanks to Prof. Bannai) was assigned the case. The government made no meaningful defense of the original judgment. (182). It instead attempted to dismiss the original charges it had brought; it argued that the government would never do anything like that again* and that the United States Supreme Court’s Korematsu opinion “‘lies overruled in the court of history.’” (184).
Judge Patel, like Judge Robarts not so long ago, rendered judgment from the bench. She found that the government “had relied upon ‘unsubstantiated facts, distortions and representations of at least one military commander, whose views were seriously infected by racism.’” (185). She found the government had not shown its exercise of power was lawful. (186). She vacated Korematsu’s conviction. (186).
The book closes with the good work Fred Korematsu did after his conviction was vacated, speaking about what had happened and trying to insure that it never happens again. Several passengers put tears in my eyes. He spoke at San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El. The Rabbi Robert Kirschner introduced him, saying ‘”The forcible removal of innocent people solely on the basis of their ancestry is an injustice we Jews recognize only too well. We know what it is to be considered alien, to watch backs turn, to hear words of hatred. But we are not the only ones who know that.’” (199).
But there are those who defend the practice. Michelle Malkin has defended the Japanese internship in recent years. (205). Justice Scalia, with perhaps more insight, acknowledged that the United States Supreme Court did wrong in affirming Korematsu’s conviction “‘But you are kidding yourself if think the same thing will not happen again. . . . [fear] is no justification but it is the reality.”
In memory of Fred Korematsu, and so this may never happen again, my law school has established the Korematsu Center for Law and Equality. https://law.seattleu.edu/centers-and-.... I am very proud of this.
A good book. Well worth the time.
*In fairness to counsel, that seemed a much more plausible assertion in the early 1980s.
Eventually, Fred Korematsu was arrested and sent to an internment camp. But because he resisted, he was prosecuted. Because he was prosecuted, he had an appeal. Because he appealed, and because his lawyers believed in the promise of our creed, the United States Supreme Court gave its imprimatur to internment in a case every law student reads.
But the United States Supreme Court made its decisions on a bad record. (139). To oversimplify dangerously, in our constitutional system, the greater the need, the greater the power the executive branch has to respond to it. Additionally, power has to be exercised for legitimate ends. What might be lawful to combat an invasion might not be lawful to combat jaywalking. The executive branch knew there was no actual need for exclusion and interment and it knew that many making the decisions were motivated by illegitimate ends. Instead of so informing the court, they falsified the record. (138). They burned the original documentation that would have shown there was no basis for the internment. (146). And they accidentally archived one copy of the file documenting their duplicity. (138).
In September 1981, after many years of searching, an ACLU lawyer, Peter Irons, found that documentation. (137).
But before he did, the harm was horrible. More than a hundred thousand innocent people lost their homes, their livelihoods, their dogs, their cats, their pianos, their cars, their friends, and their liberty. When they returned, those who did, they returned to hostile communities. Shopkeepers posted “No Japs Wanted” signs in their windows. (111). “Employment discrimination was rampant.” (111). American Legion posts refused membership to Nisei servicemen. (111). People shot at them and burned them out. Maybe the falsification of the record and the removal wasn’t the only thing that caused that eruption of id monsters, but man, it did not help.
In January 1982, Peter Irons visited Fred Korematsu with documentation that would, ultimately and effectively, reopen whether the Japanese Internment was lawful. (139). Fred Korematsu asked Irons to reopen his case. (149).
A whole bunch of lawyers, including the author, Lori Bannai, rose to the call. (Professor Bannai was one of my professors in law school I am pleased to say, and because of her, I have met Fred and his daughter Karen Korematsu.) The case was framed as a writ of coram nobis – an ancient writ available in some courts that allows a court to correct a judgment predicated on fundamental error that does not appear on the face of the judgment or the records before the original court. Judge Patel (who I have also met thanks to Prof. Bannai) was assigned the case. The government made no meaningful defense of the original judgment. (182). It instead attempted to dismiss the original charges it had brought; it argued that the government would never do anything like that again* and that the United States Supreme Court’s Korematsu opinion “‘lies overruled in the court of history.’” (184).
Judge Patel, like Judge Robarts not so long ago, rendered judgment from the bench. She found that the government “had relied upon ‘unsubstantiated facts, distortions and representations of at least one military commander, whose views were seriously infected by racism.’” (185). She found the government had not shown its exercise of power was lawful. (186). She vacated Korematsu’s conviction. (186).
The book closes with the good work Fred Korematsu did after his conviction was vacated, speaking about what had happened and trying to insure that it never happens again. Several passengers put tears in my eyes. He spoke at San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El. The Rabbi Robert Kirschner introduced him, saying ‘”The forcible removal of innocent people solely on the basis of their ancestry is an injustice we Jews recognize only too well. We know what it is to be considered alien, to watch backs turn, to hear words of hatred. But we are not the only ones who know that.’” (199).
But there are those who defend the practice. Michelle Malkin has defended the Japanese internship in recent years. (205). Justice Scalia, with perhaps more insight, acknowledged that the United States Supreme Court did wrong in affirming Korematsu’s conviction “‘But you are kidding yourself if think the same thing will not happen again. . . . [fear] is no justification but it is the reality.”
In memory of Fred Korematsu, and so this may never happen again, my law school has established the Korematsu Center for Law and Equality. https://law.seattleu.edu/centers-and-.... I am very proud of this.
A good book. Well worth the time.
*In fairness to counsel, that seemed a much more plausible assertion in the early 1980s.
April 16, 2017
This is the story of the man behind the infamous Korematsu case, in which the US Supreme Court upheld the internment of Japanese-American CITIZENS during World War II. Citizens who were born here, who spoke little or no Japanese and had no ties to Japan, who had never been suspected (let alone tried or convicted) of anti-American activity -- we ordered them to leave their homes and report to concentration camps in other states. Fred Korematsu refused to go, because he was in love and didn't want to leave his girl behind.
Painstakingly footnoted, this is an academic text with a heartbreaking personal story as a backdrop and a compelling legal drama in the foreground. So much of this seems incredibly timely in the context of 45's executive orders on Muslim immigration and the like -- it's hard to believe this book predates recent events.
As a side note, I am a lawyer myself and was very aware of the Korematsu case. It's taught in most if not all law schools, and is frequently mentioned in the same breath with the Dred Scott (fugitive slaves) and Plessy (separate but equal) cases as examples where the Supreme Court originally "got it wrong". But I was ignorant of the details of the subsequent coram nobis petition in the early 1980s. I vaguely knew that Korematsu had gotten his conviction overturned, but I hadn't realized it was so much later, and I DEFINITELY did not know that there was evidence that the federal government (including the Solicitor General) actively suppressed (and possibly helped alter) evidence before the Supreme Court about the alleged "military necessity" of the executive orders at issue. This is not just a lesson about the dangers of racism and an ugly mistake in our history; it's also a dramatic reminder of what can happen when lawyers don't uphold their strict ethical obligations.
Highly recommended not only for lawyers and those interested in legal history, but for anyone who cares about Constitutional rights and fears their erosion.
Thank you to Lorraine K Bannai for providing a review copy of this book.
Painstakingly footnoted, this is an academic text with a heartbreaking personal story as a backdrop and a compelling legal drama in the foreground. So much of this seems incredibly timely in the context of 45's executive orders on Muslim immigration and the like -- it's hard to believe this book predates recent events.
As a side note, I am a lawyer myself and was very aware of the Korematsu case. It's taught in most if not all law schools, and is frequently mentioned in the same breath with the Dred Scott (fugitive slaves) and Plessy (separate but equal) cases as examples where the Supreme Court originally "got it wrong". But I was ignorant of the details of the subsequent coram nobis petition in the early 1980s. I vaguely knew that Korematsu had gotten his conviction overturned, but I hadn't realized it was so much later, and I DEFINITELY did not know that there was evidence that the federal government (including the Solicitor General) actively suppressed (and possibly helped alter) evidence before the Supreme Court about the alleged "military necessity" of the executive orders at issue. This is not just a lesson about the dangers of racism and an ugly mistake in our history; it's also a dramatic reminder of what can happen when lawyers don't uphold their strict ethical obligations.
Highly recommended not only for lawyers and those interested in legal history, but for anyone who cares about Constitutional rights and fears their erosion.
Thank you to Lorraine K Bannai for providing a review copy of this book.
December 28, 2017
An important story to remember in the long effort to ensure hatred doesn't allow us to commit atrocities.
August 16, 2018
The reason I read this book at this time was because it was required for my 1L Orientation at Seattle University School of Law. The book is not only very well narrated and seamlessly put together, but educational in the best way possible for somebody who was planning on taking their two-week summer break completely off from any learning whatsoever (hey, I needed a break from Summer Term).
This book was such a thrill ride. I could see the culmination of my undergrad studies correlating to countless lessons learned in these pages. Fred Korematsu and his journey is incredible, and before reading this book, I hadn't recalled hearing about his case at all. Awareness is so critical when it comes to discussions revolving around historical instances of injustice and complete enforcement of systemic racism. What happened to Fred needs to be remembered. It has to. The government is capable of lying, of enforcing racism, of completely abandoning the people it is created to serve and represent, and this book, his story, is proof.
Near the end of the book, I was once again shown my exact reasons for pursuing law. I am so thankful this book fell into my hands before starting law school, as I will undoubtedly think back to Fred's story I'm sure. An essential read for every American citizen.
This book was such a thrill ride. I could see the culmination of my undergrad studies correlating to countless lessons learned in these pages. Fred Korematsu and his journey is incredible, and before reading this book, I hadn't recalled hearing about his case at all. Awareness is so critical when it comes to discussions revolving around historical instances of injustice and complete enforcement of systemic racism. What happened to Fred needs to be remembered. It has to. The government is capable of lying, of enforcing racism, of completely abandoning the people it is created to serve and represent, and this book, his story, is proof.
Near the end of the book, I was once again shown my exact reasons for pursuing law. I am so thankful this book fell into my hands before starting law school, as I will undoubtedly think back to Fred's story I'm sure. An essential read for every American citizen.
August 22, 2016
A biography of Fred Korematsu, a courageous man who gave his name to one of the most (in)famous cases decided by the Supreme Court. Fred Korematsu did not think it was right that he, an US citizen, should be interned and so he resisted. this is the story of how he came to that point and what followed. It's really well-written and quite taut.
April 5, 2020
This was a beautiful book. As someone who attends Seattle University School of Law, I was touched to see the social justice, so valued by the school, in action. Although, I have yet to meet Professor Bannai, the book beautifully demonstrated Fred Korematsu's life and his fight for justice. I believe that this is a true American story. Despite the fact that his treatment is a sad reminder of how fear can be a terrible motivator for discrimination and hate, we see that anyone can make a difference big or small. Fred made an incredible difference by simply refusing to stop living his life, as he had no reason to stop, he was a brave American. I am so grateful that there are lawyers who sincerely want to right wrongs and make a difference, instead of just seeing dollar signs. I would recommend this book to anyone seeking a real life story of a tumultuous journey with a happy ending.
November 25, 2016
Incredibly powerful book and an incredibly powerful reminder of the importance of fighting not only for our own civil liberties but the civil liberties of all Americans. Fred Korematsu's story is as important now as ever as our government and the American people once again try to call for the curtailing of civil liberties of specific groups of Americans based on race and religion alone out of an unfounded fear. Please read this book and share Fred's story with everyone you know.
September 27, 2019
Excellent book that offers a short biography of Fred Korematsu and details the legal efforts to vacate his conviction for refusing to report for incarceration during WWII.So few people understand that a US Army General's claim of military necessity was simply not true--indeed, was rebutted by other government agencies. A must read for anyone who cares about civil rights.
March 20, 2018
This history is so important for everyone to learn and understand. I learned so much about a case I’ve heard about my whole life but never understood. However, it is very dry and procedural. Readers will only enjoy this if you are really interested in the topic.
January 24, 2022
I don't think I have read through a book this quickly in a long time. It was hard to put down and the cause of several cancelled plans. Every section demonstrates Fred and his team's bravery. Even knowing the ending, I found myself cheering.
July 15, 2020
This is a great book, a product of deep scholarship, about the imprisonment of 110,000 American citizens in concentration camps in the United States during WW2. Justice Scalia believed it could happen again.
October 27, 2016
Well written, comprehensive, cautionary, and inspirational.
I would only give suggestions to this publisher as well as other publishers that books are much better when the footnotes are worked into the text pages rather than sequestered at the end. Flipping back and forth is so tedious....and no, it doesn't make me want to skip the footnotes, just makes me discouraged with the publishing industry.
Here are the questions discussed at the Reading the Western Landscape Book Club at the Arboretum Library of the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden on October 26, 2016:
I would only give suggestions to this publisher as well as other publishers that books are much better when the footnotes are worked into the text pages rather than sequestered at the end. Flipping back and forth is so tedious....and no, it doesn't make me want to skip the footnotes, just makes me discouraged with the publishing industry.
Here are the questions discussed at the Reading the Western Landscape Book Club at the Arboretum Library of the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden on October 26, 2016:
February 1, 2016
I reviewed this excellent biography of Fred Korematsu for the Los Angeles Review of Books -- and I am really happy that the the review came out on Fred Korematsu Day! (January 30). If you want to read the full review, please click below -- bottom line, it is a great read!
Here it is: https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/en...
Here it is: https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/en...
August 28, 2016
This is primarily a story about Korematsu's legal case, rather than a true biography, and it is very legalistic in tone and focus. But it is well written, very accurate, and an important tale.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews