Groundbreaking lawsuits don't happen unless courageous men and women step forward to demand that their rights be vindicated.
Topeka third-grader Linda Brown, forced to attend segregated schools, was one. Or Clarence Gideon, a gaunt, twitchy boozer who ran a poker game at the pool hall, who demanded that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel meant that all poor defendants could have public defenders appointed on their behalf.
Today, Fred Korematsu passed away at the age of 86.
Korematsu, the son of Japanese immigrants, was born in Oakland. He was living there in 1942, a 23-year-old welder, when military officials ordered all Japanese Americans on the West Coast -- including U.S. citizens like Korematsu -- to report for transportation to remote camps.
Nearly all complied, including Korematsu's family and friends, who urged him to go along. He refused.
"All of them turned their backs on me at that time because they thought I was a troublemaker," he recalled. "I thought what the military was doing was unconstitutional. I was really upset because I was branded as an enemy alien when I'm an American."
He was arrested, convicted of violating the order and sent to an internment camp in Utah.
The decision which followed was
one of the worst in Supreme Court history, agreeing with the government that the internment was justified by the need to combat sabotage and espionage. It was not until 1983 that his conviction was finally overturned.
In recent years, Korematsu remained active in civil rights issues, speaking out against parts of the Patriot Act that he felt violated the rights of Arab Americans.
"He felt like what was happening to Arab Americans was very similar to what happened to Japanese Americans," Minami said. "Part of his legacy is that he challenged the government in a time of war. ... He continued speaking out in support of civil rights and the Constitution for years and years."
Indeed,
he had Supreme Court brief filed on his behalf challenging
the post-9/11 detentions of Arab Americans.
President Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor, in 1998. The citation reads:
"An American who wanted only to be treated like every other American, Fred Korematsu challenged our Nation's conscience, reminding us that we must uphold the rights of our own citizens even as we fight tyranny in other lands. Defying the 1942 order for the internment of Japanese Americans, he stood strong against anti-Asian prejudice in the United States during World War II. Convicted of violating the order, he waited more than 40 years for justice, when a Federal court overturned the judgment that the Supreme Court first upheld against him. A man of quiet bravery, Fred Korematsu deserves our respect and thanks for his patient pursuit to preserve the civil liberties we hold dear."
A true American hero.