Born: January 30, 1919, Oakland, California, United States
Died: March 30, 2005, Marin County, California, United States
Cause of death: Respiratory failure
Spouse: Kathryn Pearson (m. 1946–2005)
Education: Castlemont Community of Small Schools
Parents: Kotsui Aoki, Kakusaburo Korematsu
Children: Karen Korematsu
Today Google’s US homepage is celebrating Fred T. Korematsu, a civil rights activist and survivor of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
January 30th, 2017 would have been his 98th birthday and is officially recognized as Fred Korematsu Day in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida.
A son of Japanese immigrant parents, Korematsu was born and raised in Oakland, California. After the U.S. entered WWII, he tried to enlist in the U.S. National Guard and Coast Guard, but was turned away due to his ethnicity.
He was 22 years old and working as a foreman in his hometown when Executive Order 9066 was signed in 1942 by U.S President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The order sent more than 115,000 people of Japanese descent living in the United States to incarceration.
Rather than voluntarily relocate to an internment camp, Korematsu went into hiding. He was arrested in 1942 and despite the help of organizations like ACLU, his conviction was upheld in the landmark Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. United States. Consequently, he and his family were sent to the the Central Utah War Relocation Center at Topaz, Utah until the end of WWII in 1945.
It wasn’t until 1976 that U.S President Gerald Ford formally ended Executive Order 9066 and apologized for the internment, stating "We now know what we should have known then — not only was that evacuation wrong but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans.”
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