It's January 30th, 🗽 Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution. In 2010, then-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this commemoration into law. It's now also being celebrated in Hawaii, Virginia, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Utah, and South Carolina. The list is growing. This special day is dedicated to a Japanese-American civil rights activist and is the first such day in the history of America to be named after an Asian American.
Mr. Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, on this day in 1919 to Japanese parents who immigrated to the US 14 years earlier. As a youth, he attended public schools and worked in his family's flower nursery. When 🌸 Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, America panicked. President Franklin Roosevelt implemented Executive Order 9066, and the government forcibly relocated about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry to hastily-built concentration camps.
Korematsu did not go willingly, though. He remained in California, claiming that Executive Order 9066 was unconstitutional. He went into hiding but was arrested, jailed, tried, and convicted. In 1944, the US 🏛️ Supreme Court ruled that Executive Order 9066 was constitutional.
The decision in Korematsu v. United States was very controversial. In 1983, his conviction for evading internment was finally overturned in US District Court for the Northern District of California. In 2011, six years after Korematsu’s death, the Department of Justice officially acknowledged that the US Supreme Court decision against Korematsu had been erroneous, but it still hasn't been explicitly overturned. Let's hope the Governator's act eventually succeeds in doing just that. ☮️ Peace… Jamiese of Pixoplanet
