Korematsu v. United States: A Constant Caution in a Time of Crisis

Twenty years ago, in a crowded federal courtroom for the Northern District of California, Fred Korematsu uttered a simple request: "I would like to see the government admit that they were wrong and do something about it so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color."1 Korematsu and his team of young lawyers were there that day to argue for vacating his 1942 conviction for disobeying military wartime exclusion and detention orders, and to end the public stigma of disloyalty imprinted by the original Korematsu decision onto the Japanese American community. Unearthed documents had revealed that no military necessity existed to justify the incarceration, and that government decision makers knew this at the time, and later lied about it to the Supreme Court. On that day, November 19, 1983, forty years after the United States Supreme Court upheld his conviction, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel reversed Korematsu's conviction, acknowledging the "manifest injustice" done to him and to all those interned.3 In the original 1944 Korematsu decision, the United States Supreme Court upheld the mass incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II without charges, notice, trial or due process, and without any evidence of espionage and sabotage by persons of