Korematsu v. US

Landmark US Supreme Court case of 1944 dealing with congressional measures forcing the relocation of citizens of certain national origins. Fred Korematsu (1919-2005), a US citizen of Japanese descent, challenged the forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II (see internment, Japanese), and lost. Although the US Supreme Court had upheld his conviction in 1944 on the grounds of military necessity, in 1983 Korematsu decided to reopen the case. Later that year, a federal court in San Francisco overturned the conviction, stating that the government's case at the time had been based on false, misleading, and racially biased information.

Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, and because of growing fear that an invasion of the West Coast was imminent and lurking suspicions about the loyalty of Japanese Americans living along the coast, in 1942 President F D Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the incarceration of over 110,000 Japanese Americans. When Korematsu refused to go to an internment camp as required by the order, he was arrested and tried in a federal district court.

In 1988, Congress passed legislation apologizing for the internments and awarding each survivor US$20,000. Korematsu was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1998 as a tribute to his enduring courage and contribution to the advancement of civil rights in the USA.