Seattle University law center to carry former WWII internee's name

Fred Korematsu considered himself as American as the next guy, a young welder from Oakland who had fallen hard for a special girl.

When his parents and three brothers were rounded up during World War II and sent to an internment camp, the 22-year-old, in a rare move, refused to leave.

With plans to leave California and get married, the U.S.-born Korematsu attempted to disguise his appearance through plastic surgery. He was eventually arrested, jailed and interned.

Years later, the little known events of his life would become familiar to every student of U.S. constitutional law. The soft-spoken father of two would go on to lobby successfully for redress for Japanese internees and to speak out against the treatment of Muslims in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

President Clinton would award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

And on Saturday, Seattle University's School of Law will launch a new center that carries his name, the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality.

Its purpose is to address, through research, advocacy and education, discrimination in all areas — from race and ethnicity to gender, sexuality, class, disability and religion.

"Fred had a wonderful quiet dignity and a strong resolve," said Lorraine K. Bannai, associate director of the new center and a Seattle University law professor who is writing Korematsu's biography. He died in 2005.

"Until his death, he felt that what happened to Japanese people was very wrong," Bannai said. "It was never just about justice for himself; it was about equality and making sure it never happened again."

More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were rounded up and transported to internment camps based on an order signed by President Roosevelt after the December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Korematsu felt it was unjust that as an American he should be forced to give up his home, his life, his friends — his girl, who was white.

"His actions didn't begin as an act of desire, but rather a desire to be free," Bannai said.

After his family left, he moved into a boarding house with her. Three weeks later, despite attempts to alter his appearance, he was picked up by police in the Bay Area.

Korematsu v. United States, a landmark suit against the U.S. over the forced relocation, began as a test case by the Northern California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. It was one of three cases challenging the government's actions that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices found the government's actions a military necessity in all three and ruled against the internees.

Korematsu was working as a tradesman in Detroit in 1944 when he learned of the ruling.

He met and married a woman there and moved back to the Bay Area, where they had two children.

He tried to move on with his life, but his past would not let go.

Law students and professors called regularly, but he declined to speak.

"Fred lived for 40 years always thinking he wanted to do something about what happened, but not knowing what he could do about it," Bannai said. "He never spoke about these things."

And that's where it might have ended were it not for a University of Massachusetts law professor who, while doing research, discovered a smoking gun.

Peter Irons found documents showing that government lawyers had suppressed key intelligence reports concluding that Japanese Americans had committed no wrong — that claims that they were spying were intentional falsehoods and that mass internment was not advised.

These official reports became the basis for reopening the three Supreme Court cases — including Korematsu's.

Bannai, then an attorney in San Francisco, was among a team of passionate young lawyers assembled to seek an overturn of the three convictions on grounds of prosecutorial fraud.

Twenty-five years ago this month, a federal judge in Northern California voided Korematsu's original conviction. The reluctant public speaker became a voice in the call for justice.

"It was so wonderful to see — this soft-spoken man, walking the halls of Congress talking to lawmakers," Bannai said. "He spoke from the heart, just an everyday person and that really appealed to people."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published April 17, 2009, was corrected April 21, 2009. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that President Clinton would award Fred Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Honor. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.