Events

Fred Korematsu Speaks Up – Meet the authors

ACLU of Northern California Santa Clara Valley chapter meeting in September

For our September Chapter meeting set for Wednesday, September 27th, 7:00 p.m., we feature two authors, Laura Atkins and Stan Yogi, who will speak about their new book for young readers, Fred Korematsu Speaks Up, along with a chance to visit the Japanese American Museum of San Jose.  Both authors are on a Bay Area book tour sponsored by the ACLU of Northern California.

In 1942, Fred Korematsu defied US government orders that forced all Japanese Americans from the West Coast and led to their mass incarceration during World War II. His subsequent challenge to the constitutionality of his forced removal became the basis of the landmark, Korematsu v. United States Supreme Court Case. Today, with the lessons of Fred Korematsu’s life more relevant than ever, the authors felt Korematsu’s story should be made accessible to young readers and their educators.

Laura Atkins is a children’s book author, editor, and instructor. Stan Yogi is coauthor of Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, and worked as a staff member of the ACLU of Northern California for many years.

Background

The Korematsu story is deeply intertwined with the history of the ACLU of Northern California. Fred Korematsu of San Leandro resisted the wholesale expulsion of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans from California during World War II. Attorney Ernest Besig of the ACLU of Northern California helped Korematsu challenge the constitutionality of his exclusion and detention, and Korematsu appealed his arrest and conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which infamously upheld his conviction.

The case, Korematsu v. United States, has become a landmark case, studied by all American law students.  In 1982, the case was re-opened when Fred Korematsu, armed with newly discovered evidence that the U.S. Solicitor General had lied to the Supreme Court, applied for a “writ of error Coram Nobis.”  This allowed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to hear arguments on the new evidence, and it subsequently threw out (vacated) his conviction (but did not overrule the original Supreme Court decision.)

The vacating of Korematsu’s original conviction along with the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1983, were key moments in the more than decade-long struggle that culminated in the passage and signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, that provided an apology and individual monetary compensation to Japanese American former incarcerees.

Fred Korematsu Speaks Up – Meet the authors

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Japanese American Museum of San Jose

535 N. Fifth Street San Jose, CA 95112

No charge to attend but you must RSVP due to limited seating. Please contact [email protected] or call (408) 294-3138 to reserve a seat.

This event is co-sponsored by the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the ACLU of Northern California, the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, and the Yu-Ai Kai.