Biography
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was a Japanese-American welder in Oakland, California who refused to comply with Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 and remained at large rather than report for forced relocation. Arrested in San Leandro on May 30, 1942 and convicted in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California; sentenced to 5 years' probation and held at the Tanforan Assembly Center and then the Topaz War Relocation Center. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the conviction 6-3 in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), one of the most-criticized rulings in modern American constitutional history. The conviction was vacated by writ of coram nobis on November 10, 1983 by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel after the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians showed the government had suppressed evidence undermining the "military necessity" rationale. President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. The Supreme Court formally repudiated Korematsu in dicta in Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. ___ (2018).
