Korematsu Case Summary

Korematsu v. United States: Fred Korematsu’s Case
On February 19, 1942, during World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt passed the Executive Order 9066. This authorized the U.S. military to move thousands of Japanese citizens from places deemed crucial to national safety and possibly defenseless against infiltration. The military immediately used this power to issue a ban on all people, “immigrant and non- immigrant,” with Japanese lineage. Following this ban, captivity camps were set up to hold Japanese Americans, extending along the entire West Coast. In rebellion of this, a man named Fred Korematsu, an American born citizen with Japanese heredity, refused to comply with this law and vacate his residence to stay at a camp. He even made many attempts to hide his ancestry; he did this by undergoing cosmetic surgery on his eyelids and he adopted a fake identity where he claimed to be of Hispanic and Native background. In consequence to his failure to adhere to the migration order, he was detained on May 30, 1942, he spent two and half months behind bars, and after he paid a bail of $5,000 he was freed and directly sent to an encampment with his parents and sibling. When he was found guilty, he appealed and his case went to

His case hinted that our basic civil rights should be second to discrimination, intolerance, and paranoia. Because of this, after the war ended Congress passed the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948, which gave a reimbursement to Japanese American citizens who had to move to a camp and lost their residences or establishments during the war. Additionally in 1988, Congress also sent all these families official apologies for the loss and distress, and later sent out compensations totaling $20,000 to the survivors of these incarceration camps. Then later in 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Fred Korematsu with the Presidential Medal of