Fred Korematsu and His Fight for Justice


June 4, 2018

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, uprooting some 120,000 Japanese-Americans – two-thirds of them American citizens – from their homes on the West Coast and forcing them into concentration camps. Fred Korematsu refused to go. He was arrested and convicted of violating the Executive Order and related military proclamations. The reenactment of this seminal case, told through narration, reenactment of court proceedings, and historic documents and photographs, was developed and presented by members of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, including Cadwalader attorneys Jessica Wong and Kathy Hirata Chin, the Honorable Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Honorable Kiyo Matsumoto of the Eastern District of New York, and the Honorable Ona Wang of the Southern District of New York. Fred Korematsu's daughter, Karen Korematsu, played herself in the reenactment and gave closing remarks.