Posted on: Friday, April 1, 2005

EDITORIAL
Korematsu: When will we ever learn?

Fred Korematsu was an authentic American hero, but most of us didn't know it for about four decades, and many of us have forgotten about it since.

Korematsu, the son of Japanese immigrants, was living in Oakland in 1942, a 23-year-old welder, when military officials ordered Japanese Americans to report for transportation to remote internment camps even though they were U.S. citizens.

Nearly all complied, including Korematsu's family and friends who urged him not to be a troublemaker.

He refused, and was arrested, convicted of violating the order and sent into internment. In one of its most shameful moments, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1944, agreeing that the threat of sabotage and espionage trumped his constitutional rights.

His conviction finally was overturned in 1983; the internment camp survivors won a national apology in 1988, and Korematsu was awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Korematsu died Wednesday at 86.

But have we learned from Korematsu's story? Now there are Arab Americans who refused to go quietly when they were rounded up in the near-panic that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Will it be four decades before their names become known and we apologize?