CA Apologizes for Incarcerating Japanese-Americans During WWII and Urges Schools to Teach About it

By: Erik Perez

Photo of the Manzanar War Relocation Center, one of two Japanese Concentration Camps used during World War II. Photo by Shelly on flickr. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Just over a decade after California first declared January 30 as the “Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution,” the State Assembly has finally issued a unanimous apology, via House Resolution 77 (HR 77), to Japanese-Americans incarcerated during World War II under Executive Order 9066 (EO 9066).

EO 9066, signed by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942, empowered the U.S. government to relocate more than 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry to 10 concentration camps scattered throughout the country’s west coast.

Fred Korematsu was one of a handful of interned Japanese-Americans who sued the government in 1944, arguing that EO 9066 violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by targeting Korematsu because of his race. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Korematsu’s conviction and effectively legalized the prosecution of people based on their race, if the government was facing a legitimate national emergency. The decision was not vacated until 1983.

“This apology is long overdue,” said Assemblymember Albert Muratsuchi, in his February 20, 2020 introduction of HR 77 to the State Assembly, in front of a few internment survivors and their families, including Korematsu’s grand-nephew, Allen Korematsu. “Most of the survivors of Japanese-American internment have already passed away.”

Indeed, California’s legislative apology comes 78 years after EO 9066 was signed and 32 years after the U.S. government issued its own apology. This may be why some of the survivors are not exactly moved by the State’s resolution.

“For California to do this now, it doesn’t really mean much to me,” said Mits Kawamoto in an interview with NBC San Diego.

Kawamoto, who was only nine years old when her family was relocated to a camp in Arizona, said she would prefer that the State focus on making sure that atrocities like this are never repeated.

Muratsuchi, who has been introducing a resolution to establish a Day of Remembrance since he was first elected in 2014, has concerns like Kawamoto’s in mind. The apology that he authored specifically acknowledges California’s crucial role in facilitating the Japanese-American internment.

“California led the nation in fanning the flames of racism and immigrant scapegoating against Japanese-Americans,” said Muratsuchi.

Among other things, HR 77 details how, after Pearl Harbor, the State Assembly approved legislation that questioned Japanese-American loyalty, fired state employees who “may be proved to be disloyal” to the U.S. and urged Congress to strip the U.S. citizenship of Japanese-Americans holding dual citizenship in the U.S. and Japan.

But, Muratsuchi insists that the public recognition of California’s “past mistakes” is necessary because of a current political climate that is reminiscent of the one that existed during the establishment of Japanese-American internment camps. Muratsuchi specifically cited the migrant children detained at a former WWII Japanese-American camp at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and the “sweeping” ban on people traveling from predominantly Muslim countries.

In an effort to further facilitate this learning, the State Assembly also passed House Resolution 76 (HR 76), encouraging all public schools and educational institutions to conduct exercises each year on January 30 to remember Korematsu’s fight to preserve civil liberties.

But this kind of celebration is not new to California. Several schools across the state, including Santa Clara University’s School of Law, and others named after Korematsu, planned days of remembrance prior to the passing of HR 76.

At one of its two Korematsu Day events, SCU’s Law School hosted Karen Korematsu, the Executive Director of The Korematsu Institute and Fred Korematsu’s daughter, to weigh in on a mock trial of the Korematsu case. Following oral arguments, Korematsu’s public conversation with SCU’s Professor, Margaret Russell, seemed hopeful for the future of civil rights in the U.S., even under a conservative Supreme Court.

“[We] need creative thinking in the areas of restorative justice and in the areas of political organization,” said Russell. “We should remain optimistic.”

(Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the March 2020 [Volume 50, Issue 3] version of The Advocate.)