Fred Korematsu

Words: 1476
Pages: 6

On January 30, 1919, Fred Korematsu was born to Japanese parents in Oakland,
California. He grew up in a small neighborhood with his parents and three brothers. They were no different from the average American family, except Fred’s parents were born in Japan.
Where his parents were born was never much of a concern, but the events leading up to World
War II would change America’s views on Japanese Americans (Category par. 2).
After Fred Korematsu graduated from high school, he studied to be a welder and worked in shipyards in California, proudly building the Navy’s flotilla (Category par. 2). Fred was an “all American” and as soon as he turned twenty-one, he proudly registered to vote. When it came time to elect the next president, he voted
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United States (1944)." par. 4 and 5).
The Supreme Court case Korematsu v. The United States began on April 5, 1943, when the oral arguments were held. Over a year later, on December 8, 1944, the case started to come to an end when the United States Supreme Court delivered its opinion of the case
("Korematsu v. United States (1944)." par. 6 and 7). The 6-3 majority voted in support of Fred
Korematsu’s conviction.
Writing for the majority was Justice Hugo Black. Black held that “Although all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect and subject to tests of the most rigid scrutiny”. He continued to talk about how not all restrictions based on race are unconstitutional, “Pressing public necessity,’ he wrote, ‘may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can.” (PBS. par. 2)
Justice Hugo Black wrote the opinion for the court as well:
“We uphold the exclusion order as part of the time it was made and when petitioner [Fred Korematsu] violated it. In doing so we are not unmindful of the hardships imposed by it upon a large number of American citizens. But hardships are part of war, and war is an aggregation of