What Are You Doing to Celebrate Fred Korematsu Day?

Whose day?  I asked the same the thing when I saw the press release, but I think the program probably tells you more about this day than anything:

BERKELEY, CA (1/30)- January 30th marks the first annual Fred Korematsu Day in California, the first day in U.S. history named after an Asian American. The Fred Korematsu Day bill, signed into California law in September 2010, honors an American civil rights hero from Oakland, CA who bravely resisted the government’s incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

Several hundred people are expected to attend the first annual Fred Korematsu Day celebration on Sunday at UC Berkeley’s Wheeler auditorium. The program, sponsored by the Korematsu Institute, includes:

- Keynote speaker Reverend Jesse Jackson

- Def Poetry Jam spoken word artist Beau Sia

- Karen Korematsu, daughter of Fred Korematsu

- California Assemblymember Warren Furutani (D – South Los Angeles) co-sponsor of the Fred Korematsu Day bill

- California Assemblymember Marty Block (D – San Diego), co-sponsor of the Fred Korematsu Day bill

- Speeches from students who attend schools named after Fred Korematsu

- A video message from Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to U.S. Congress.

So, the keynote speaker is Jesse Jackson, a guy who's about as Asian as a taco, and a video will be presented from the first Muslim member of Congress. And the whole thing is taking place in Berkeley, so you know this has to be some sort of liberal Woodstock.

So, who was Fred Korematsu?

During World War II, Korematsu was a 23-year-old welder in Oakland, California who defied military orders that ultimately led to the evacuation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans. After he was arrested and convicted of defying the military’s incarceration order, he took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1944 upheld his conviction on the ground that the forced removal of Japanese Americans was justified due to “military necessity.” That decision has been widely condemned as one of the darkest chapters in American legal history.

After four decades of having to live with a “disloyalty” conviction on his record that limited him from securing full-time work, Korematsu filed suit to reopen his case on proof that the government, when arguing his case during the war, had suppressed, altered, and destroyed material evidence that contradicted the government’s claim of military necessity.In 1983, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California granted his petition for a writ of error coram nobis (a notice of error) and overturned his conviction. It was a pivotal moment in civil rights history that helped lead to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, whereby the U.S. Government paid $20,000 to each survivor of the Japanese American incarceration camps.

So, he was the man responsible for the Japanese reparation payments, and that tells me why Jesse Jackson is involved. He has his own sights set on reparation payments.   I guess he's hoping a little of that old Korematsu magic will wear off on him.