Fred T. Korematsu

This c. 1940 photograph of Fred T. Korematsu (1919-2005) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

Fred T. Korematsu waged a lifelong struggle to right an injustice that the U.S. government inflicted upon approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. In response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for the forcible removal and detention of persons of Japanese ancestry. When Korematsu defied the order, he was sent to federal prison and later incarcerated with his family in an internment camp. Aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, he challenged the legality of the detention, but the Supreme Court upheld the order in 1944. Korematsu petitioned to reopen the case in 1983, arguing that the government had known that Japanese Americans were not a security threat. A lower court ruled in his favor, and his conviction was overturned. In 1988, Congress apologized for the internments and awarded living camp survivors restitution payments of $20,000.  -- NPG