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First Korematsu Day Celebration Attracts More Than 700 Attendees

Speakers at First Fred Korematsu Day

More than 700 attendees packed the Wheeler Auditorium at the University of California, Berkeley, for the first Fred Korematsu Day celebration on Jan. 30, 2011 — Korematu’s birthday.  He would have been 92 years old.

Minami Tamaki LLP partners Dale Minami and Don Tamaki were members of the legal team that helped overturn Korematsu’s wrongful conviction for defying the military orders that ultimately led to the evacuation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, including Korematsu and his family.Highlights of the event included a keynote by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and remarks by Korematsu’s daughter, Karen,, spoken word artist Beau Sia, California Assemblymember Warren Furutani and a video greeting from Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison.  CBS 5 anchor Sydnie Kohara emceed the program.

The first Korematsu Day celebration marked a milestone in the ongoing effort to educate the public about the dangers of rolling back civil liberties in the name of national security.

In September 2010, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1775 into law, establishing January 30 as Fred Korematsu Day, the first time in United States history a day has been named after an Asian American.

The Korematsu Institute, launched last year by the Asian Law Caucus in partnership with the Korematsu family, plans to roll out curriculum in K-12 schools that week and on all future Korematsu Days.

A Chance of a Lifetime

  • By minamitamaki
  • January 6, 2009
  • Info

When our legal team stood in the courtroom of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on a rainy Nov. 10, 1983, to argue for the overturning of Fred Korematsu’s 40-year-old conviction for failure to obey the military orders directed at Japanese Americans in 1942, we knew that an extraordinary event would be unfolding before us.

Our first clue was the reassignment from Judge Marilyn Hall Patel’s courtroom to the “ceremonial courtroom,” a larger and more grandiose venue for what might become a historic occasion.

The second clue was the crowd. Folding chairs were brought in to accommodate the more than 1,000 people. Reporters were stuffed into the jury box that usually seated only 12 people. Third, the composition of the audience was unusual for a court case – many JAs including Nisei, former internees, 442nd members and our friends and family were there.

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