Celebrating Human Rights Hero Fred Korematsu on his 100th Birthday, January 30

January 30 is Fred Korematsu Day, with events being held around the country. 

In New York, the 2nd annual New York City Fred T. Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution will be celebrated on Wednesday, January 30, 2019 at the New York County Lawyers Association, Andrew Hamilton Hall, from 6:30 to 9:00 pm. The event is co-sponsored by the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY) and the Asian Practice Committee of the New York County Lawyers Association. AABANY members will perform a reenactment of the legal proceedings in Korematsu v. United States.

About the Trial Reenactment:

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, uprooting some 120,000 Japanese-Americans – two-thirds of them American citizens – from their homes on the West Coast and forcing them into concentration camps.  Fred Korematsu refused to go. He was arrested, and convicted of violating the Executive Order and related military proclamations. He appealed his conviction first to the Ninth Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court affirmed his conviction, upholding the Executive Order. In 1983, nearly forty years later, the federal court in San Francisco vacated Korematsu’s conviction after evidence was uncovered showing that the government had suppressed evidence that undermined its assertions before the Supreme Court.

This presentation by members of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, led by the Honorable Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Kathy Hirata Chin, Partner, Crowell & Moring, will tell the story of Fred Korematsu and his fight for justice through narration, reenactment of court proceedings, and historic documents and photographs.

Registration for the event is required and is available here until January 29.