Fred Korematsu Quotes
I was born in the U.S. This is my country.
Korematsu, Fred. Interviewed by Peter Irons. The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court, by Peter Irons, The Free Press, 1988, p. 44.
In a House debate in 1923 on the Nordic or Latin discovery of America, Congressman Summers of Washington asked Italian-American Congressman La Guardia to yield to ask whether or not Christopher Columbus had come from "your country."
This was written by a French Journalist who had been assigned to America for 7 years when he wrote this in 1939. WWII was just breaking out in Europe. America is one of the few countries where naturalized citizenship is based on nothing other than desire and commitment.
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was an American civil rights activist who objected to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Shortly after the Imperial Japanese Navy launched its attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast from their homes and their mandatory imprisonment in internment camps, but Korematsu instead challenged the orders and became a fugitive.
