Fred Korematsu Quotes
I was very upset because I did not have a fair trial to prove my loyalty to this 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. 45.
This quotation is a great example of the difficulty of deciding some of the major Constitutional issues. Most reasonable people believe that Rehnquist certainly has a point. On the other hand, critics observe that this quotation essentially says that it is OK to convict an innocent person if it cost too much or be too much trouble to do so. Reasonable people would also agree that this objection has much merit also. So the judicial system is stuck with deciding when the cost or trouble is too much. There will never, can never, be a clear cut answer.
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.
