Korematsu Then and Now
November 15
“Korematsu Then and Now”
Lorraine K. Bannai Director, Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality and Professor of Lawyering Skills, Seattle University School of Law
During World War II, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, to forcibly remove over 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to desolate camps in the interior. In Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court, infamously, upheld the constitutionality of the government’s actions, deferring to the government’s claims about national security. Today, new government actions, such as the travel ban, are also asserted to be justified by national security, but are rooted in the same fear and prejudice that led to the wartime incarceration. The WWII incarceration can teach us much about what happens when ignorance and fear combine to harm vulnerable communities; when the courts fail to act as a check on the exercise of government power; and when we, as a people, fail to uphold the rule of law and to speak out against injustice.
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Speaker Bio
Lorraine Bannai has directed academic support at Boalt Hall Law School and taught Law at University of San Francisco, New College of California, Fairhaven College, and, for 20 years, at Seattle University. She has written and spoken widely on the wartime Japanese American incarceration and its present-day relevance, testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and written an amicus brief for the Supreme Court in Hedges vs. Obama. Prof. Bannai is the author Enduring Conviction: Fred Korematsu and His Quest for Justice (Seattle: Washington, 2015).