Fred Korematsu, at Center of Landmark Internment Case, Dies
San Jose Mercury News (March 31, 2005)
It was a deep disappointment to young Korematsu, who was in his 20s at the time. But unexpectedly in 1982, three young Japanese-American lawyers in San Francisco approached the feisty Korematsu and convinced him to take his case back to court. -- Karen Kai, Don Tamaki and Dale Minami were energized by their own parents and grandparents who had been interned. The following year, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of U.S. District Court in San Francisco, overturned Korematsu's conviction, citing government misconduct through suppression, alteration and burning of evidence, race discrimination, lack of military necessity, and manifest injustice. "We were not only trying to reverse a very bad legal precedent," recalled Don Tamaki, "but we were also trying to vindicate for our families."