Radiolab - Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - American Pendulum I

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

This story comes from the second season of Radiolab's spin-off podcast, More Perfect. To hear more, subscribe here. What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United States is a case that’s been widely denounced and discredited, but it still remains on the books. This is the case that upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens during World War II based solely on their Japanese heritage, for the sake of national security. In this episode, we follow Fred Korematsu’s path to the Supreme Court, and we ask the question: if you can’t get justice in the Supreme Court, can you find it someplace else?  The key voices: Fred Korematsu, plaintiff in Korematsu v. United States who resisted evacuation orders during World War II. Karen Korematsu, Fred’s daughter, Founder & Executive Director of Fred T. Korematsu Institute Ernest Besig, ACLU lawyer who helped Fred Korematsu bring his case Lorraine Bannai, Professor at Seattle University School of Law and friend of Fred's family Richard Posner, recently retired Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit  The key cases: 1944: Korematsu v. United States  The key links: Fred T. Korematsu Institute Densho Archives Additional music for this episode by The Flamingos, Lulu, Paul Lansky and Austin Vaughn.  Special thanks to the Densho Archives for use of archival tape of Fred Korematsu and Ernest Besig.  Leadership support for More Perfect is provided by The Joyce Foundation. Additional funding is provided by The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation. Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. See?

Yeah. Okay. Ready? Mm-hmm. All right, Jad. Robert. Radio Lab. So, Robert. Yes, sir.

The day is here. The day is here. It is here. You have been getting ready for this. So we should just tell people that Jad last year produced... With an amazing team. A spinoff from. radio lab, it is a series about the law.

The law. And the Supreme Court of the United States. The highest court in the land. Yeah, the idea was to take the radio lab thing, the way of looking, the way of seeing, the way of sounding, producing, and apply it to this bizarre, opaque body of robed figures. Robid as in people who wear black robes. Robid. That is not an English word.

No, it isn't, but it's an old English word, actually. It's actually sort of the common law word that they used to use for robes. No, so the show is called More Perfect. The idea behind it is could we tell personal, human, surprising, thought-provoking stories about not just the justices, but the people and the ideas that get in front of the court. And in the process, could we give ourselves a new way of thinking about this country? That was the idea. It worked pretty well, too. I thought it worked all right.

The first season, which was enormously popular, I think was enormously popular because these, as you call them, robed people, these people in black, were had pulsing hearts. You know, they would sit down lakes by themselves and go crazy with concern. They were throbbing, heartful, nutty, passionate, angry, fair, beautiful people. It was really quite something. Oh, thank you. Okay, so now, Robert, I would love to play you the first. first episode, the very first episode of the season. And one of the sort of central ideas of this season

More Perfect is that these moments in history that we thought were gone, they're never really gone. They will always swing back into the now. And one of the cases that is very much swinging back into the now is a, well, maybe we should just play it. As you're listening, know that there are already a couple more extra episodes already in the More Perfect feed, radio lab.org slash more perfect or more perfect on iTunes,

Google Play, whatever. Okay, here it is. Episode number one, season two. In February of 2017, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said something that surprised a lot of people. Well, I would say that we are not experiencing the best of times. She stepped straight into the political fray and addressed this political moment. It was a great man. I once said that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle. It is the pendulum. And when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it will go back. Some terrible things have happened in the United States, but one can only

hope that we learn from those bad things. Today, we're going to ride the pendulum to the dark side. We're going to start with one of the most infamous decisions the court has ever made, the Korematsu decision. You might imagine it's not going to be the happiest of situations, but the story that we're going to tell you today, and tomorrow as well, actually. They're not stories of bitterness. Because this curious thing happens in both cases. When our characters can't find justice inside the Supreme Court, you stop looking for it there. And they find it somewhere else entirely. Producer Julial Longoria starts us off.

The year is 1967, and the place is San Lorenzo High School in the East Bay of California. No school go day. And we're in a U.S. history classroom. I was actually a junior in high school. This is Karen Korematsu. I'm the executive director and founder of the Fred T. Koromatsu Institute in San Francisco. So on this particular day, Karen is sitting at the back of the classroom. And our teacher had assigned each of my classmates, a little paperback book to read,

you know, books about American history, government. And the assignment was to then get up in front of the class and give an oral book report. I mean, this is a long time ago, so that's the way they used to do things. I don't even remember what my book was or my subject. But Karen said she was just sitting there in class listening, As one by one, her classmates got up, talked about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or whatever. And then my friend, Maya, who is Japanese American, third generation like myself, got up in front of the class. And her book was called Concentration Camps USA about the Japanese American internment.

And I thought, no, that's interesting. I hadn't heard about that before. What's that about? Maya's book report went something like this. In 1941, the United States of America was attacked. And the president, President Roosevelt, had to respond. I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. So in terms of defense, one of the big questions for Roosevelt was,

what happens if the Japanese invade the continental U.S.? America's sounding her alarm. They'd probably come in on the West Coast, and you had more than 100,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. Like, would they turn against the United States? They didn't know. And so... Her friend Maya explained to the class.

On February 19th and 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. That gave the military the authority to forcibly remove anyone of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. All of them. Citizens and aliens alike would have to move. She goes on to explain these, the horrific circumstances and how, you know, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry had been, you know, forcibly removed from their homes. She explained they were put into these detention camps.

Really, without any due process of law. But then she went on to say, but there was this one man who refused to go to the camps. And he was arrested. And he sued the government and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. And then he became a landmark Supreme Court case. And that man's name is Fred Korematsu. Oh, I said to myself, that's my name.

She says the class got really quiet. And I had 35 pairs of eyes turn around and looking at me. Okay, yes, she thought my last name is Korematsu. My dad's name is Fred. But no way. there's no way it's my dad. Someone would have told me. So, of course, and I go running home and confronting my mother and asking her.

What does she say? Well, I got the standard answer, wait till your father gets home and you can ask him. That voice you heard, by the way, was Ellie Mistal, our legal editor? By the time he got home, it was 8 o'clock in the evening. And so that's a long time after, you know, 3.30 in the afternoon. And I calmed down a little bit, and I asked him, and he said, it happened a long time ago, and what he did he thought was right, and the government was wrong. And it was that clear and simple. I could just see this hurt going over his face, and I just couldn't ask him any more questions.

Karen says it wasn't until years later that she learned what really happened and why her dad never wanted to talk about it. Well, I was 21 then. This is Fred Korematsu. It's tape of him from the Dencho archives. And I was up on the hill Sunday morning with my girlfriend. And Fred's story starts out on a date. You know, when you're at that age, you have a girlfriend just like anybody else. And she was more important to me than anything.

Fred and his girlfriend, Ida, are driving in the hills above San Francisco, looking down on the city. The Golden Gate Bridge. He'd been dating this girl for a while now. She was Caucasian. Italian-American. Most of his friends were Caucasian. And we were in a car,

and we were deciding what to do was such a nice day. Either go picnicking or something like that. And then all of a sudden I hear out. We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese of attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air, President Roosevelt has just announced. It came on the air, and there were car radio. And I was quite shocked in front of the White House and the State Department and the Japanese embassy.

And I was quite shocked. We both were. Fred knew there was a war on and that the U.S. was likely to get involved. He'd even tried to enlist in the U.S. military but was denied because he was Japanese-American. And he said sitting there, one of his first thoughts was, why does it have to be Japan? If some country was going to attack Pearl Harbor, I wish it was Russia, you know. I just thought about that, you know. I was bitter with Japan for having this happen.

So I took her home, and then I went home. So he gets home. My parents were all shocked. They were all sitting around in the living room. The house is just in despair. His mom is in tears. They were proud of being Japanese, you know. They obeyed a law.

They did everything that's supposed to have been. to have this happen. It put them in shame. It was even hard to talk to them after that. Fred had a traditional immigrant Japanese-American family. His parents were born in Japan, and then all his brothers were born here in the U.S.

Born in Oakland, California. He was the third out of four brothers. And being the third, not the second or the first, that mattered. Absolutely. Fred was in a unique position as the third son.

He could resume. We asked Lorraine Benai. I teach at Seattle University School of Law. For some context. She's a law professor and a friend of Fred's family. The cultural tradition is that the first son is the favored son. The oldest was going to inherit the family garden and nursery business. The second would help out with that business.

Fred, as the third son, was very low on the totem pole. His parents didn't have the same expectations of him. Relatively speaking, he was kind of off the hook. Unlike his older brothers, he did. didn't speak much Japanese, and he felt more American than anything else. When I was in school, we started each day with the Pledge of Allegiance. I studied American history. I've always been a good American citizen.

So when he came home that Sunday when Pearl Harbor was attacked, his family's response to the whole thing was unsettling. I didn't know what to do. And Fred says, pretty soon after, things got very weird. Within a few days, they put spotlights on the whole nursery at night. And they had a guard standing right near our home there while around the fence there watching us, because I went out one night to have a cigarette and I was standing on a porch and I lit a cigarette. And a guard yelled out if I was signaling somebody. It was ridiculous.

Then came Roosevelt's executive order. That big order, 9066, authorized the military to make a series of smaller ones. The first set of orders was a curfew order. saying that Japanese, Italians, and Germans were subject to a curfew. The second order was a freeze order directed just at the Japanese on the West Coast. They weren't allowed to leave the area. And then the third order was an order that they could not remain on the West Coast, except for in the custody of an approved location by the Army. All persons of Japanese descent were required to move to assembly centers.

There were about 15 of these assembly centers, and Japanese Americans were told to report to one of these centers by a certain date. When the evacuation notice came, Fred's family began to scramble. They had to worry about what they were going to take, what was going to happen to the nursery. So especially my mother, you know, the attention and worries. So in the days before his family left, Fred made a decision. Me being the third son, you know, I had my own worries. I had my own girlfriend, my own problems.

He decided not to go with his family. I talked to them that I don't want to leave. I won't leave with you. He didn't want to leave Ida behind, and he thought maybe the two of them could make a break for it later on. Leave the state before the evacuation deadline, and they said, fine, if we can do it, go ahead. He was the third son, so he knew that his older brothers would be able to take care of the family,

and they said he was a grown-up and he should make his own decisions. And so he did. He went off and got his own apartment and his own job as a welder and kind of lived under the radar. He knew his brothers would be there to take care of his parents. If you're with the family, like my family or any Japanese family, you feel the pressure and the sadness. But on the outside, it's different. It's just like a normal life, you know?

Just like we've been living all the time. I felt right at home. You know, I said, well, heck, I'm an American citizen too, you know. I didn't feel guilty because I don't think I did anything wrong. Do you have a sense that he was politically aware at this point? If you're asking me about whether he refused to go as an act of political resistance, I don't think initially. Unconsciously, he probably knew that what was happening to Japanese Americans was wrong.

But I don't think he had the words for it that we might have today. It's on his way home from work one day that he reads in the newspaper about his parents and all the other Japanese Americans in the area being taken away to camp. made me sick to my stomach, you know, and I can see my parents going in, you know, and my brother's going into camp, and I'm not there, you know. But that was the only time that I felt kind of lonely,

you know, like, well, what am I going to do now, you know? It begins to slowly dawn on him what he's done. By staying in the Bay Area, he is officially breaking the law, and he and Ida aren't sure what that means. Like, will they be thrown in jail or worse? He talks in the archives about how he's worried. And Ida's worried too. Because now he could get arrested.

So they start to think about their options. Fred decides to get an ID with a Spanish-sounding last name on it, so he won't be recognized as Japanese. And then Ida says, essentially, that might not be enough. She pulled out an article regarding the plastic surgery. and she says, what do you think of this? I looked it over and, well, I didn't think it was a good idea. But she said, hey, why don't you think about this?

This might be a good thing that will allow you to stay here. So the idea would be that he'd, you know, have his eyes doubled or something like that. A plastic surgery procedure where you put a fold in the eyelid so you look more white. that's Japanese-American. And she says, do you think it at work? And I said, I don't know. Well, she says, shall we look into it? And, well, I said, then we haven't got anything to lose.

So we decided to try it. So Fred gets into his car and he drives into the city into San Francisco. And he just stops in front of the doctor's office. And he starts pacing. walking up the steps of this Victorian and then walking down the steps to leave thinking this was a really crummy idea and then walking back up the steps

thinking, well, yeah, maybe Ida's right. It's a good idea. And the down the steps, this is a ridiculous idea. Giving some doctor your hard-earned money to change your face. So he goes up and down and up and down and up and down until

he decided to just go in and have the procedure done. He really did it as a way to protect them as they tried to leave the state. The doctor said he was going to work on his eyes and then also fix a broken nose. I had a broken nose from playing football and I never had it fixed

and said he could do a pretty good work on me. But it turned out he didn't do everything he said he would. He just took my money. That's what it was, actually. There wasn't anything changed except I didn't have a broken nose anymore. So he drives back to the East Bay with a new nose but the same eyes. And shortly after that day at the doctor's office, he's out buying cigarettes at a convenience store.

And a clerk recognized him and reported him. And one day, walking down the street, he was stopped and arrested. and spent his Memorial Day in 1942 in the San Leandro jail. When we got caught, they called her in too, you know, and I've seen the police chief talking to her for quite a while. I imagine it's a small jail and he's just been admitted, so he's sitting in the lobby and he sees Ida come into the front desk. He's just out of earshot.

He can't make out exactly what they're saying, but at a certain point they stopped talking, and she just walks out. So that was the end of it. I never did see her again. They never saw each other again? Nope. So he's sitting there alone in the San Leandro jail,

and they end up transferring him to Oakland jail for some reason, and then he ends up at the federal prison in San Francisco because resisting the order was a federal offense. Anyway, when they, I got a... call from the guard and told me I had a visitor and I didn't know who it was, you know. I knew all my friends were in camp or they were in the military. But Fred goes down to the visiting room anyway, and there's this man there. I'm a New Yorker who, well, I believe in civil liberties.

And when the right of people is being denied, this is something that I'm concerned about. The man says his name is Ernest Bessig. And he was a very nice fellow. Easy to talk to. He asked me if I needed some cigarettes or something like that, you know, just to break the ice. By the way, I ask him, who do you represent? And Ernest responds, well, The ACLU.

And I thought it was maybe a church or something like that. We have no way of knowing what exactly. was said between Fred and Ernest Bessig, both men have passed away. But it seems like something important must have happened in this conversation, because if, as Lori Benai says, I don't think he had the words for it that we might have today. Fred didn't have the language of resistance before this moment. Something in that conversation must have given it to him. Because when Ernest Bessig asked him, do you want me to represent you in a court of law? Fred says yes.

What do you imagine the words were that might have turned him in that moment? I imagine that Bessig must have said to Fred. We think that what's happened to Japanese Americans is unconstitutional. We'd like to bring a lawsuit to say that Japanese Americans are being sent away only because of their race. And in that, he gave Fred language. For what I think Fred knew was wrong. Bessig tried to get Fred out of jail, but the military stepped in and said he had to join his family in camp.

They were at a place called Tamfran Racetracks. It was a temporary holding spot. So that meant that the first place that Fred went after jail was a converted horse stall. I opened a door and there's gaping holes on the walls. The wind just blew in there in the door. dust blew in there and everything. And this was a small horse doll because Fred had asked for his own.

He wanted to sit and think about what to say to his family, who were also at Tamfran. He sat and looked at the single lone, bare light bulb above and the smell of manure and hay. I mean, it's made for horses, not for human beings. And then all of a sudden I hear a knock on the door. And I opened it and it was my brother. He says, hey, you can't stay here.

you can't come and see the folks. So he walks Fred over to the stall where his family's been living. And I was surprised the way they fixed up their stall. They filled up all the cracks, and they put newspaper for the walls, you know, papered it all up. This was a common thing for these families. Thousands of them were transferred to more permanent camps, and many stayed there for up to three years.

Over time, the community kind of tried to build lives for themselves. You hear stories and see pictures of people building small Japanese gardens out of what they found in the area. You saw newsreels about the people who made the desert bloom. You eventually saw people forming baseball teams. My brother, he was involved in various Japanese activities. And he thought it might be a good idea for me to get some suggestions and opinions regarding to if I should fight the case or not. So Fred's brother called a meeting.

He got about 30 young people together. I imagine it was like in a mess hall or something like that. And they discussed Fred's case. They were discussing it to themselves in little groups. And I stood around and waited for someone to speak, but no one actually came out to speak to me. I can see Fred kind of standing in a corner as people are gathered in small groups whispering to each other,

stealing glances at him, but no one says a word to him. Finally one did And he said Fred were undecided on If I should fight the case or not Because they didn't want to Make any more disturbance Anything to upset the parents right at this time Because they were too upset already

And just being an in-camp They told them their parents had been through enough Leaving their lives behind Basically, they said, we can't help you. But there was one Japanese-American group that did decide to say something about Fred's case. What's the name of the group? J-A-C-L.

Ernest Besig had a nickname for this group, the Japanese American Citizens League. The Jackals. I met with the leadership of that group, several of them. I urged them to oppose the exclusion. but they didn't seem to be particularly interested. The JCL condemned Fred's case and anyone else who fought against the government orders.

Said it would not support any of these individuals who were fighting the orders and called them self-styled martyrs. Wow. They used that phrase? Yes. They would basically get everyone else into trouble. To do this by myself, I just wonder if I was doing wrong or maybe putting them in shame by bringing the issue up again. Because of Japanese people, they're peaceful people, and they like to leave things alone if they

can because they were in enough trouble as it is because of this Pearl Harbor attack. And the country blamed them, so they have this sort of a guilty complex, even though they had nothing to do with it. The majority of them just avoided me, so therefore I assume that I got myself in this problem, and therefore it was my problem and not theirs. Fred continued to fight his case. He argued that basically rounding up thousands of Japanese Americans, American citizens, without a trial, without due process,

basically amounted to racial discrimination. His case made its way up and down the courts, and eventually two and a half years after he'd met Ernest Bessig in that jail cell, the case arrives at the Supreme Court. You know, he thought that by the time his case got to the Supreme Court... That's Fred's daughter, Karen, again. He would be able to vindicate his family and everyone that had been in. incarcerated. I mean, that's how much he believed in the Supreme Court. And so when that didn't

happen, he felt like... He felt like it was his fault. That's a big burden to carry around. What ends up happening is on December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court ruled against Fred. It's kind of a complicated decision. The Supreme Court said racial distinctions, when the government is making racial distinction. It's serious. We need to look at this very, very carefully. And that was a big precedent. So in a lot of ways, it's kind of a victory for people fighting racial discrimination. But then the court turned around and said, even though racial distinctions are serious, this one is not strictly racial. We're at war with the Japanese Empire, therefore rounding up Japanese American citizens is a way to defend the nation.

God, if you're Fred at this point, like it sounds like lonely than I can almost imagine because you're by yourself pretty much on all fronts. The country that you feel so a part of that you want to actually enlist in the military to fight for doesn't seem to want you at that moment. Your own community doesn't seem to want you. Your family is ashamed. by you. Your girlfriend is gone. I can't imagine being more alone at this point. And he never shared that with my brother or I. He shared it with my mother, but we didn't,

that wasn't part of our dinner conversation. They're discussing drafting a proposal to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries. Yeah, and perfectly, perfectly honest, they say it'll hold constitutional muster. We did it during World War II with Japanese, which, you know, call what you will, maybe you're not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope. No, no, no, I'm not proposing that at all, Megan. But what I am saying is that we need to protect America. That's the kind of stuff that gets people scared, Carl. Right.

But I'm just saying there is precedent for it. And I'm not saying I agree with it. This is the crazy thing about the Korematsu decision. It is still on the books. That guy, Carl Higbee, got on Megan Kelly, and said this stuff about Korematsu. The very next day he got on and apologized for saying that. But he's right. Korematsu is technically still good law.

Just as Antonin Scalia once said, that, sure, Koramatsu was wrongly decided. But if you think that it's not going to happen again, you're kidding yourself. The court isn't going to cross the president in a national emergency. Would you like it to? I think so. would you like it to? No. That's not Antonin School yet.

It's a judge named Richard Posner. And at the time that Ellie talked to him, he was on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. And he was widely considered by people on both the left and the right to be one of the most influential judges in the country. He's sometimes called the 10th Supreme Court justice. And he's a big defender of the Korematsu decision. What do you say then to Fred Kormatsu?

What do you say then to a Japanese-American about kind of the law and the court. Well, they were given compensation. Right. I mean, there's, you know, there is, you know, pain and suffering. There is an anguish, right, that we can't exactly commodify. Yeah, but at the time it all happened shortly after Pearl Harbor, it seemed like the right thing to do and probably was the right thing to do.

And I imagine that the officials in federal government in 1941, they probably didn't know anything about Japanese Americans on the West Coast. I think Roosevelt had ever met a Japanese American? I doubt it. Right. I just think that, you know, the fact that he hadn't ever met anybody might have been a reason for him to be more restrained in his executive orders, right? No, because all he cares about is the defense of the United States. If there's any possibility of Japanese Americans somehow cooperating with a Japanese invasion force, then he has to move the Japanese Americans. I'm sure that's all he would have thought of, right? I mean, I think it's all he did think of.

But what else could he have thought of? That's the only thing he is going to be. going to focus on. And if he doesn't, he could be impeached. Well, he could also worry about citizens, right now. I think one of the... No, no, no. Look, you're not, you're, you're missing the priorities. The priority is defense. That's the priority. That's what these people are thinking about. You think they have time to be thinking about any, any kind of nice ideas for protecting people any more than, then Lincoln did. What he's referring to there is a moment in 1861,

when Abraham Lincoln basically tossed this alleged Confederate in jail without due process, and then justified it by saying he had to save the union. In that case, Supreme Court Justice Roger Tawny ruled against him. Should Lincoln have said, oh, well, Tony, he's the chief justice, and he said this jerk should be released. I guess I have to do that. He's the chief justice. No, you do that enough times as the president.

You're out. It seems to me that that's why we have courts. We have courts to restrain the executive. That is not why we have. We do not have courts so that presidents can be checked in situations of a national emergency. That wasn't why courts were set up. So then what, I mean, I guess I'm flailing now, but then what stops them?

If Congress can't stop them and if the courts can't stop them, what can stop a president in a time of war? There's nobody can check that. That's the president's responsibility. Obviously, I'd like a do-over because somehow in the heat of the moment, I forgot that I'm talking about defending

the rights of actual American citizens and Posner is talking about people who are rebels to the country. there's probably a way where I could have said, pointed that out to him. In terms of the court stepping in, I mean, it happens. It happened to Truman. But, you know, Judge Posner is right, that it doesn't happen a lot, which is why he gets to be Judge Posner,

and I'm the guy that had to check Wikipedia. And by the way, do you think these Supreme Court justices are great big brains, big stars, who were selected because of the best law, lawyers in the United States and their decisions are usually great. You think all that? I don't. I don't have a high respect for the Supreme Court at all. You look at their decisions.

You look at them, how they're appointed. Who appoints them? So why do you think the Supreme Court is such a great balance to the president in a war? This is what gets me up and gets me going. because I still think it can be used as a precedent. So you're still worried that it can be used? Yes. And that it, do you think it will be?

Definitely. You know, I think we cannot take this for granted. Wow, that's just quite a, I mean, that judge is as revered and as thought highly of as you guys said. Yeah, he just actually, the thing we don't mention, I'm sure. He just retired. Yeah, he just did. Like, I think within the last month. But, you know, I mean, I'm listening to that, and I'm thinking, wow.

Not only is there a distinction to be made between people who are American citizens and people who are traitors, but there's also this huge fact that there were German Americans by the tens of thousands in this country at that time. We were at war with Germany, too. And Germans held big rallies in Madison Square Garden with swastikas and supported Hitler out loud and marched for him for a while, which they had every right to do, but they were not given quite the same degree of suspicion as the Japanese. And that's a question, I think, for the court. So there is an argument for Justice Posner,

but there's an argument against him. Yeah, for sure. And, yeah. Wow, that's really interesting. So now Fred has to solve his problem elsewhere. Right. So in the next part of the story, the question really is, like, since Fred can't get justice in the court,

can he find it on the outside? And he does in this place that you wouldn't expect. When we come back, we'll find out where that place is. Yeah. All right, so we'll continue in a moment with our featuring of Radio Lab's first ever. Spin-off More Perfect, Season 2, Episode 1. More in a moment. This is Kevin Murray from Fort Collins, Colorado.

Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan. at www.sloan.org. Hey, I'm Chad Abumran. I'm Robert Krollwitch. She's Radio Lab. We're previewing the first episode

of More Perfect Season 2. So we go back to Fred Korematsu, who, as you just heard, lost his case before the Supreme Court, did not get the remedy he wanted. And so now he is, I don't know what he's going to do. Well, now he ends up getting a kind of remedy.

You said it was something that it's not from judges. No, no judges involved. And this, when I, this, this I find really, really moving, I got to say, just personally, the whole reason to tell the story is where it ends. Okay. So, don't see any more. I'm not going to see any more. Let's just listen to it. Yeah.

Okay, so producer Julia Longoria is going to pick back up the story with what happened to Fred after the decision. So the internment camp where Fred was staying closed in 1945. And Fred had gotten permission by that point to work at a steel mill in Detroit. So he was living in Detroit. He fell in love with a woman named Catherine. They got married, moved back to the Bay Area, and had two kids. And Karen, his daughter, says that they were kind of ostracized from the Japanese American community. They grew up outside of the Japanese community.

He was involved in Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts. I was a Girl Scouts, so, you know, the camps, when we had to open the camp, he would work on that. The Presbyterian Church in Oakland, and then he became an elder. He even joined the Lions Club. was president twice. And Karen says throughout the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, she never heard him talk about his case. No, never. No, never.

He just, he never, he never told a story. Even after she confronted him about it in high school. Yeah, it's, that's it. But she says in like 1969-ish. 68 or 69. When the world was in a very different place, they got a phone call. Back in those days, you know, my parents' phone number was in the phone book, of all things. So, I mean, my father would get phone calls from law students when to interview him.

But he really didn't want to talk about his case much. He just, it was just too painful. But this time there was a professor on the line. From the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Japanese guy, actually. And he told Fred, I really, really want you to come into my class. There was a ethnic studies class that was actually off campus. Ethnic Studies was not even recognized then.

So he talked at this ethnic studies class, and these kids were brutal. I mean, UC Berkeley at that time had this, you know, notorious reputation of being very radical. People were asking questions during the whole hour. This is Jean Kwan, former mayor of Oakland. She was in the class that day. It was an important time. At different times your life, you had to learn out to stand up to authority. And certainly these students were like, you know, fist pounding, say.

well, why didn't you protest? Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? Why didn't you fight harder? And we're almost angry that he wasn't angry. You know, I think you've got to remember that a lot of these students that even know anything about the camps. Many kids had not had frank discussions with their own parents.

So with Korematsu, he was probably a surrogate for, like, their parents. How could they have gone through that and never told me? They had no right not to tell me. And so they're really angry at their parents. Surrogate or not, Fred felt like he was being indicted all over again. It was such a painful experience for my father. He never wanted to speak to anyone again. Fred would ultimately challenge his conviction in a lower court, and he would win.

The Supreme Court decision still stands, but he was able to clear his own personal name. And in around 1990, again, the world in a very different place, he finds himself again on a college campus. This time, the University of Michigan, my father and mother were walking with some other students across the campus to see the newly renovated library. And my father loved architecture. It was very old, Gothic library.

So they're walking through this sort of open quad looking at the architecture. And then they come upon this group of students. A group of Arab-Arab, American students. The students start walking toward him. They all of a sudden kind of surrounded my father, and they had this certificate to give to my father,

to thank him for speaking up. So that was meaningful to him. Why did that make you emotional? Why that story? Well, because it meant so much to my father that this group really oner. him that also had been racially profiled, you know, to think that he would be able to touch their lives. It kind of reinforced what he was doing. Do you have the same faith in the

Constitution that your dad did that? Yes. I have great faith in our Constitution. It's a great document it so happens though that it's the way that certain people interpret it that gets us into trouble yes definitely administration unveiling new travel restrictions on certain foreign nationals from eight countries where they're going to go because they sold everything with the feeling with the thinking they're going to start a new life in the United States one we won the freedom We want the liberty. We want the people. We are the people.

We the people. There are many, many lawyers here. They're all working pro bono today. They're from different organizations. This is what resistance looks like today. This sends a message that they cannot do away with constitutional protections without people standing up for the Constitution. So I think this is inspirational.

I think it's wonderful. And I think we need to be vigilant. And keep fighting. Well, you know, it's interesting. It's like not only do the courts, you know, eventually go back and forth on these deeper questions, so do all of us. And the verdict of history is always going to be a little bit shifting.

But eventually, you kind of hope that the arc sort of moves just far enough along. You can't go back too far. You can't go all the way back. eventually you get to a better place. Yeah. You get a little bit more perfect. Boom. Nice. More perfect, by the way, is produced by me.

And Susie Lechtenberg, Jenny Lawton, the amazing Julia Longoria, Kelly Prime, Sean Romsforam, Alex Overington, and Sara Khari, with Ellie Mistal, Christian Farias, Linda Hirschman, David Gable, and Michelle Harris. Special thanks to the Den Show archives

for the tape of Fred Korematsu and Ernest Bessig, Supreme Court audio is from Oyei, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. Leadership support for More Perfect is provided by the Joyce Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation.

So, yeah, I guess we should just close. I mean, I guess that was the first episode of More Perfect Season 2. There are already two other episodes in the feed. And there will be many more coming. So if you like that, if you want to sort of keep up

with it, definitely go to RadioLabb.org slash more perfect or search for more perfect on iTunes or Google Play or whatever. This season, we will be releasing a lot more episodes that are way more ambitious. We're just going for it. So tell everybody.

Tell everybody it's out and spread the word. Yeah, because I don't think it'll be a big effort to spread it. I think this is very much of its moment. Yeah, we'll see. Anyhow, let's go. I'm Chad I boom-rod. I'm Robert Quilwitch. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for listening, yes.