Date: Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
Time: 5:30-7:30pm
Location: The Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education, 55 Columbus Street, San Francisco, CA 94111

Participants will work with Voice of Witness staff and local oral history educators, coming away with oral history training, lesson plans and curricula support, and complimentary copies of Patriot Acts for use in schools and organizations.

Click here to download a flyer with further information. Space for this free workshop is limited. Please RSVP to juliana.sloane@voiceofwitness.com.

Watch the video here. The statement made by Marvin Schachter (which begins at the 2’58″ mark) is particularly moving, as it ties in the recent killing of teenager Trayvon Martin.

Click here for a list of city councils, school boards and other local government bodies that have passed similar Fred Korematsu Day resolutions.

Click here to read more about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the US military to indefinitely detain individuals suspected of terrorism.

Click here to read more about Sen. Feinstein’s bill, which challenges the NDAA law. If passed, Sen. Feinstein’s bill would make clear that US citizens and legal permanent residents cannot be subject to indefinite military detention.

Click here to read Karen Korematsu’s statement, which argues that the protection should be extended to all persons in the US, as our Constitution requires.

Numerous racist comments have been made since Jeremy Lin's spectacular run began on Feb. 4. These incidents have helped shed a spotlight on wider Asian American civil rights issues in this country.

Korematsu Institute director Ling Woo Liu published a CNN editorial on February 14 entitled Why Jeremy Lin’s race matters.

Ling was the featured guest on the South Korean radio show This Morning Seoul on February 21, when she discussed Jeremy Lin and Asian American civil rights.

Ling was also quoted in this Jeremy Lin article, published on March 2 in the national French newspaper Le Monde.

From left to right: National Portrait Gallery director Martin Sullivan, Korematsu Institute director Ling Woo Liu, Korematsu Institute co-founder Karen Korematsu, Congresswoman Doris Matsui, former US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, JACL National executive director Floyd Mori, GPhA CEO and former Leadership Conference on Civil Rights executive director Ralph Neas, Congressman Mike Honda. Photo courtesy of JACL.

On February 2, civil rights icon Fred T. Korematsu became the first Asian American featured in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery permanent exhibition, “The Struggle for Justice.” Two 1940s-era original photographs of Korematsu were presented on February 2 at 9:30 a.m. at the Portrait Gallery in a private event featuring speakers including the Honorable Norman Y. Mineta, former US Secretary of Transportation, Congresswoman Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Congressman Mike Honda, Congressman Doris Matsui, Ling Woo Liu, director of the Korematsu Institute, Karen Korematsu, co-founder of the Korematsu Institute and Martin Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery. The photographs are now available for public view.

The event took place just three days after the second annual Fred Korematsu Day, an official day of special significance passed in the state of California in 2010. Celebrated every January 30, on Korematsu’s birthday, Fred Korematsu Day is the first day in U.S. history named after an Asian American.

To see additional photos of the historic photo presentation and reception, click here.

Fred T. Korematsu. Hand-colored gelatin silver print, c. 1940. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Fred T. Korematsu Family.

The National Portrait Gallery’s “The Struggle for Justice” exhibition opened in 2010 and features many images of individuals who have worked on behalf of civil rights, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eunice Kennedy Shriver and César Chávez. The museum, which drew in one million visitors last year, is the first museum not specifically focused on the Japanese American experience to include Mr. Korematsu’s story. To date, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, CA, the Manzanar Interpretive Center in Independence, CA, and the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center in Powell, WY all feature Mr. Korematsu in their exhibits. (For more information about the museums that include Korematsu’s story, click here)

Photo source: University of Alberta

The Korematsu Institute mourns the loss of Gordon Hirabayashi and his former wife, Esther Hirabayashi, who both passed away Monday, January 2, 2012. Gordon Hirabayashi, along with Min Yasui and Fred Korematsu, were three of the four brave individuals who challenged the US incarceration of Japanese Americans before the Supreme Court in the 1940s. Forty years later, these three men re-opened their cases and continued to fight for justice. We remember an American hero today.

For more information about Hirabayashi’s court cases, click here.

Click here for the Korematsu Institute and Asian American Center for Advancing Justice press release about Gordon Hirabayashi’s passing.

Stories of the Japanese “Internment”

A two-part  workshop - FREE

November 9 and 15, 2011  -  4:00 to 6:00 PM

San Joaquin County Office of Education

Featuring Karen Korematsu of the

Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education

For more details, click here.

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