The Asian Pacific Islander Faculty & Staff Association and the NOCCCD Office of Diversity & Compliance presented

“The Persisting Significance of the Incarceration of Japanese Americans”

Eric Yamamoto

Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice

University of Hawai’i at Manoa, School of Law

Date: Wednesday, Feb. 16th, 2022

Time: 1:00-2:30

 2022 marked the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 initiating the World War II incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans on what turned out to be falsified claims of group disloyalty.  This mass racial treatment, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 Korematsu decision legally validating it, remain startlingly significant today. What will happen when those detained, harassed or discriminated against in the name of national security turn to the courts for legal protection?  How will the U.S. courts respond to the need both to promote security and to protect fundamental democratic liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights?

Professor Yamamoto is nationally and internationally recognized for his legal work and scholarship on civil procedure as well as national security and civil liberties, civil and human rights and social justice, with an emphasis on reconciliation initiatives and reparations for historic injustice. His presentation was informed by his recent book, In the Shadow of Korematsu:  Democratic Liberties and National Security.