Senate Bill S2587

                                 
BILL NUMBER: S2587

SPONSOR: MAYER
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the executive law, in relation to establishing January
thirtieth of each year as a day of commemoration known as "Fred Koremat-
su Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution"

 
PURPOSE:

To establish January thirtieth of each year as a day of commemoration
known as "Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution."

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1 amends subdivision 3 of section 168-a of the executive law to
establish January thirtieth of each year as a day of commemoration known
as "Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution."

Section 2 sets forth the effective date.

              

 
JUSTIFICATION:

In February 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry into
World War II, President Roosevelt issued an executive order permitting
the U.S. military to "prescribe military areas ... from which any or all
persons may be excluded."1 A subsequent executive order created the War
Relocation Authority, whose mission was "to provide for the removal from
designated areas of persons whose removal is necessary in the interests
of national security."2

Lt. General John DeWitt, military commander of the Western Defense
Command, issued a series of public proclamations establishing certain
areas from which "(a)ny Japanese, German or Italian alien, or any person
of Japanese ancestry" were restricted in their movements or excluded
altogether.3

A series of civilian exclusion orders followed, directing that all
persons of Japanese ancestry report to "civil control stations," to
receive further instructions and transport to "their new residence."'

While the United States was fighting in Europe and Asia to protect and
defend democracy and freedom abroad, thousands of West Coast residents
of Japanese descent, many of them citizens, were summoned on no more
than a few days notice, and told to leave behind homes, businesses,
possessions, and communities, and to report to central locations from
which they were then sent to internment camps for the duration of the
war.

According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, over
120,000 persons of Japanese descent, 70,000 of whom were U.S.  citizens,
were forcibly moved to "assembly centers" and then sent to "relocation
centers," located in remote areas in the western United States. (Despite
this treatment, many enlisted or were drafted into the military and
30,000 Japanese Americans served with distinction during World War II.)5

Fred Korematsu, a son of Japanese immigrants, born in Oakland Califor-
nia, refused to report for relocation. Having tried to enlist at the
start of the war and been turned down, he worked as a welder, only to be
fired due to his Japanese ancestry. When the rest of his family members
were forcibly relocated to an internment camp, Mr.  Korematsu stayed in
California. Subsequently arrested, prosecuted, convicted in federal
court of disobeying a military order, and sent to a relocation camp, Mr.
Korematsu's appeal of his conviction made its way to the United States
Supreme Court.6

In Korematsu v. United States, the Court upheld Mr. Korematsu's
conviction and the related policy under which the U.S. government
ordered that individuals, including American citizens, be excluded from
their homes and communities, and be relocated and detained indefinitely
purely on the basis of ethnic origin.' In dissenting from the Court's
ruling, Justice Robert Jackson said: "Korematsu ...  has been convicted
of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in
the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and
where all his life he has lived."8 Justice Frank Murphy called the
exclusion order "the legalization of racism."'

At the end of the war, upon release from internment, Fred Korematsu went
on to rebuild his life, got married, had children, and became a civil
rights activist, lobbying for redress of the wrongs done to Japanese-Am-
ericans during World War II and doing what he could to ensure no such
harms would befall others and that the U.S. government would not repeat
past mistakes. Mr. Korematsu died on March 30, 2005.

Mr. Korematsu's conviction was overturned in 1984 after his case was
reopened on the basis of government misconduct. Thanks to his efforts as
a member of the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations, the U.S.
Congress passed a bill granting a formal apology and token compensation
to affected Japanese-Americans in 1988. However, the U.S. Supreme Court
never officially overruled its determination in Korematsu v. United
States that the policy under which Mr. Korematsu was arrested, prose-
cuted, convicted, and interned was lawful.

In 2018, in a decision upholding a ban on the entry of foreign nationals
from certain Muslim-majority countries into the United States, Trump v.
Hawaii, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, said: "The
forcible relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and
explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the
scope of Presidential authority.... Korematsu was gravely wrong the day
it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and - to be
clear - 'has no place in law under the Constitution,'" citing Justice
Jackson's dissent in Korematsu in 1944.10

In order that we learn from the lessons of history, and to honor the
bravery and persistence of Fred Korematsu, and his fight for justice, in
passing this legislation, the state of New York will join the growing
number of states, including California, New Jersey, Hawaii, Virginia,
Michigan, and Arizona,n in declaring January 30th the "Fred Korematsu
Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution."

 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

2023-2024: S8331/A9163, Passed Senate, died in Assembly.

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect immediately.
1 Exec. Order No. 9066, 7 Fed. Reg. 1407 (February 25, 1942) (Authoriz-
ing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas), available at
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5730250; see also Executive Order 9066:
Resulting in Japanese-American Incarceration (1942), National Archives,
available at
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9066;
2 Exec. Order No. 9102, 7 Fed. Reg. 2165 (March 20, 1942) (Establishing
the War Relocation Authority in the Executive Office of the President
and Defining Its Functions and Duties), available at
https://www.presidency.  ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-9102-establi
shing-the-war-relocation-authority-the- executive-office-the
3 Western Defense Command Public Proclamation No. 1 (March 2, 1942)
(Establishing military zones where certain "persons or classes of
persons" will be excluded), available at
https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/pione
erlife/id/15329/rec/5; American Civil Liberties Union of Northern Cali-
fornia Records--Case Files, 1934-1993--Korematsu, Fred, 1942-1946,
available at https://digitallibrary.californiahistoricalsociety.org
/object/aclu-kor ematsu; Personal Justice Denied, Report of the Commis-
sion on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, December 1982,
at 100 et seq., available at https://www.archives.gov/research/japanese-
americans/justice-denied
4 Civilian Exclusion Orders, Densho Encyclopedia, available at
https://encyclopedia.densho.org /Civilian_exclusion_orders/.  Examples
of civilian exclusion orders available at
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/536017;
https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Civilian_exclusion_orders/;
https://americanhistory.si.edu/ collections/nmah_1694663.
5 Executive Order 9066: Resulting in Japanese-American Incarceration
(1942), National Archives, available at
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9066
6 Fred Korematsu's Story, Fred T. Korematsu Institute, available at
https://korematsuinstitute.org/freds-story/.
7 Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944).  In Hirabayashi v.
United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), and Yasui v.  United States, 320 U.S.
115 (1943), the Supreme Court earlier upheld the convictions of Minoru
Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi, who like Mr.  Korematsu refused to cooper-
ate with the exclusion orders and to go willingly to internment camps.
One woman, Mitsuye Endo, who reported to an internment camp but filed
for a writ of habeas corpus, won her case and was released after two
years, see Lori Aritani, She Fought the Internment of Japanese Americans
during World War II and Won, Wash. Post, Dec. 18, 2019.
8 Korematsu at 243.
9 Korematsu at 242.
10 Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 585 U.S.(2018).
11 Fred Korematsu Day, Fred T. Korematsu Institute,
https://korematsuinstitute.org/what-is-fred-korematsu-day/