NPR Interviews Fred Korematsu’s Daughter On His Civil Rights Work & Celebrating Fred Korematsu Day

NPR recently interviewed Karen Korematsu, the daughter of civil rights leader Fred Korematsu, on her father’s legacy and how she discovered his role in Japanese American history: “I didn’t find out about my father’s Supreme Court case until I was a junior in high school. And it was in a social studies class when my friend Maya(ph) got up in front of all of us to give a book report, an oral book report, about the Japanese-American internment…[I]t was a subject I had not heard of before. No one spoke about it in my family. And then she went on to say that someone had resisted the exclusion order and resulted in a famous Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. the United States. Well, I sat there and said that’s my name. And the only thing I knew is that Korematsu is a very unusual Japanese name.” Can you imagine sitting in a history class and learning about your own family? You can listen to the full interview here.