A welder in 1940s Oakland defied military orders to report to a facility that would send him to an incarceration camp. And when he took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court he lost, but his legacy of fighting for justice lives on today in the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality. The center recently transferred to the UC Irvine School of Law from Seattle University.

In this episode of The UCI Podcast Aaron Orlowski speaks with Bob Chang, director of the Korematsu Center and UC Irvine professor of law who brought the center to UCI Law when he joined its faculty this summer.

On Oct. 22, UCI Law will officially welcome the Korematsu Center to UC Irvine with a celebration for the campus and local community. One of the speakers is Karen Korematsu, the daughter of Fred Korematsu and the center’s founder. Attending are presidents and representatives from 21 different national and regional bar associations, as well as from public interest, advocacy and others.

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TRANSCRIPT

Aaron Orlowski:

Professor Chang thank you for joining me today on The UCI Podcast.

Bob Chang:

Thanks so much for inviting me.

Aaron Orlowski:

We’re happy you have trekked down from Seattle to join us in sunny Southern California and you’ve brought the Fred Korematsu Center for Law and Equality with you. So perhaps the first thing we can talk about is what the Korematsu Center does?

Bob Chang:

The Korematsu Center does a lot in the racial justice space. We do advocacy in terms of being involved in litigation to advance racial justice. We also train students to do this work and we engage in knowledge production where we do research and publish reports and articles about issues involving racial justice.

Aaron Orlowski:

Maybe we can dive into that in a minute. But maybe we can start with the name of the center and the backstory of it. It’s named after Fred t Korematsu who was a welder in Oakland back in the World War II era who defied military orders to leave his home and report to its assembly center which would’ve then taken him to an incarceration camp. He refused this order and was arrested and convicted in 1942. And then he took his challenge to the U.S Supreme Court which actually handed him a defeat in 1944. And this was one of the darkest periods of American legal history. What happened next? What happened after that defeat that he suffered?

Bob Chang:

You’re exactly right Aaron that was a very dark chapter in terms of U.S. history and also in terms of the history of the court. After he was convicted, he served his time and was sent to a Japanese American incarceration camp until after the war ended and the camps were closed. Then in terms of his legal case not much happened for decades until researchers discovered in the National Archives evidence that U.S. Department of Justice attorneys had in fact suppressed evidence before the Supreme Court when his case got up there. And after this evidence was discovered Peter Irons went to visit Fred Korematsu and he told him about this and asked him if he wanted to figure out a way to reopen his case.

And that’s exactly what happened. And a great team of lawyers assembled to work on Fred’s behalf. And great teams of lawyers also worked on behalf of two other men who had challenged the treatment of Japanese Americans. And so it was remarkable thinking about what was revealed this this breach of professional ethics and the injustice that came about. And so in terms of Fred’s case, there’s this unusual, not-well-known pathway to revisiting a conviction that you know where the person has already served this time. It’s called a writ of coram nobis. And so if there is an injustice that occurs, an improper behavior before a court, you can go back. And that’s exactly what happened. In 1984, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel overturned his wartime conviction of 40 years. Wow. It’s such a remarkable, rich story.

Aaron Orlowski:

The public awareness of his story has grown in the years since then. How has this changed and how has the United States continued to honor Fred’s legacy in recent years?

Bob Chang:

In recent years, part of the way that this country has begun to recognize the injustice and his efforts to seek justice includes him being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in addition to that, efforts by his daughter Karen Korematsu to get states to recognize Fred Korematsu Day as a day to remember civil rights and the Constitution. There are a number of states that have recognized it into perpetuity. And it’s a project that she’s engaged in. It would be remarkable if it became a nationally recognized holiday.

Aaron Orlowski:

Picking up where you joined the story, when did you initially start the Korematsu Center and what led you to do so?

Bob Chang:

The Korematsu Center was launched officially in April 2009, and that was after I joined the faculty at Seattle University. Seattle University gave me the opportunity to start a race center, which is something that I had been wanting to do for some time. The idea to name it after Fred came about when I was speaking with one of my colleagues there, professor Lorraine Bannai, who had been on Fred’s legal team in the 1980s. And she suggested naming this new center after Fred Korematsu, and it was like a lightning bolt struck I was originally just going to call it the Center for the Study of Race and Inequality, because that’s what us academics do [laugh]. There was some sense that maybe we should wait for a donor to give us money, and we can name it after the donor.

But naming it after a civil rights icon propelled our work because it allowed us to do the work for something. And so the name of the center changed. It was going to be named for the study of law and inequality, which is in some ways passive. And not to say that the study of these things is not important. We’re deeply committed to knowledge production but now it has become a center for law and equality. And it allowed us to do this work to motivate it to advance Fred’s legacy. It drew people together who wanted to work with us to advance Fred’s legacy.

I should also add that after his wartime conviction was overturned, Fred began speaking around the country decades later to talk about the injustice, and also to stand up for others who had faced injustice. And that’s the other lesson I really take from his example.

Aaron Orlowski:

In bringing the Korematsu Center to UC Irvine, you’re calling it the Korematsu Center 2.0.  What do you mean by that? How is 2.0 going to be different than version 1.0?

Bob Chang:

Part of the difference of calling it the Korematsu Center 2.0, at least informally, is to honor and recognize the first 15 years at Seattle University.  The challenge for me throughout has really been sustainability, so when I started the center, I wanted to create a durable institution. At a certain point in time, it became a resource question. We weren’t able to honor the commitment we had made to the Korematsu family. They gave me permission to try to find a new institutional home where I would be able to fulfill my commitment and to create a durable institution. And so that’s what I’m able to do here at UC Irvine. And I’m so excited about the support that I’m getting here.

We don’t need to recreate the wheel. There’s so much that we were doing in the 1.0 version I’m so proud of that we are going to continue. One of the things that the law school is doing is creating a new racial justice clinic. And I’m so excited about that because that takes care of the sustainability question. And so instead of thinking about next year or five years from now or even 15 years from now, I can plan for 50 years. And that’s really what I’m trying to do. In addition to that, I have supporters of the center who are continuing to support our work down here at UC Irvine, and I’m going to get to relaunch a teaching fellowship.

I had begun that had been part of the design of the Korematsu Center 1.0 – a teaching fellowship to train somebody to then launch them into a tenure track career where they can take the lessons from the Korematsu Center on how to do scholarship, how to teach students and how to advocate in ways that advance Fred’s legacy. I got one teaching fellow through before funding was cut at Seattle University. And his name is Vinay Harpalani, who has a chair at the University of New Mexico School of Law. And if you look him up, you’ll see that he’s doing fantastic work. And if the funding hadn’t been cut off there would be five more of them out there in the world. And because when I think about change, I think about the short-term time horizon, the midterm time horizon and the long-term time horizon.

Sometimes with litigation, it’s that instant thing. A case that I litigated can go on for six years but there’s an immediate impact and that’s great. And if you set a precedent, it can have an impact beyond that. But when you train students and give them a taste of doing this work, that’s the kind of impact that has a ripple effect. And then if you can work with somebody who’s going to teach students, and they go out there to other institutions and do this work, you can see in some ways the kind of change that we’re trying to produce here.

Aaron Orlowski:

You mentioned that UC Irvine has offered a lot of institutional support and some of your other supporters have come with you to UC Irvine. Are there other reasons why UCI Law is an ideal location for the Korematsu Center?

Bob Chang:

One of the great things about the UCI Law faculty is how engaged so many of them are with doing this kind of work. I’m so excited to be working with so many of the people here that I’ve admired for years. The other thing that I think is fascinating about UCI Law is in part because it’s such a new institution. It’s a little over 15 years old, and now there is the ability to be part of the continued building of this law school. And I’m excited to be part of that.

Aaron Orlowski:

The Korematsu Center is named after someone who defied injustice and fought for justice decades ago. The story is still incredibly relevant today. What do you think are some injustices that you hope students today will be inspired to fight against?

Bob Chang:

A lot of the work that we do is in the criminal-legal system space. Mm-Hmm. One of the projects that I’m so excited to have been brought into is actually from work that I’ve been doing with Caitlin Glass at Boston University School of Law. She’s the one who brought me into this work. But in some ways, I’m thinking about this a lot because this is a very immediate project, and it has to do with this doctrine about felony murder. And under this doctrine if you’re committing a felony with somebody else, and they without your knowledge bring a gun and kill somebody, even if you didn’t know about it you can be charged with murder and end up serving life in prison without parole.

We just recently filed together an amicus brief. An amicus brief is a friend of the court brief so you’re not representing one of the parties. We filed this brief in the 11th Circuit. It involves this man who was apprehended during a car prowl and was sitting in the back of a patrol car handcuffed when the person he had been committing the crimes with stole a car. The police chased him in a high-speed chase, and two cyclists were killed. A terrible tragedy. They charged this person who was sitting in the back of the police car with felony murder and is serving a life in prison without parole prison sentence. There are so many of these cases out there. We had filed a similar brief also in Pennsylvania. There’s a movement afoot to try to change this around the country. The impact of that is a circumstance of tremendous injustice. And the other piece of the story is one of racial injustice. The people who tend to be charged more frequently with felony murder are people of color. especially young men of color.

Aaron Orlowski:

What you’re saying and what you said earlier about training the next generation of legal advocates is that the work of fighting injustice is very much an on-the-ground thing. It happens case by case, individual by individual, and more advocates are needed to take up that work to achieve justice at a broader scale.

Bob Chang:

That’s exactly right. Part of what has drawn me to legal education is the opportunity to work with students. It’s so exciting to me when students become passionate about doing this work. And the other thing is that students often are very passionate about is their feelings about racial injustice and the other injustices that occur in society. One of the things that we’re able to do in law schools is to show them how they can become part of doing this work. So there’s a difference for me then in terms of just going out there by myself and litigating cases or trying to affect change. But if I can work with students to do this part, it is allowing them to fulfill their passions to see that they can do something about this and to see the possibilities.

That to me is so exciting. So you know you asked what do I hope students will learn or get from you know the Korematsu Center? And I think I began with a sort of a micro-sort of answer. It’s like there’s this thing that I’m thinking about a lot, but I guess your most recent question has opened up what I should have started with, which is showing students the possibilities out there and how they can become part of the change. That to me is if there’s one thing that I could do, that’s what I hope students would get out of working with me and the Korematsu Center.

Aaron Orlowski:

Thank you again so much for sharing that and joining me today on The UCI Podcast.

Bob Chang:

Well, thank you Aaron for inviting me.