Google has a special and timely Google Doodle on the Google home page in the United States region for Fred Korematsu. Fred Korematsu was an American activist who fought against the the internment of Japanese Americans, which was instituted in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he issued Executive Order 9066.
Clearly, this Doodle takes aim at Trumps Executive Order "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States".
Google wrote:
Today Google’s US homepage is celebrating Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, civil rights activist and survivor of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. January 30th, 2017 would have been his 98th birthday and is officially recognized as Fred Korematsu Day in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida.A son of Japanese immigrant parents, Korematsu was born and raised in Oakland, California. After the U.S. entered WWII, he tried to enlist in the U.S. National Guard and Coast Guard, but was turned away due to his ethnicity.
He was 22 years old and working as a foreman in his hometown when Executive Order 9066 was signed in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The order sent more than 115,000 people of Japanese descent living in the United States to incarceration.
Rather than voluntarily relocate to an internment camp, Korematsu went into hiding. He was arrested in 1942 and despite the help of organizations like ACLU, his conviction was upheld in the landmark Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. United States. Consequently, he and his family were sent to the the Central Utah War Relocation Center at Topaz, Utah until the end of WWII in 1945.
It wasn't until later that he was praised by the US government as a hero. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s most distinguished civilian award.
He was born on January 30, 1919, 98 years ago, in Oakland, California and passed at the age of 86 on March 30, 2005 in California as well. He has numerous awards, monuments and more for his contributions to America and civil rights.
Forum discussion at Google+.
