The annual dinners and monthly meetings many lawyers attend aren’t always the most exciting affairs, so the recent third annual installation dinner of the Pan Asian Lawyers Association was a refreshing contrast. The banquet at the Bali Hai featured the hotel's trademark Polynesian dance performance during which a few brave lawyers emerged from the audience to try to keep up with the furious drumming and the impressively costumed dancers. The evening had substance as well, provided by featured speaker and guest of honor Fred T. Korematsu, the 78 year old Japanese American who made constitutional law history in the 1940s with his legal challenge to the World War II internment of Americans of Japanese descent, Korematsu vs. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). In addition, City College history professor Don Estes showed slides of photos of the internment journey of San Diego Japanese Americans who were relocated to a camp in Arizona.

    The energy and down-to-earth outlook that prompted Korematsu to resist the wartime orders imposed on ethnic Japanese are as evident as ever as he approaches his 80th year. A native Californian, Korematsu described how, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he abandoned his horticulture job and took up welding so he could work directly for the war effort. But Korematsu was dismissed from his San Francisco shipyard job when the first wartime restrictions were imposed on ethnic Japanese in May 1942. Undaunted, he adopted an Anglo name and altered his eyelids, sufficiently disguising his Asian ancestry to be accepted back at the shipyard. But military officers arrested and jailed Korematsu a few weeks later. He recalled the despair he felt until ACLU attorney Ernest Besig arrived and offered him a pro bono defense.

    Korematsu's lawsuit challenging the internment order was initially unsuccessful. In a case now widely viewed as error, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1944 upheld the wartime orders, marking the only time it pronounced unadorned racial discrimination constitutional. It was several years later when attorney Peter Irons, now a political science professor at UCSD, began researching Korematsu's case with an aim to have it overturned. Korematsu recounted receiving a phone call from Irons, whom he had never met, nor heard of. He was impressed by Irons' tenacity and punctuality — Irons flew from Chicago and arrived at Korematsu's house in the Bay Area the day after their first phone conversation.

    Irons has written two books about his research on the World War II internment of ethnic Japanese. Among the most significant discoveries were previously classified documents showing that military officials and U.S. Justice Department attorneys knowingly submitted false evidence of sabotage and espionage to the U.S. Supreme Court to make up for the absence of real data justifying the relocation. In a dissent eerily predictive of Irons' discoveries, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson criticized the government's case, saying, "How does the court know that these (military) orders have a reasonable basis in necessity? No evidence whatever on that subject has been taken by this or any other court..." (Lest anyone still argue the wartime orders were based on military necessity rather than racism, it bears remembering that while American citizens of as little as 1/16th Japanese ancestry were interned, citizens of German heritage were not.)

    It was 40 years before Korematsu's conviction was overturned by U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel of San Francisco. Korematsu regards the final result as a vindication of the American legal process. At the same time, his case is an important reminder of the danger of the racism that is a disturbingly persistent characteristic of American culture. As Justice Jackson's dissent pointed out, "... Once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

    Professor Irons will discuss his research on the wartime internment at a lecture at 1 p.m., Sunday, April 6, at the Thornton Theater in Balboa Park. His talk is presented in conjunction with two exhibits of internment camp photos. San Diego’s Museum of Photographic Arts will display "Whispered Silences," photos by Joan Myers, through April 13. Next door, the San Diego Historical society is showing "A Hundred Year Road," organized by the Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego. Professor Estes will moderate a panel discussion in conjunction with that exhibit, "Hot Enough to Melt Iron: First Impressions of the Internment Camps," at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 15.

    The Pan Asian Lawyers' annual banquet was also the occasion for the installation of the new officers for 1997. They are, Robert Brownlie, president; Mary T. Nuesca, vice president; Madeline Clogston, treasurer; Myrna Bryn Pascual, treasurer; and board members Maria Fuchs, Eleanor Bregman, Timothy C. Stutler; Paul Dulin and the Honorable Lillian Y. Lim, San Diego Municipal Court judge.

    Pamela Lawton Wilson was a legal affairs reporter in San Diego from 1989 to 1993. She is now an associate at the civil firm of Sullivan Wertz McDade and Wallace.