If you were in Fred Korematsu's situation, what would you have done? Would you have defied the government or followed your family? What would influence your decision?

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Lola Heath

13 February, 00:27

If you were in Fred Korematsu's situation, what would you have done? Would you have defied the government or followed your family? What would influence your decision?

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Paris · Answer 1

US President Donald Trump's executive order to ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries is being compared to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Barely two months after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry residing on the country's western coast were branded a military threat and put inside internment camps across the country.

But a 23-year-old Japanese American, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, defied Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D Roosevelt and went into hiding instead of voluntarily relocating to an internment camp, where conditions were often harsh.

Korematsu was finally arrested in May 1942 and convicted of defying the government order. He fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court but the top court ruled against him.