Of Civil Wrongs and Rights – The Fred Korematsu Story

This film is one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen aired on PBS, and I’ve watched innumerable documentaries there over the last 10 years. As noted by an earlier reviewer, the case is examined in close detail and the presentation contains many insights into the ins and outs of how it initially came to be handled the way it was: the biases within the Asian-American and non-Asian-American communities, Korematsu’s own reasons for opposing the internment (along with the obvious civil rights interests, he had personal reasons as a young man involved in a romance that would be interrupted), and the lies that were told by the U.S. government even over the objections of its own legal advisors.Even more thought-provoking and interesting is the examination of how a new generation of lawyers and law students rose up to challenge the original decision many decades later. Their relentless pursuit of a way to get the faults of the case addressed in a new legal precedent is an amazing story in which Korematsu himself once again played a key role.I first saw this film not long after the events of 9/11 and the reactionary, emotional climate of restrictive law-making and ethnicity-based harassment that ensued in the United States. The closing portion of the film discusses the continuing relevance both of Mr. Korematsu and of his legal case in 21st-century America. The results both disturbed and inspired me, and I cannot recommend it more highly.