Google Doodle Honors Bay Area Man Who Fought WWII Internment Camps

BAY AREA, CA -- An Oakland man who fought spoke out against the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during Work War II has been honored by the world's largest search engine by being featured as the subject of today's Google Doodle.

Northern California native Fred Korematsu, a civil rights activist who objected to the forced placement of people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast in incarceration camps from 1942 to 1946, is being being recognized by Google on what would have been his 98th birthday, Jan. 30.

Those going to google.com and clicking on the illustration are taken to a search page with links to articles and information about Korematsu, who challenged the U.S. government's order to him to a camp, then became a fugitive and went into hiding after refusing to report for internment.

He was eventually arrested, convicted and sent, along with his family, to a camp in Topaz, Utah. His conviction was overturned in 1983 and in 1998, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as seen in the image above.

In 2015, the state of Virginia established January 30 as "Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution," beginning in 2016.

Korematsu died March 30, 2005 in Marin County, and is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.

Image courtesy of Capital News Service, under Creative Commons Attribution