Screening of the film And Then They Came For Us and panel discussion with:

Karen Korematsu, Founder & Executive Director, Fred T. Korematsu Institute 

Donald K. Tamaki, Partner, Minami Tamaki LLP, Korematsu coram nobis counsel

This event is supported by the USC Safe Communities Institute 

Over 75 years ago, a U.S. president signed an executive order that led to the forced incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens. The constitutional considerations that gave tremendous deference to the executive branch on national security issues in 1942 are reverberating today with the Supreme Court travel ban decision and current immigration policies.

And Then They Came For Us won the American Bar Association 2018 Silver Gavel Award as an exemplary work which fosters the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system. Featuring George Takei and other incarcerees, this film sets the stage for a discussion about the striking and disturbing parallels between the Japanese American World War II experience and today’s rhetoric, regulations, and court decisions affecting Muslims, immigrants, and other racial groups. Should courts continue to step aside and accept the government’s actions whenever it claims that they are “plausibly related” to national security?

Panel Participant Bios:

KAREN KOREMATSU 
Karen Korematsu is the Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute and the daughter of the late Fred T. Korematsu. In 2009, on the 25th anniversary of the reversal of Fred’s WWII U.S. Supreme Court conviction, Karen established the Fred T. Korematsu Institute. Since her father’s passing in 2005, Karen has carried on Fred’s legacy as a civil rights advocate, public speaker and public educator. She shares her passion for social justice and education at K-12 public and private schools, colleges and universities, law schools, teachers’ conferences and organizations across the country. Karen’s work, and her father’s legacy, extends to advocating for civil liberties for all communities, and she addresses current issues that draw lessons from the past. She has signed on to amicus briefs in several cases opposing violations of constitutional rights arising after 9/11, including in Odah v. United States, Turkman v. Ashcroft, Hedges v. Obama, and Hassan v. City of New York. She authored the foreword to Patriot Acts, Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice in 2011. She is a current board member for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC in Washington, D.C., and a former member of the Board of Directors for Marin Ballet and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus. In 2015, Karen was invited as the first non-lawyer member of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA).

DONALD TAMAKI (Minami Tamaki LLP)
For over 40 years, Don Tamaki has specialized in providing value-driven legal counsel to entrepreneurs, privately-held companies, and nonprofit corporations, with special focus on commercial leasing, personnel and employment law, corporate governance and other internal practices, licensing, acquisition, and other business transactions. In addition, Mr. Tamaki has extensive experience negotiating talent agreements and endorsement deals, representing Olympic ice skating gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, and various television news anchors, reporters and weather persons including Carolyn Johnson, Kristen Sze, Mike Nicco, Carolyn Tyler, Lyanne Melendez, David Louie, Matt Keller and Jonathan Bloom. In keeping with the firm’s tradition of community service, Mr. Tamaki served on the pro bono team that reopened the landmark Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. the United States, overturning Fred Korematsu’s conviction for refusing as an American citizen to be incarcerated on account of his racial ancestry. Mr. Tamaki is past member of the board of Glide Foundation and is the board president of the San Francisco Japantown Foundation.

Light refreshments will be served

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