Jack Herzig dies

Jack Herzig has died. Naturally his obituary contains some reparations myths that once again need to be revealed as untruths.

After reading the AP piece below, come back and read this.

Check out Jack and Aiko Herzig's involvement with this...

And this...

Ken Masugi makes some interesting observations about the reparations folks and their use of obituaries here.

Another stellar piece of work, courtesy of the AP:


Obituary: Jack Herzig

LOS ANGELES (AP) Jack Herzig, a lawyer who with his wife played an instrumental role in gaining redress from the United States government for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, has died. He was 83.
Herzig, a World War II veteran, died Sunday at his Gardena, Calif., home from colon cancer, said his son-in-law, Warren Furutani.

Between 1942 and 1945, the federal government interned more than 120,000 ethnic Japanese -- most of whom were born in the U.S. -- amid widespread anti-Japanese sentiment.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1944 case of Fred Y. Korematsu vs. the U.S. upheld the constitutionality of the decision to imprison Japanese-Americans during the war.

Korematsu, who in 1942 was a 23-year-old welder living in Oakland, Calif., refused to report to an internment camp. He was arrested, convicted of violating the internment order and sent to a camp in Utah.

Herzig and his wife, Aiko Yoshinaga-Herzig, in the 1980s uncovered documents in the National Archives and other repositories that showed government prosecutors suppressed, altered and destroyed evidence during its prosecution of Korematsu.

The documents enabled a team of largely Asian-American attorneys to file a petition for a writ of coram nobis, a rarely used legal strategy to overturn a conviction after new evidence has been discovered.

In November 2003, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel from the bench exonerated Korematsu and blasted the government for basing its decisions on "unsubstantiated facts, distortions and the (opinions) of one military commander whose views were seriously tainted by racism."

Herzig is survived by his wife, daughters Gerrie Lani Miyazaki and Lisa Abe-Furutani, and sons David Abe and Tommy Herzig.

The Japan Times: Aug. 25, 2005