Japanese Internment

alifornia marked Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution Saturday, remembering the shipyard welder who challenged the constitutionality of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Les Ouchida was born an American just outside California’s capital city, but his citizenship mattered little after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States declared war. Based solely on their Japanese ancestry, the 5-year-old and his family were taken from their home in 1942 and imprisoned far away in Arkansas. They were among 120,000 Japanese Americans held at 10…