Journal of Transnational American Studies

Fred Korematsu, plaintiff of the landmark 1944 case Korematsu v. United States, had facial cosmetic surgery to try to escape the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. This article examines the popular and legal discussion of his surgery at that time, which conveys that fears of Japanese spies and the supposed inability to distinguish Japanese, captured in the famous Life magazine article “How To Tell Your Friends from the Japs,” directly influenced the courts’ rulings on the legality of the incarceration. The deliberate decision of the Supreme Court to excise this issue from the Korematsu opinion, which disclaimed racism as a root cause of the incarceration, is exposed through archival documents and drafts that betray a deep interest in his surgery, as do the government and lower court documents. As a heroic figurehead of civil rights, Korematsu complicates the discussion of surgical patients as complicit, drawing attention instead to the legalized discrimination that drives such choices.