George Takei will play Fred Korematsu at a live staged reading of “Korematsu v. The United States,” co-presented by The L.A. Local and the Democracy Center, on Thursday, Nov. 12, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Japanese American National Museum’s Democracy Center, 100 N. Central Ave. in Little Tokyo.
Jeff Liu will direct the production, with a script written by the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY).
Fred Korematsu (1919-2005) was a welder from Oakland who, in 1942, refused to comply with Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to America’s concentration camps – impacting more than 125,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans.
Korematsu was arrested and jailed for refusing the order, then imprisoned for the duration of World War II. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction in a 6-3 ruling, arguing his incarceration was justified by the extraordinary needs of wartime.
In 1983, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel vacated Korematsu’s conviction on the ground that the government had lied to the Supreme Court.
As the U.S. marks 250 years of independence amid travel bans, detention centers, and fights over what students can read, the Korematsu case continues to inform who is allowed to belong in America and whose exclusion the law will tolerate — in spite of the Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection.
The cast also features Tamlyn Tomita and more actors to be announced. Karen Korematsu, Fred’s daughter, will play herself, as will Dale Minami and Lorraine Bannai, members of the legal team that reopened the cases of Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui.
The reading will be followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Michele Siquieros, CEO of The L.A. Local.
Tickets are $20 general, $10 for JANM and L.A. Local members. Info: www.janm.org/events/2026-11-12/decisions-defined-us-korematsu-v-united-states