How a New Reparations Effort Changed an Expert’s Understanding of History

Don Tamaki was integral to getting redress for Japanese Americans. He says serving on a California task force transformed his view on racism in America. Don Tamaki and his colleagues who reopened the Korematsu v. United States case paved the way for Japanese Americans in 1988 to secure redress, which included $20,000 for each survivor.Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times When California set up a reparations task force in 2020 to study the generational effects of slavery and other racist policies in the state and propose specific policy ideas for restitution, it was the first such statewide effort in the nation. The nine-member team included lawmakers, scholars, community leaders and lawyers. Eight of the nine members were Black. The ninth was Donald K. Tamaki, a Japanese American lawyer with valuable experience to share. In the 1980s, Tamaki worked pro bono on the legal team that reopened the landmark 1944 Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States. The court’s decision in that case had been used to justify the federal government’s forced relocation and internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans and people of Japanese descent during World War II. Manzanar, an internment camp, 200 miles north of Los...