Google celebrates Fred Korematsu with Google Doodle

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Google is celebrating Civil Rights leader Fred Korematsu, with its Google Doodle on Monday. The Oakland native would have turned 98 Monday.

At the age of 23, shortly after the Pear Harbor attacks, he defied President Roosevelt's executive order that Japanese-Americans report to internment camps.

He was arrested, tried and send to a camp in Utah, where he stay in a horse stall.

The ACLU took Korematsu's case to the Supreme Court and lost.

He was interned for two years before the government closed the camps and released the detainees.

In 1983, a Federal Judge overturned his conviction and in 1998 Korematsu was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"I think that he really would embrace the resistance movement...because he lived it. And he knows how important it is to fight for these American ideals," said Jeff Adachi, Public Defender for San Francisco.

Governor Brown issued a proclamation Monday, declaring January 30th "Fred Korematsu Day", as he's been doing for the past seven years.