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Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Google is celebrating what would have been the 98th birthday of civil rights activist Fred Korematsu with a new Doodle on Monday. Google's homepage features an illustration from artist Sophie Diao that features Korematsu wearing his Presidential Medal of Freedom given to him in 1998 by President Bill Clinton alongside cherry blossoms and a set of internment camps. The Google logo is colored using the American flag.
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A survivor of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Korematsu, a son of Japanese immigrant parents, was born and raised in Oakland, Calif., where he was turned away from the U.S. National Guard and Coast Guard due to his ethnicity.
At 22, Korematsu was sent to live in an internment camp after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942 that Google reports sent more than 115,000 people of Japanese descent living in the United States to incarceration.
"Rather than voluntarily relocate to an internment camp, Korematsu went into hiding. He was arrested in 1942 and despite the help of organizations like [the American Civil Liberties Union], his conviction was upheld in the landmark Supreme Court case of Korematsu vs. United States. Consequently, he and his family were sent to the the Central Utah War Relocation Center at Topaz, Utah until the end of WWII in 1945," Google wrote.
Executive Order 9066 was formally ended in 1976 by President Gerald Ford and in 1983 Korematsu's conviction was overturned.
"If you have the feeling that something is wrong, don't be afraid to speak up," Korematsu is quoted as famously saying.
Jan. 30 is recognized as Fred Korematsu Day in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida.
