California judge gathers signatures of internment survivors on 48-star flag
Photo of a 48-star flag from Wikimedia Commons.
A judge in Santa Clara County, California, is honoring survivors of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II by gathering their signatures on a 48-star flag.
Judge Johnny Gogo chose a 48-star flag because that is the number of U.S. states during World War II, the Mercury News reports. He is taking the flag around the country in his quest.
Dozens of people have signed the flag in just two months’ time.
“Based on all of the stories that folks have shared with me over the last several weeks, I now realize that while I may have initially obtained the flag for this project, the flag no longer belongs to me,” Gogo told the Mercury News. “It now belongs to each of the folks who have signed the flag, and I’m now the caretaker of the flag.”
Gogo plans to donate the flag to the Japanese American Museum of San Jose on Jan. 30, 2022. That is a day that honors Fred Korematsu, the Japanese American man who fought his conviction for defying a detention order in a failed case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
