Fred Korematsu was Japanese-American born, raised in California, and was very much your average American. He had a girlfriend. He had just gotten a convertible. He was working as a welder. He had no political background--no sort of political ideals--but when the government asked him, or rather told him, that he must report to an internment camp, he just intrinsically knew it was wrong. One of a small number of Japanese Americans to resist the internment during World War II, Korematsu simply saw no reason why he should accept the suspension of his basic constitutional rights. Aided at first by a lone American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer, Earnest Besig, Korematsu appealed his felony conviction for resisting the internment order all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in 1944, accepted the government's claim of military necessity and affirmed Korematsu's conviction. Korematsu lost his case but never his resolve.