LOS ANGELES — Jack Herzig, a lawyer who with his wife played an instrumental role in gaining redress from the United States for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, has died. He was 83.

Herzig, a World War II veteran, died Sunday at his Gardena home from colon cancer, said his son-in-law Warren Furutani.

Between 1942 and 1945, the federal government interned more than 120,000 ethnic Japanese, most of whom were born in the United States, amid widespread anti-Japanese sentiment.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1944 case of Fred Y. Korematsu v. the United States upheld the constitutionality of the decision to imprison Japanese-Americans during the war. Korematsu, who in 1942 was a 23-year-old welder living in Oakland, refused to report to an internment camp. He was arrested, convicted of violating the internment order and was sent to a camp in Utah.

Herzig and his wife, Aiko Yoshinaga-Herzig, in the 1980s uncovered documents in the National Archives and other repositories that showed government prosecutors suppressed, altered and destroyed evidence during its prosecution of Korematsu. The documents enabled a team of largely Asian-American attorneys to file a petition for writ of coram nobis, a rarely used legal strategy to overturn convictions after new evidence is discovered.

In November 2003, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel from the bench exonerated Korematsu and blasted the government for basing its decisions on "unsubstantiated facts, distortions and the (opinions) of one military commander whose views were seriously tainted by racism."

The ruling helped secure a presidential apology and financial reparations for former internees.

Korematsu, who died in March, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1998, the nation's highest civilian honor.

"Jack Herzig is one of those unrecognized giants of redress for Japanese-Americans," said Dale Minami, a Bay Area civil rights lawyer who helped form the legal team to exonerate Korematsu. "He and his wife found the documents that essentially incriminated the United States government and undercut the whole rationale of military necessity for internment."

Herzig was committed to social justice and denounced the discrimination that surfaced during the Persian Gulf War and the current war with Iraq, Minami said.

"He understood how significant the internment was not only to Japanese-Americans, but also to the notions of civil rights in this country," Minami said. Herzig's wife, Aiko, also was a former internee.

Minami called Herzig one of his personal heroes and noted that Herzig worked pro bono on the coram nobis legal team.

Herzig is survived by his wife, daughters Gerrie Lani Miyazaki and Lisa Abe-Furutani, and sons David Abe and Tommy Herzig.

A memorial service will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at Green Hills Cemetery in San Pedro.