From DiscoverNikkei.org

Contents

Resistance

General Resources

  • "Court Challenges": In: Exploring the Japanese American Internment Through Film & the Internet. (National Asian American Telecommunications Association)
Encapsulation of the four cases challenging the curfew, mass removal, and incarceration of Japanese Americans: Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), Yasui v. United States (1943), Korematsu v. United States (1944), and Ex parte Endo (1944).
  • "Civil Liberties" (Facing History and Ourselves, "Readings and Connections from Facing History")
"Facing History and Ourselves is devoted to teaching about the dangers of indifference and the values of civility by helping schools confront the complexities of history in ways that promote critical and creative thinking about the challenges we face and the opportunities we have for positive change."
Part of the Smithsonian's exhibition, A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans & the U.S. Constitution.
High school senior research composition for an introductory sociology course.
Profile of Dale Minami, the attorney who led the legal team that re-opened the U.S. Supreme Court cases against Korematsu, Kobayashi, and Yasui in the 1980s.
Excerpt: "Scholars have documented the overwhelming anti-Japanese sentiment on the West Coast, but they have paid less attention to the small groups that spoke out in defense of Japanese Americans and against mass internment. The experiences in San Francisco and Seattle suggest that networks of personal contacts between religious and social activists and local Japanese American communities were important in fostering organized opposition to mass internment. The keys to building such networks were a substantial Japanese American population and the presence of a large urban university. In Portland, a city with a smaller Japanese American population and no major university, these networks were lacking and no organized opposition movement materialized."
Excerpt: "Against this backdrop of forced relocation and confinement, and suspicions of being security threats to their fellow citizens, nisei internees were surprised to read in January 1943 an announcement by the WRA that it would seek volunteers from among camp populations to serve in the army. Before Pearl Harbor, nisei were found in all levels of the U.S. military, but following the outbreak of war, those who attempted to enlist were turned away, and those already serving were transferred to noncombat posts. But now soldiers were needed, and the army set quotas for the number of volunteers it sought from the various relocation camps. Despite the urging of such groups as the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) that nisei use the opportunity to prove their loyalty, and much to the embarrassment of the WRA, less than half of the quotas were met. In fact, the call for volunteers caused an increase in applications from camp members to expatriate or repatriate (in the case of issei who wanted to remove their service-age children from the country) to Japan. Then came the draft."
Conference jointly convened in Los Angeles on November 4, 2004, by the University of North Carolina School of Law, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and the Japanese American National Museum, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States.
From editor Eric Muller's Foreword: "The conference took what might be termed a multi-modal approach to remembering Korematsu, Ex parte Endo, Hirabayashi v. United States, Yasui v. United States, and other cases from World War II in which Japanese Americans used the courts to contest their eviction and confinement. Surviving participants in the cases -- law clerks, lawyers, and litigants -- shared recollections and impressions. Chief among these was Supreme Court litigant and civil rights hero Fred Korematsu, to whose memory this symposium issue is devoted. Children of men who contested the internment in court spoke about the personal legacy of their fathers' resistance. Conference attendees saw a dance piece, a play, and a film interpreting the internment and the legal challenges to it. And an array of scholars in law and history presented papers examining both the historical setting of the World War II cases on Japanese American civil liberties and their significance for the law and politics of today."
"On September 10, 2001, no one could have imagined that the sixtieth anniversary of the Japanese American civil liberties cases of World War II would be of anything more than historical interest. Instead, those cases today are intensely -- and tragically -- relevant to our most pressing national debates. By deepening our understanding both of what happened sixty years ago and of what is at stake today, the articles in this symposium contribute importantly to those debates."
Excerpt: "Watada said he does not regret his actions. 'I realize it is going to be a difficult and arduous path -- one with a lot of personal risk and sacrifices on my part. I don't think it is any more or any less than the soldiers who are sacrificing and risking their lives over in Iraq. It is what we signed up to do to protect and defend our nation's laws and its people. What I am doing is trying to uphold those principles and values.'"
Bob Watada, who lost a brother in the Korean War and served in the Peace Corps rather than fight in the Vietnam War, supports his son, Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, in his decision not to deploy to what he considers an illegal war in Iraq.
Paper written for 2006 History Day in California.
"Did internment opponents aid Japanese-Americans? What was the nature of their support? What motivated these individuals? To investigate these questions, this paper examines the actions of internment opponents living in or near a county with a significant Japanese-American population: Sacramento, California."


Draft Resisters

"During World War II the United States government conscripted Japanese American internees into the army after forcing them into internment camps on suspicion of disloyalty. Most were more than willing to fight or even die for their country, but they wanted their country to first treat them as citizens, to grant them their rights, as it insisted on their duties. Free to Die for Their Country by Eric Muller tells, for the first time, the story of their resistance, trial, and imprisonment."
Web site contains the full text of Chapter 1, "Untold Patriotism".
Muller has also published an excerpt from a lecture that he gave on the occasion of receiving the 2000 Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievements by Young Faculty. The lecture was based on his book.
  • Conscience and the Constitution The online news center for a PBS documentary on the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee maintained by producer/director Frank Abe.
Includes the full text of Norihiko Shirouzu's article for the June 25, 1999, Wall Street Journal, "Decades On, a Legacy of War Still Haunts Japanese-Americans", which examines the disparate attitudes toward draft resisters among the Japanese American community.
"Director's cut" of a segment Takayama produced for the public affairs radio program Making Contact, originally aired April 14, 2004, titled "Courage Under Fire: Resistance to War".
"Hiroshi Kashiwagi looks back on a boyhood in Loomis - and a stirring WWII act of defiance"
"A glimpse into the intertwining issues of selective service requirements, civil rights, and loyalty as experienced by two Southern California Japanese Americans during World War II."
Southern California public television station KCET commissioned Sojin Kim to guest-produce a feature for its web site titled "Rites of Passage", that piece explores the voices of young men and women who shaped Los Angeles. The Duty of Every Male Citizen contrasts the experiences of two 19-year-old Japanese Americans, Stanley Hayami and Takashi Hoshizaki, and the choices they made when coming of age during World War II. The piece includes an article by Martha Nakagawa, "In Times of War", accompanied by selections from Hayami's and Hoshizaki's diaries, and related multimedia.


Mitsuye Endo

Gordon Hirabayashi

Full text of the Supreme Court's opinion by Justice Stone, with concurrence by Justices Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge.

Fred Korematsu

Full text of the Supreme Court's decision (by Justice Black), including concurrence by Justice Frankfurter and dissents by Justices Roberts, Murphy, and Jackson.
From the State Department web site, under "Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy - Part X: A More Inclusive America"
  • Fred Korematsu vs. United States (323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193, 89 L. Ed. 194)
Resources assembled by the University of Houston Law Center, Teacher Access to Court Opinions (TACO) program. Includes a statement of the case, excerpts from the Supreme Court decision, and "learning stations" for use by teachers.
Full text of U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's opinion in the Korematsu case.
Describes Fred Korematsu's legal battles, and the involvement of Peter Irons, a professor at UCSD, in overturning Korematsu's conviction.
"Korematsu's victory was celebrated anew on Oct. 3 during a reception at the James West Alumni Center. The occasion was the donation of the Fred T. Korematsu v. U.S. Coram Nobis Litigation Collection — 36 boxes of personal litigation files, pleadings, legal research memoranda, internal correspondence and government documents — to UCLA's Asian American Studies Center (AASC) and the Young Research Library's Department of Special Collections."
Details the successful effort to have the Davis (Calif.) Joint Unified Board of Education name a new elementary school after Fred Korematsu.
" Korematsu's life and the lessons he taught us remind us of the fragility of civil liberties and the potential for political movements, with activists and lawyers working together, to vindicate our rights. And at the close of Korematsu's memorial, a quartet of trumpets etched his memory in our hearts as they rang out with Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man." They reminded us that under these spacious skies, a very patriotic American once stood hopelessly alone, but the simple justice embodied in his singular act of courage eventually drew us and our nation to stand with him."
Obituary that places Korematsu's legal case in context with the famous U.S. civil rights cases of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education.

Minoru Yasui

Born in 1916 in Hood River, Oregon, Minoru Yasui was an attorney in Denver, Colorado from 1945 until his death in 1986. Yasui purposefully violated the Curfew Order for Japanese Americans in 1942 to initiate a test case, which found him guilty. He became active in the Denver, Colorado, Japanese American community, serving as a member of the Japanese American Citizens' League and on the city's Commission on Community Relations. He filed a writ of error coram nobis in U.S. District Court. Although his conviction was vacated in 1984, Yasui appealed the judge's dismissal of the remainder of his writ. He died in 1986, while his appeal was pending before the Ninth Circuit of Appeals; in 1987 the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, ending any hope of Yasui's complete vindication.

Full text of the Supreme Court's opinion, written by Chief Justice Stone.
Biographical profile of Yasui and his legal battles.
108 cartons, 2 boxes (135.8 linear feet). Includes personal and professional correspondence in English and Japanese which document Yasui's many civic activities; some family correspondence and records; materials relating to the coram nobis case; records of the Japanese American Citizens' League; significant documents relating to the Japanese American fight for Redress; calendars, memorabilia, and photographs; and legal case files (restricted).
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