I was thrilled to learn that the Pasadena Playhouse is doing a one-man play based on the story of Gordon Hirabayashi, a Quaker who challenged the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. The play will run from May 30-June 25.
In 1986 Hirabayashi took his case for exoneration all the way to the Supreme Court. He won, and the US government decided to give reparations to Japanese Americans who'd been interned illegally. This win for justice is a powerful story, one that we need to hear at this time when our liberties are at risk.
I plan to go to Thursday, June 22, because my friend Phil Way will be giving the after-talk. His parents ran a Quaker school in Temple City and helped the Japanese Americans in many ways during this dark period when they were being scapegoated. He has maintained a keen interest in the cause of Japanese Americans, and also of Muslim Americans who have been threatened with the same kind of xenophobia.
If you want to purchase tickets, go to
http://www.pasadenaplayhouse.org/event/hold-these-truths/
These articles about Gordon Hirabyashi appeared in
The Western Quaker Reader (2000), a book I edited.
[Friends not
only provided humanitarian assistance, they also supported the efforts of
Japanese Americans and others seeking their civil and human rights. When the
Civilian Exclusion Act was passed in 1942, calling for internment and
relocation of the Japanese, many questioned whether the Federal Government had
the right to incarcerate Japanese Americans, 70,000 of whom were US citizens.
Gordon Hirabayashi, a member of University Meeting and a
Japanese-American student at the University of Washington, committed civil
disobedience and refused to accept this law. When his case was appealed all the
way to the Supreme Court, it ruled that the rights of citizens could be
suspended in the interests of national security
(320 US 81, [1943]).
In 1986, Judge Donald Vorhees in Seattle reversed Gordon’s conviction,
saying that the government withheld information form the Supreme Court. In
1988, the US government acknowledged that is policy towards Japanese Americans
was misguided and a violation of civil rights. It awarded surviving internees
reparations.
In 1999, the prison camp in
Arizona where Hirabayashi was jailed during the war was renamed the Gordon
Hirabayashi Recreation Center.]
“Why Revive
the Japanese-American Wartime Cases” by Gordon Hirabayashi
uring the war years I was never referred to as a
citizen. I was always considered a
“non-alien.” I was an undergraduate student at the University of Washington at
the time, training for an occupational career and practicing to be a
first-class citizen. As a conscientious objector and member of University
Meeting in Seattle, I was not an enthusiastic supporter of our entry into war,
but neither was I bent on obstructing “national security” measures. I could not support an unwarranted violation
of our constitutional guarantees. As a
result, I refused to cooperate with the Western Defense Command order. I needed to be given more relevant reasons
for my removal than the fact of my ancestry.
With the supportive counsel
of Friends/friends, and the legal advice of Arthur Barnett, a member of my
meeting, I reported to the FBI the day following the removal of all
Japanese. Later, a Gordon Hirabayashi
Defense Committee was formed, and the legal battle for citizens’ rights
began. Without this committee, composed
of Friends and a few others like them, mine would have become an obscure
wartime case gathering dust in the archives.
It was not easy to secure
competent legal counsel; mine was not a popular case during the war. Arthur
Barnett contacted many of his colleagues, but although some were willing, their
firms would not consent to their participation. We finally found an able young
lawyer from a prestigious firm, but when his name and that of his firm appeared
in the press following my arraignment, the Teamsters threatened to withdraw
their legal work from his firm if it persisted in defending “that Jap.” Needless to say, we had to begin a new
search. Fortunately, we were able to
secure a man with a relevant background: a Republican member of the American
Legion who was keenly interested in defending the Constitution.
Our court battles were
neither easy nor successful. Some funds
were raised locally, but mainly they were raised with assistance from Clarence
Pickett and Homer Morris, using the American Friends Service Committee mailing
list and through a sympathetic foundation known to them. We did not win in the
district court when the presiding judge ruled that the prevailing law was the Western
Defense Command Proclamation, which in effect suspended my constitutional
guarantees in spite of the fact that martial law had not been invoked.
When our appeal eventually
reached the Supreme Court, we thought we would have our day in court. Not so. We found that the Supreme Court had gone to
war, too. Instead of demanding evidence for the suspension of constitutional
guarantees to citizens regardless of race, religion, creed or national origin,
the Supreme Court accepted the government’s position on the word of government
officials and military officers….
Although we never
relinquished the hope that some day in some way the records would be corrected,
my case and that of two others, Fred Korematsu and Minoru Yasui, remained
dormant for more than 40 years. In
1980-81, using the Freedom of Information Act, Peter Irons, a legal historian,
was investigating the conduct of lawyers on both sides of the Japanese-American
constitutional cases. He discovered in
the musty, old files of the federal archives that the Western Defense Command
had on its desk FBI, Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) reports denying danger of espionage or sabotage
at the very moment it was stating in its brief that the removal action was “militarily
necessary.” Western Defense Command had
knowingly withheld from the Supreme Court the FBI, ONI, and FCC reservations
for a mass, forced uprooting. (During
the war the government continued to use the humanitarian euphemism,
“evacuation.”)
Peter Irons contacted Dale
Minami, a San Francisco lawyer, and through him, some other Asian-American
lawyers on the West Coast to explore the possibility of appeals. This group of lawyers then contacted Fred
Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and me and asked if we would consider becoming
petitioners through a rarely used procedure called “writ of error coram
nobis.” Although the seven-year statute
of limitations had long since expired, coram nobis allows opportunity to
petition for a hearing on the grounds of government misconduct. Thus, three
sets of legal teams, maintaining close liaison, were established to launch
simultaneous petitions for coram nobis in the respective federal district
courts of San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.
In January, 1983, a major press conference was held in San Francisco to
launch the three cases, and a public education group, the Committee to Reverse
the Wartime Japanese-American Cases, became busy and has remained active ever
since….
Why revive Japanese-American
wartime cases? Certainly to erase the
convictions recorded against me, but there is more. As a test case, my case can help to remove
the dark cloud hovering over 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were mistreated and
who continue to wonder to this day about their citizenship.
When the unprecedented
uprooting of U.S. citizens occurred and our people were confined to internment
camps, enough safeguards and principles existed in our Constitution to have
protected us. Missing, however, was the
will of the people, including the Supreme Court, to uphold constitutional
guarantees.
During the war my hopes were
constantly buoyed by the Friends/friends who visited me in jail, and by others
who supported the G. H. Defense Committee.
These activities were definitely not popular then. Today, citizen vigilance is expressed on many
fronts, for example, Central America, remembrance of the Holocaust, the
continuing problems in Southeast Asia, as well as social issues at home. My
petition is another area in which such vigilance is demonstrated.
I am privileged to witness
and be part of this demonstration for human rights supported by a strong
citizens committee and by my legal team.
It serves us well to remember that our constitution and the increasing
number of human rights laws are mere scraps of paper unless active citizen
vigilance ensures they are upheld.
“Remembering
Gordon Hirabayahi” by Floyd Schmoe
[Floyd Schmoe was teaching at the University
of Washington when Hirabayashi and others were arrested. One of the founding
members of University Friends Meeting, as well as the first executive secretary
of the AFSC in Seattle, Floyd not only befriended Gordon, he ended up becoming
his father-in-law. The The following oral history, taken from interviews conducted by Rose Lewis in 1974,
should be read for its human interest, not for its precise historical detail.]
ordon Hirabayashi and some of the other students at
the University decided they should do something about [the new curfew law].
They were American citizens and had certain rights, and some of them felt that
some protest should be made, so Gordon decided quite early to deliberately
refuse the curfew. Later he refused the evacuation and turned himself in, that
is, went to the FBI and told them he was not going to conform or abide by the
curfew. We were quite well acquainted
with Gordon in that group, and we supported him, as we do COs now, with affidavits or letters
or whatever is needed. They threatened him, of course, told him that if he was
found on the streets he would be picked up. Actually he never was picked up by
the FBI or the police….He turned himself in and said that he had violated and
would not comply with either order, the curfew or the evacuation order. He was held in the county jail first, and [my
daughter] Esther and the rest of the kids visited him there. Some of the Japanese who resisted the orders,
were not COs. They were objecting on
other grounds. Gordon’s objection was that this was a civil rights issue; being
a citizen, his civil rights were being violated….
It was an interesting thing
about his prison experience. Because of
the evacuation, and the restrictions on the West Coast, his trial in federal
district court was held in Spokane. He was held in the county jail in Spokane
during the trial and after the trial and his conviction. He was there for several weeks, and a county
jail is much worse than a federal prison usually, as far as living conditions
are concerned. So he objected to that
and said that since he had been sentenced for a federal crime, he insisted on
being sent to a federal prison; he was tired of the county jail. The local
sheriff, or US Marshal perhaps it was, said, “All the federal prisons are
full. There is no place to send you.”
But after several protests, he said, “There is a federal prison work camp in
the mountains of Arizona. But,” he said,
“I couldn’t send you down there because I don’t have anyone free to go with
you” Gordon said, “Why not let me go on
my own? I’ll give you my word that I’ll
go.” The sheriff or marshal was pretty well acquainted with Gordon by then and
said, “OK, I’ll trust you.” He gave
Gordon bus fare to Phoenix, Arizona; the camp was near
there.
Gordon, perhaps also to defy
the evacuation order, to try it out—or perhaps just to visit on the West Coast,
I don’t know—came by way of Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, which was
another violation. He was inside the
restricted zone; not only that, but he thought he’d need the bus money, so he
hitchhiked. But he got down there within
the time limit that they gave him, and wasn’t picked up anywhere along the
road.
He spent most of a year
there in the work camp. He came back to Spokane and there were a lot of
Japanese in Spokane and we had a sort of center over there. We’d rented a
house, a hostel for people who had gone from the West Coast and hadn’t been
able to find places to live over there, and Esther helped there. Someone asked Esther to take a truck from
Bainbridge Island to the camp over at Minidoka near Twin Falls, Idaho. She went by way of Spokane and she picked up
Gordon or Gordon picked her up, I don’t know which, and they went together from
Spokane. When she came back she asked Ruth and me—”What would you think if
Gordon and I got married?” We said, “Well,
what do you think?” She said, “Well,
we’ve decided we will.” We liked Gordon
very much, we had no serious objection, so they were married….
Before Gordon was released
from the prison camp in Arizona he was drafted and refused to cooperate with
the draft board, so he was tried again and convicted and sent to McNeill Island
for a year. It was while he was there
that Esther gave birth to twins, and this drew a lot of publicity. They were about a month old before she took
them down for a visit and the guards at McNeill Island wouldn’t even let him
touch them—he had to see them through a wire barrier. They had pictures in the paper and a good
many of these stories were friendly. It
was mentioned in Time once, and in
newspapers all over the country. A
Boston daily, I’ve forgotten which one, had a front-page picture when the twins
were born—a picture of Esther and the two kids.
It was a two or three column picture on the front page of one of the
sections, but the headline was rather insidious. It says “Jap Sires Twins” or something like
that, but the story wasn’t bad. Esther
was with us all the time he was in prison. The babies were six to eight months
old when he got out of prison.
For biographical information,
see p. 92. During the course of
interviewing Floyd, Rose accumulated
over 274 pages of material that is
currently stored in the Quaker archives in Whittier under the title Floyd and Ruth Schmoe: Idealism, Service and
Commitment in Two Quaker Lives.
