Nishikawa v. Dulles

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U.S. Supreme Court case decided in 1958 concerning the loss of citizenship of a Nisei due to his having served involuntarily in the Japanese military. Mitsugi Nishikawa, a Nisei dual citizen , was born in California in 1916. He attended school in California and went on to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley. He went to Japan in 1939 to visit and to continue his studies and was drafted into the Japanese military in 1941 under penalty of imprisonment, and served as a mechanic. When he tried to return to the U.S. after the war, he found he had lost his citizenship under the Nationality Act of 1940. By a 7–2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned lower courts and restored Nishikawa's citizenship, ruling that the government had to prove that his enlistment was voluntary. The decision affected a small number of other Nisei caught in Japan before and during the war and similarly conscripted.

For More Information

Chuman, Frank F. The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese-Americans . Del Mar, Calif.: Publisher's Inc., 1976.

Nishikawa v. Dulles 356 U.S. 129 (1958) on Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11302679329307502223&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr .

Last updated Oct. 5, 2020, 6:31 p.m..