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{ "url_title": "Hirabayashi v. United States", "title_sort": "hirabayashivunitedstates", "links": { "json": "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/articles/Hirabayashi%20v.%20United%20States/?format=api", "html": "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Hirabayashi%20v.%20United%20States?format=api" }, "modified": "2024-03-12T00:02:11", "title": "Hirabayashi v. United States", "body": "<div class=\"mw-parser-output\">\n <div class=\"alert alert-info\">\n <p>\n The content in this article is still under development. A completed version will appear soon!\n </p>\n </div>\n <div class=\"floatright\">\n </div>\n <div class=\"floatright\">\n </div>\n <div class=\"floatright\">\n </div>\n <p>\n <i>\n Gordon Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States\n </i>\n was one of four cases concerning aspects of the Japanese American exclusion and incarceration to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hirabayashi was found guilty of violating the curfew and\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Civilian_exclusion_orders/\" title=\"Civilian exclusion orders\">\n exclusion orders\n </a>\n . Because his prison sentence for the two offenses was served concurrently, the Supreme Court opted to rule only on the curfew violation, upholding the lower court ruling and the legitimacy of a measure specifically targeting American citizens of Japanese ancestry.\n </p>\n <p>\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Gordon_Hirabayashi/\" title=\"Gordon Hirabayashi\">\n Gordon Hirabayashi\n </a>\n was a student at the University of Washington who on May 4, 1942, began to disobey a curfew set for enemy aliens and American citizens of Japanese descent. Twelve days later, he reported to the\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation/\" title=\"Federal Bureau of Investigation\">\n FBI\n </a>\n office in Seattle announcing his intention to violate the exclusion order guided by both his religious beliefs and his belief in the U.S. Constitution. He was arrested and jailed, charged with violations of both the curfew and exclusion order. The\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/American_Civil_Liberties_Union/\" title=\"American Civil Liberties Union\">\n American Civil Liberties Union\n </a>\n (ACLU) initially expressed interest in the case and brought in Frank L. Walters to represent Hirabayashi. However, due to internal conflicts, the ACLU had to pull back and a local committee led by Mary Farquharson was formed in Seattle to support his case.\n </p>\n <p>\n Hirabayashi remained in King County Jail for five months until his trial on October 20, 1942, before Judge Lloyd D. Black and an all male jury. The jury returned with two guilty verdicts after ten minutes of deliberation. Judge Black sentenced Hirabayashi to two thirty day sentences to be served consecutively; Hirabayashi asked if he could serve his sentence in an outdoor road camp, expressing a willingness to take a longer sentence if necessary. Black then sentenced him to two ninety-day sentences to be served concurrently, which Hirabayashi and his lawyers accepted, not realizing the later legal implications this would have.\n </p>\n <p>\n The case was appealed and heard before all seven members of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, together with the appeals for the\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Korematsu_v._United_States/\" title=\"Korematsu v. United States\">\n Korematsu\n </a>\n and\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Yasui_v._United_States/\" title=\"Yasui v. United States\">\n Yasui\n </a>\n cases. Under the influence of\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Edward_Ennis/\" title=\"Edward Ennis\">\n Edward Ennis\n </a>\n of the Justice Department, the appeals court invoked certification—essentially declining to rule and asking a higher court to rule on the case—to send the case directly to the Supreme Court.\n </p>\n <p>\n The Supreme Court heard arguments on the\n <i>\n Hirabayashi\n </i>\n and\n <i>\n Yasui\n </i>\n cases on May 10 and 11, 1943. The ACLU had by then decided to support the case within the parameters set by its board and brought in Harold Evans to argue the case along with Walters. The ACLU's Osmond Fraenkel also rewrote the brief in part to conform to ACLU policy. The Northern California office of the ACLU submitted a separate amicus brief authored by\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Wayne_M._Collins/\" title=\"Wayne M. Collins\">\n Wayne M. Collins\n </a>\n , while the\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Japanese_American_Citizens_League/\" title=\"Japanese American Citizens League\">\n Japanese American Citizens League\n </a>\n deviated from its initial opposition to the test cases by also submitting an amicus brief that had been written by\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Morris_Opler/\" title=\"Morris Opler\">\n Morris E. Opler\n </a>\n , an anthropologist who also the official \"community analyst\" at\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Manzanar/\" title=\"Manzanar\">\n Manzanar\n </a>\n . Because the sentences for the curfew and exclusion orders ran concurrently, the Supreme Court ended up considering just the curfew issue, presumably to avoid the exclusion issue that was the basis of the whole incarceration program.\n </p>\n <p>\n The Supreme Court's ruling appeared on June 21, 1943. Though several of the justices came close to dissenting, in the end, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone was able to produce a unanimous opinion upholding Hirabayashi's curfew conviction, which he authored. Stone's opinion argued that \"some infringement on individual liberty\" was allowable in time of war and that the government could adopt \"measures for public safety, based upon recognition of facts and circumstances which indicate that a group of one national extraction may menace that safety more than others.\" Three concurring opinions were also published by Justices William O. Douglas, Wiley B. Rutledge, and Frank Murphy. Murphy's, initially drafted as a dissent, wrote that \"[t]oday is the first time, so far as I am aware that we have sustained a substantial restriction of the personal liberty of citizens of the United States based upon the accident of race or ancestry.\" After comparing it \"to the treatment accorded to members of the Jewish race in Germany and in other parts of Europe,\" he wrote that \"[i]n my opinion this goes to the very brink of constitutional power.\"\n </p>\n <p>\n In the 1980s, the case was revisited when historical research documented that the government had hidden or knowingly falsified evidence during the original trials. Through the use of a petition for a writ of error\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Coram_nobis_cases/\" title=\"Coram nobis cases\">\n <i>\n coram nobis\n </i>\n </a>\n , both of Hirabayashi's convictions were eventually vacated.\n </p>\n <div id=\"authorByline\">\n <b>\n Authored by\n <a class=\"encyc notrg\" href=\"/Brian_Niiya/\" title=\"Brian Niiya\">\n Brian Niiya\n </a>\n , Densho\n </b>\n </div>\n <div id=\"citationAuthor\" style=\"display:none;\">\n Niiya, Brian\n </div>\n <div class=\"section\" id=\"For_More_Information\">\n <h2>\n <span class=\"mw-headline\" id=\"For_More_Information\">\n For More Information\n </span>\n </h2>\n <div class=\"section_content\">\n <p>\n <a class=\"external text offsite\" href=\"http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5939600273001810074&hl\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 US. 81 (1943).\n </a>\n </p>\n <p>\n Bangarth, Stephanie.\n <i>\n Voices Raised in Protest: Defending Citizens of Japanese Ancestry in North America, 1942–49\n </i>\n . Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008.\n </p>\n <p>\n Fine, Sidney. \"Mr. Justice Murphy and the Hirabayashi Case.\"\n <i>\n Pacific Historical Review\n </i>\n 33.2 (May 1964): 195–209.\n </p>\n <p>\n Irons, Peter.\n <a class=\"external text offsite\" href=\"https://archive.org/details/justiceatwar00iron\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n <i>\n Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases\n </i>\n .\n </a>\n New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.\n </p>\n <p>\n ---.\n <a class=\"external text offsite\" href=\"https://archive.org/details/courageoftheirco00iron\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n <i>\n The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court\n </i>\n </a>\n . New York: Free Press, 1988.\n </p>\n <p>\n Kang, Jerry. \"Denying Prejudice: Internment, Redress, and Denial.\"\n <i>\n UCLA Law Review\n </i>\n 51.4 (2004): 933–1013.\n </p>\n <p>\n Lyon, Cherstin.\n <a class=\"external text offsite\" href=\"https://archive.org/details/prisonspatriotsj00lyon\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n <i>\n Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory\n </i>\n .\n </a>\n Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011.\n </p>\n <p>\n <i>\n A Personal Matter: Gordon Hirabayashi vs. the United States.\n </i>\n Documentary film directed by John de Graaf. 30 min.\n </p>\n <p>\n Yamamoto, Eric, Margaret Chon, Carol L. Izumi, Jerry Kang, and Frank H. Wu.\n <a class=\"external text offsite\" href=\"https://archive.org/details/racerightsrepara00yama\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n <i>\n Race, Rights, and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment\n </i>\n .\n </a>\n Gaithersburg, Md.: Aspen Law & Business, 2001.\n </p>\n <!-- \nNewPP limit report\nCached time: 20240418160714\nCache expiry: 86400\nDynamic content: false\nComplications: []\nCPU time usage: 0.014 seconds\nReal time usage: 0.036 seconds\nPreprocessor visited node count: 43/1000000\nPost‐expand include size: 526/2097152 bytes\nTemplate argument size: 58/2097152 bytes\nHighest expansion depth: 4/40\nExpensive parser function count: 0/100\nUnstrip recursion depth: 0/20\nUnstrip post‐expand size: 0/5000000 bytes\nExtLoops count: 0\n-->\n <!--\nTransclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template)\n100.00% 4.933 1 -total\n 33.37% 1.646 1 Template:AuthorByline\n 33.31% 1.643 1 Template:Published\n 31.36% 1.547 1 Template:comingsoon\n-->\n <!-- Saved in parser cache with key encycmw:pcache:idhash:136-0!canonical and timestamp 20240418160714 and revision id 36099\n -->\n </div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div class=\"toplink\">\n <a href=\"#top\">\n <i class=\"icon-chevron-up\">\n </i>\n Top\n </a>\n</div>", "categories": [ "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/categories/Legal/?format=api" ], "sources": [ "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/sources/en-denshopd-p72-00092-1/?format=api", "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/sources/en-denshopd-p72-00096-1/?format=api", "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/sources/en-denshovh-hgordon-05-0015-1/?format=api" ], "coordinates": {}, "authors": [ "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/authors/Brian%20Niiya/?format=api" ], "ddr_topic_terms": [ "https://ddr.densho.org/api/0.2/facet/topics/topics-97/objects/" ], "prev_page": "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/articles/Hilo%20Independent%20Language%20School/?format=api", "next_page": "http://encyclopedia.densho.org/api/0.1/articles/Hiram%20Johnson/?format=api" }