Some 5,500 Issei men arrested by the FBI immediately after Pearl Harbor were already in Justice Department or Army custody, and 5,000 were able to "voluntarily" relocate outside the exclusion zone the remaining Japanese Americans were "evacuated" from their homes and placed in isolated concentration camps over the spring of 1942. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal and confinement of 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Though Endo, now Tsutsumi, never returned to California, her resilience and courage helped thousands of people leave the incarceration camps and return home.Further information: Internment of Japanese Americans She rarely spoke about her legal suit, even to her own family. She became a secretary for the Mayor's Committee on Race Relations, married Kenneth Tsutsumi, and had three children. In May 1945, Endo moved to Chicago, Illinois, where her sister and brother-in-law had relocated. Two weeks after the Supreme Court's Endo decision, President Roosevelt officially ended west coast exclusion. Korematsu protested for decades longer, until his conviction was overturned by a writ of error coram nobis in 1984. They determined that Korematsu had been lawfully arrested for violating the exclusion order. On the same day, the Supreme Court ruled against Fred Korematsu in Korematsu v. The decision, however, did not declare the exclusion or mass incarceration unconstitutional. For we conclude that, whatever power the War Relocation Authority may have to detail other classes of citizens, it has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure." In reaching that conclusion we do not come to the underlying constitutional issues which have been argued. "We are of the view that Mitsuye Endo should be given her liberty. "Loyal" Japanese Americans could not be imprisoned without cause. The Supreme Court issued its final ruling on December 18, 1944. Endo refused, choosing to remain imprisoned so that she could represent her fellow Japanese Americans. The WRA eventually offered Endo an immediate leave permit, if she would abandon her case. There, Endo and Purcell continued to appeal their case, pushing it through delays to the Supreme Court. The legal team believed that Endo would be accepted by even the most suspicious American judge: She was a government employee, Christian, knew only English, had never visited Japan, and had a brother in the army. But relocating could derail her case, and so Endo remained at Tule Lake.Ī year later, Endo signed the so-called "loyalty questionnaire." She moved to Topaz Relocation Center in Arizona. In fact, that's partially why she had joined the legal case. She could fit into the mainstream American social scene wherever she went. Her friends, like many young adult Nisei, applied to "relocate" to the midwest or east coast. While her legal battle began, Endo remained in Tule Lake Relocation Center. The government could not imprison Japanese Americans without trial, they argued. Purcell filed the petition on July 12, 1942, in federal district court in San Francisco. Though hesitant, Endo agreed to file a habeas corpus petition. Soon, she received an unusual proposal from lawyer James Purcell: Would she sue the United States government? Their legal battle, backed by the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), was one of several filed by protesting Japanese Americans. However, Endo's case was upended when Japanese Americans were "evacuated" from the west coast that spring.Įndo and her family were sent first to Sacramento Assembly Center and then Tule Lake Relocation Center. Endo joined the legal challenge against their firings. The California government fired Endo and approximately 400 other employees, simply because of their Japanese ancestry. The attack on Pearl Harbor sent their lives into sudden chaos. She attended public school, secretarial school, and then took a clerical job with the California state government. She and her three siblings grew up like many other Nisei children (first generation Japanese American citizens). Mitsuye Endo was born in Sacramento, California in 1920. "They said it's for the good of everybody, and so I said, well if that's it, I'll go ahead and do it."
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