1942 May 16

Gordon Hirabayashi Tells FBI He Won’t Register for Evacuation

 

Gordon Hirabayashi on this day told the FBI in Seattle why he would not register for compulsory evacuation from the west coast, as ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Hirabayashi’s refusal initiated a Supreme Court test of the Japanese-American evacuation and internment program by refusing to obey a curfew on Japanese-Americans. His refusal led to his arrest and then the historic Supreme Court decision in Hirabayashi v. United States. Decided on June 21, 1943, it was the first important Japanese-American internment case to reach the Court. The Court deferred to the judgment of the military and unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the curfew that Hirabayashi had violated.

The evacuation of the Japanese-Americans had been authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Executive Order 9066 (February 19, 1942). The president’s order, however, did not mention Japanese-Americans by name, nor did it specify what would happen to people after they were evacuated.

The evacuation and internment of the Japanese-Americans during the war is widely regarded as the greatest single civil liberties tragedy in American history.

Read Gordon Hirabayashi’s Statement: https://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/1942%20Hirabayashi%20Statement%20against%20Inernment%20-%20May.pdf

Watch a tribute to Gordon Hirabayashi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HLsXt0_4rs

Read: Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (2001)

Learn more about Gordon Hirabayashi: http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Gordon_Hirabayashi/

Visit the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site near Tucson, AZ: http://gingerpost.com/?p=1876

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