A Little Known Case For Redress Railroad and Mine Workers

              National Japanese American Historical Society
dotoyed evidence
3id knowledge	
Court Challenges (Cont'd from Page 7)
based on his belief that both orders
were discriminatory and contrary to
the democratic principles on which the
United States was founded.
Yasui v. United States
Minoru Yasui was an American born
citizen of Japanese ancestry, a graduate
of the University of Oregon Law
School, a U.S. Army reserve officer, an
attorney and active member of the
Japanese American Citizens League.
He had recently worked for the
Japanese Consulate in Chicago. After
Pearl Harbor, he resigned to enlist in
the military, but was denied on the
grounds that he was Japanese. Yasui
challenged the curfew orders on the
grounds of racial discrimination. He
served nine months in solitary confinement while awaiting trial. He was
tried and convicted.
Korematsu v. (Jilted States
Born and raised in Oakland,
California, Fred Korematsu tried to
enlist in the Navy, but was denied
because of his Japanese ancestry. He
was employed as a welder in a shipyard
in San Leandro, CA. He was fired after
WWII broke out because of his ancestry.
Korematsu ignored the eviction
orders, and attempted to alter his
appearance with plastic surgery in the
hope of remaining with his fiancee
who was not Japanese, until they could
move to Nevada.
He was arrested by the FBI and after
spending two and a half months in jail,
Korematsu was found guilty of violating the eviction orders. He was sentenced to five years probation, but the
judge did not impose the sentence.
Despite paying bail, Korematsu was
again taken into custody by the
Military Police. He was confined at the
Presidio Army Headquarters and then
sent to Tanforan "Assembly" Center.
Court Appeals
Hirabayashi and Yasui appealed
their cases separately to the Supreme
Court. The Court ruled together on
the two cases, unanimously upholding
the curfew law for Japanese Americans
living in Military Area #1 (West Coast
region). The Court declared that the
President and Congress had used the
war powers provided in the Constitution appropriately.
The Supreme Court made its ruling
on Korematsu in 1944, over two years
after Japanese Americans were
removed from the West Coast and put
into detention camps. In a 6-3 vote, the
Court upheld the exclusion of Japanese
Americans from the West Coast. In
handing down the decision on the
eviction, the Supreme Court sidestepped the ruling on the internment.
Coram Nobis
Forty years later, the federal district
courts in San Francisco, Portland, and
Seattle vacated the original convictions
of Korematsu, Yasui, and Hirabayashi
in response to a petition for a writ of
error coram nobis - a legal procedure
requesting the original decision be set
aside due to fundamental errors and
injustice at the time of trial.
The petition, presented by a legal
team headed by Sansei attorney Dale
Minami, asserted that fundamental
errors were made in that officials of the
War Department altered and destroyed
evidence, withholding knowledge of
the evidence from the Department of
Justice and the Supreme Court; that
the War Department and the Justice
Department failed to inform the
Supreme Court of falsities contained
in DeWitt's Final Report; and that both
departments suppressed evidence on
the loyalty of Japanese Americans.
These startling discoveries were
made by legal historian Peter Irons and
researcher Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga.
They found that the Supreme Court
decisions of the 1940s had been based
on the misrepresentation of available
facts and on the deliberate suppression
of evidence.
In her opinion, Federal Appeals
Court Judge Marilyn Hall-Patel (San
Francisco) found "substantial support
in the record that the government
deliberately omitted relevant information and provided misleading information" to the Supreme Court. She
wrote, "The judicial process is seriously impaired, when government's law
enforcement officers violate their ethical
obligations to the court."
Postscript
Min Yasui passed away just before
his conviction was vacated.
Gordon Hirabayashi has been a professor and visiting professor at many
colleges and universities in the United
States and abroad. He has authored
numerous books and articles and has
received many awards and honors
throughout the country.
Fred Korematsu was active in the
redress movement with the National
Coalition for Redress and Reparations
and has spoken at numerous community events and universities. Mr.
Korematsu recently received the highest civilian award, the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, from President Bill
Clinton. ■
Nikkei Heritage*Spring 1998    15